Deviana vows to break the ceiling

Deviana vows to break the ceiling

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): When Deviana Daudsjah, 42, saw Abdurrahman Wahid
sworn in as the fourth president of Indonesia on television, she
decided that it was at last time to come home.

So overnight all further engagements in Basel, Switzerland,
were canceled and the Jazz musician and composer packed up her
belongings of 25 years to return to Jakarta.

"Most people I know think that I am crazy to have done this,"
said Deviana, who had a lucrative career in Europe cutting
records, playing live and televised concerts, and as the music
director of Theater Basel.

In fact, she had been toying with the idea of moving back for
some time.

"Life was very comfortable and secure, but there was something
missing. I longed for the company of my mother, my sister. I
missed my family, my natural environment," she said in a
sorrowful tone.

But she realized that she also needed to make music wherever
she decided to live. All those years she had been able to do so
with much more freedom in Europe than in Indonesia, where
people's lives had been restricted for more than three decades by
all kinds of formalities, procedures and conventions. She found
it difficult even to breathe in such an atmosphere and to create
her kind of music -- to which the description of German
philosopher Hegel of a beach neither sea nor land is fitting --
seemed almost impossible.

The soul of jazz after all is about harmonic improvisation and
exploration all the time, and the oddly eccentric nature of this
music abhors playing to the tune of anyone. Jazz is the art of
the individual musician with a specific language conveying subtle
shades of emotions of the moment and not just an abstract
aesthetic gesture. The only truism about jazz remains that the
performer playing a theme always tries to make it sound not like
itself, but like himself.

It is almost impossible perhaps to play jazz restricted to any
one style even though it was born out of the music of West
African slaves isolated from their home and the superior attitude
of their white masters which they were forced to suffer in the
cotton fields of the U.S. After that it took this most enigmatic
of musical forms years to come to terms with its own
idiosyncratic nature that today prides itself upon not having any
respect for restraint of any kind.

Therefore, all that this instinctive musician could do was
continue to educate herself and to wait for Indonesia to
reconcile itself to the importance of individual freedom before
she finally returned forever.

And now that she is here, she threatens to "Break the Glass
Ceiling" that has muffled the notes of this medium of music for
so long in her native country. At an evening organized by Debra
H. Yatim of Komseni, Communications for the Arts with the same
theme here recently, music lovers concluded that the jazz scene
in Jakarta may never be the same again with the return of
Deviana.

"I want to share everything that I have learned over the years
with professional musicians and lovers of jazz here," Deviana
explained, giving details of a series of training workshops she
will conduct from April 15, running into September.

Apart from performing, she wants to teach jazz music and
organize concerts all over the country. And if the curtain raiser
presented the same evening after a discussion on "Jazz and You"
is anything to go by, then it should not be too difficult for
this waiting-to-erupt vocalist, pianist and superb entertainer to
eventually engulf the entire city into the throbbing folds of her
hot music.

After a short piece on the piano, Deviana gave a solo
performance, dedicating one of the numbers to her mother, who was
in the audience. The highlight of the evening was the appearance
on stage of the "gang of four" with Deani, Rizainy and
Alekszandra joining Deviana to make the most wonderful music
heard in a long time. The four women played classical jazz
numbers and later turned Indonesian folk songs from Aceh,
Sulawesi and Ambon into mainstream jazz tunes that got the
audience rocking wildly to the unique rhythm.

Although working with three other women here, Deviana does not
see herself as a flag bearer for women musicians alone. "That is
too fanatical an attitude," she said. She wants to encourage a
love of music among people of both sexes. The reason she feels
there are so few women involved in jazz is because of the
traditional roles played by men and women in society itself. She
finds it so difficult to talk about the importance of gender
equality here. She wonders how an awareness can be created when
in traditional societies like Indonesia.

She has noticed that many changes are taking place outside of
Indonesia.

Pretty women are not just used by musical bands to decorate
the stage anymore. They are lead singers, instrumentalists and
business managers too in the West. As the role of women in
day-to-day life changes, society will also change, including the
male dominated sphere of jazz.

"We are all part of an evolutionary process, but the future
looks brighter than ever," the impish looking Deviana insisted
with a wide grin.

Born in Jakarta of a Manadoese mother and an Acehnese father,
Deviana recalls a huge collection of music at home from around
the world. One of her earliest memories is listening to Ella
Fitzgerald, the black American singer whose voice has been
warming the hearts of jazz lovers ever since 1935, along with
Indonesian folk songs. She dreams of a day when music will not be
classified as this or that but simply as good or bad music.

When she was one year old, the family moved to Thailand, where
she began piano lessons at the age of five, and later went on to
graduate from the Music Academy Freiburg, Germany. Here she also
worked as the academic director for jazz and rock before she
moved to Switzerland to give lessons in piano and vocal music.

In the spirit of true jazz that recognizes no boundaries and
favors all kinds of fusion, Deviana was accompanied from Europe
by Alekszandra Svekan, a Hungarian born Swiss vocalist who makes
dazzling instrumental music with her voice, apart from being able
to put all of her soul into singing local songs. She is also an
expert on the theory of jazz.

So while the lady sings the blues, you put on those dancing
shoes and without pause go and find out what all that jazz is
about.

All inquiries of music enthusiasts to Deviana's Profound Jazz
Ensemble Training Workshops will be answered at telephone number
79191121.