Club culture shakes Jakarta

Club culture shakes Jakarta

By Dini S. Djalal

JAKARTA (JP): Is club culture coming to Jakarta? The last year
has seen a spate of new clubs shifting the city's sonic tolerance
to new levels.

But neither the model-infested Garasi at the Jakarta Stock
Exchange Building, a newly-refurbished Tanamur, or smaller dens
like @ Cafe (pronounced as At Cafe) and Morgan's, can compare to
the behemoth christened Bengkel jutting out in the middle of the
Sudirman Central Business District.

A 11,000 square-meter pyramid-shaped tome to steel, glass, and
cement, three-floored Bengkel offers 60,000 watts of that which
parents love to loathe: pure noise.

And it's not even noise that they're used to reviling. The
rock'n'roll which terrorized trustees of tranquil homes is slowly
being replaced by even more incomprehensible rhythms. Open your
eyes to the blinding strobe lights and your ears to the pulsating
beats. The future is here, and it's called electronica.

Electronica is the buzzword ripping through the United States
to describe the dance music that's been coming out of the U.K.
for the last 10 years. And save for churning a few Beatles
tribute albums (whither Oasis?), the Brits are making their name
in music circles dancing out of the dole.

House, deep house, hard house, techno, trance, garage,
ambient, trip-hop, acid jazz, jazz funk, soul, jungle,
drum'n'bass, ragga: spot the train your itchy feet want to hop
on. London's night-out listing Time Out scans the expanding terms
of musical terminology, and offers more than 50 clubs on a
Saturday night, a good 20 more than 10 years ago.

But the bookish ghettoization of dance music has its
drawbacks. Young men turned pale from spending too much time in
record shops rule over turntables and fanzines like music
fascists, dissecting bands and deejays like Oppenheimer peering
over a microscopic atom. To become famous in England means
becoming unfamous almost immediately after. Music has long been a
religion for unemployed British youth, but this piety is often so
zealous that it has lost the joy.

As the wise men say, ignorance is bliss. When Ministry of
Sound, England's biggest club, took over Bengkel last Saturday,
what stayed most on the minds of deejays Marc Auerbach and Jan
Mehmet was the audience's unfettered glee.

"Wicked, mate!", Auerbach and Mehmet repeated over and over
again on the mammoth stage and off as they presided over more
than 7,000 writhing bodies. Ministry's two resident deejays, who
had never heard of Jakarta prior to this visit, were shocked that
so many people turned up. And better yet, turned up happy.

"The vibe is like England in the late 1980s," said Auerbach,
describing the atmosphere as "still innocent". London, Auerbach
said, was "too serious" and "elitist". In fact, the deejays
thought the mood that night was so good that they regarded it as
one of the best shows they have ever done.

And that's a lot of shows. In the six years since its
inception, Ministry of Sound has not only become the biggest club
in the U.K., but the biggest club in the world, touring through
the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. The original club,
a booming maze of tunnels and caves in South London, week in and
week out still packs the crowds, mixing out-of-towners with local
celebrities (a few dishevelled members of Take That marked my
last visit).

In fact, Ministry has become so big, it's less club than
corporation. After all, the Ministry of Sound Recordings is the
largest independent label in Europe. Ministry was also one of the
first clubs to charge exorbitant entry fees -- 15 (Rp 70,000) on
a Saturday night and more on special occasions. Ministry charged
Rp 30,000 for their show in Jakarta.

Nightclubbing

Many making a living of nightclubbing say that Ministry's
business mentality is helping ruin club culture.

They claim that corporate sponsorship -- Pepsi on last year's
tour, Levi's for the Indonesia show and Sony, which allegedly
paid 50,000 (Rp 250 million) for a Playstation room at the
London club -- is undermining the "underground" spirit of
clubbing.

Deejays once commanded only triple-digit fees; years ago,
Ministry paid Todd Terry only $150 a night. He now demands
10,000 (Rp 50 million) after his remix of Everything But the
Girl's Missing became a worldwide platinum hit. A top deejay
easily walks away with 5,000 pounds a night, plus first-class
airfare and accommodation.

Clubbing for music

What really matters, said manager of Bengkel Anton Wirjono, is
having fun. "Most people in Jakarta don't know what Ministry is,
they're not experts in club culture," he said. "They don't know
if it's commercial. It's just good entertainment, it's fun,
that's the most important thing."

Anton is trying to bring in more outside deejays, such as Boy
George and the deejays of Liverpool's club central Cream, because
he wants kids to come clubbing for the music, not drugs.

"That's the next step, bringing in deejays from abroad so that
people here can better understand club culture. I want to shift
the attention on dance music away from drugs," said Anton.

Anton doesn't have to convince 23-year-old Ndun, a student at
Jakarta's Institute of Arts. Ndun danced for four hours non-stop
to Ministry's tribal rumble, without any chemical assistance. "If
you take Ecstasy, you can't appreciate the subtle nuances in the
music," said Ndun.

The nuances Ndun loved, however, were somewhat lacking on the
night. "The first set wasn't so good. I expected harder beats,
something different. I wanted to hear some Chemical Brothers,
Prodigy, and jungle," he said.

He may have never been to London but he is well-versed in
dance music, going often to raves held at his college. And he's
heard of Ministry of Sound -- specifically of its commercial
reputation.

So has Simon, an 18-year-old high-school student who wants to
be a deejay. He has read about Ministry of Sound in music
magazines, particularly deejay magazine Mixmag, which he bought
in Singapore.

"I go clubbing about three times a month," said Simon, mostly
to Bengkel, Garasi, or, before Anton moved to Bengkel as deejay
and manager, Parkit. Simon said that if more deejays come from
London or the U.S., he'd definitely stand in line to see them.
That is exactly what the management at Bengkel likes to hear.