Asian conference-festival is music to local composers' ears

By Slamet A. Sjukur

JAKARTA (JP): The country will act as host to a great event next week for local composers and musicians, especially those who are engaged in contemporary and traditional music.

The 20th Asian Composers League (ACL) Conference-Festival will be held for the first time in the country. It will take place in Yogyakarta from Sept. 2 to Sept. 5 and in Surakarta from Sept. 6 to Sept. 8.

There will be seven concerts of two hours each, two competitions for young composers up to 30 years of age, the ACL Young Composers Award and Yoshiro Irino Memorial Prize, which is restricted to young composers of the host country. Other activities include three workshops on the themes of music and education, computers and music and the material to the soul of gamelan, a seminar on the spiritualism of sound and structure in contemporary music, and an exhibition-bazaar of traditional instruments from all over Indonesia.

There also will be the country reports of the 12 country members of the ACL, the executive committee meeting and the general assembly.

With the support of the Directorate of Arts, Directorate General of Culture and the main sponsor, the Ford Foundation, the Indonesian Composers Association (AKI) is responsible for the whole program.

The festival is held annually, with last year's event held in Taipei and the preceding year in Manila. Yokohama is scheduled next year.

As one might expect, the ACL's theme emphasizes the identity of Asian music. In Manila it focused on "Theories of Music Composition from Music Ensemble in Asia" and in Taipei it was "Discovery of Asian Music: Discovering the Significance of Oriental Philosophy in Music".

AKI considers that it is best not to let ourselves become entangled in an endless East-West dichotomy. It is time to live with a whole, open mind. Indonesia's theme is Maha-Swara (Deep Sound), that is, the sound emanating from the depth.

Inspired by the works of Hazrat Inayat Khan (the mysticism of sound in the sufi message), Baghwan Shree Rajneesh (the book of the secrets), Tomatis (La Nuit Uterine/the universe of sound in the uterus) and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, we arrive at the conclusion that almost every music culture originated in the realm of spiritual needs in the widest sense of its meaning. The creation of instruments, compositions and their contents were always signified by organized sounds; their structures were in the realm of spiritual and even cosmological considerations.

Our modern era of information with its digital global networks tends to forget such basic human needs in favor of quantitative and countable considerations.

How can contemporary composers contribute to this situations in order to balance the possible alienations of humankind from itself?

To meet the depth of the theme, AKI planned to invite highly qualified observers such as A.A. Tomatis of France, prominent Indian philosopher-musician Bhaskar Candavarkar, Indonesians Djelantik, who lives in Denpasar, Kuntar Wiryamartana from Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta, and members of the Hardo Pusoro Association from Purworejo, Central Java.

In his lifelong research, Tomatis, the French specialist in oto-rhino-laryngology, audiology and phonology, discovered that the ear is one of the parts of the human body which is formed first and perfectly in the fetus. It means the fetus unconsciously aware of what is outside of its own body. Hearing is the first contact and the first awareness of human memory.

When a person is dying and when most parts of the body do not function anymore, hearing is the last connection with the world which he or she is leaving. It is for this very reason that there are traditions to help the dying through whispering soothing words or spiritual advice.

The message of sound as the heart of the problem in music is more constructive and relevant than exploring the East-West conflict.

The festival also is an opportunity for Indonesia to reveal its potential in contemporary music. The gondang (tuned drums) from the Batak people of North Sumatra, the gamelan and the choral way of singing in Flores are only few examples of traditions which are inspiring for new Indonesian music. We also have the phenomenal pianist-composer Ananda Sukarlan, who lives in Spain and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the pianist with the most pieces of music dedicated to him by living -- a total of 38 -- composers. We also have Paul Gutama Soegijo, an Indonesian composer who has lived in Berlin for more than 30 years and who is famous in prestigious international festivals.

We expect also the best performances of the best music from Australia, Azerbaijan, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

But the best is an enemy of practical good sense; there should be a certain tolerance between what is ideal and what is possible.

Due to problems with timing, the number of musical scores submitted to the committee is only 48, that is only about 25 percent of what is usual for such an important festival. Lucky composers obtained the "Call for Score" less than two months before the deadline (normally one year in advance), and many more composers did not get any information at all. The chance to have more choices of solid music is consequently little.

Time management is a big problem for the organizing committee, especially when clear insight into designation of tasks is not shared properly.

People become crazily busy, have no time to communicate with each other and lose sight of what priorities are. Then, as usual, a banal scapegoat appears: financial difficulty. It is ironic that art management lacks creativity in problem solving.

However, the 20th ACL Conference-Festival is conceived as the sound emanating from the depth of time and bringing hope for the coming millennium.

Distinguished French musicologist Francois Picard of the Sorbonne University in Paris will give a seminar on the function of voice in the Tibetan ritual.

Jose Maceda, the celebrated composer and Professor Emiritus of Philippines University, will present his music.

Cross-cultural music of the famous Irwansyah Harahap will also be in the program of Maha-Swara.

The writer is a composer.