French jazz musketeers join Raharjo for gamelan fusion

By Nicolas Colombant

JAKARTA (JP): The French have a thing about gamelan music.

Classical melody-maker Claude Debussy wrote: "It can only be compared to two things: moonlight and untamed water. It has all the purity and mystery of moonlight, and is forever changing, just like untamed water."

When Sapto Raharjo was invited to the Banlieues Bleues music festival outside of Paris in 1996, he ended up playing for two- and-a-half hours, his longest ever stint.

"Normally, one sitting is a maximum 90 minutes, but the audience wanted more and more," he remembered of his first performance in France.

"If the organizing committee didn't decide to let the next group on stage, we'd probably still be playing," he said with a laugh from his Yogyakarta residence, where the gamelan music pulses like a lifeblood.

In the past three years, four different French jazz artists have ventured to this place to undertake an adventure in fusion, blending the improvisations of jazz with the sounds of the gambang, the bonang kenong, the celempung and the many other instruments that make up a gamelan orchestra, compliments of a group assembled by Raharjo.

Three magical CDs have come out of this innovative collaboration, and a fourth is on the way. They have earned rave reviews in the French press, and Raharjo now speaks of a world gamelan tour.

Tomorrow night, the adventure continues at the Wayang Orang Bharata Hall on Jl. Kalilio 15 in Senen, Central Jakarta.

The four French musicians -- saxophonist Andre Jaume, guitarist Remi Charmasson, flutist Miqueu Montanaro and vibraphonist Alex Grillo -- will reunite with their gamelan mentor and his troupe at the start of a four-date tour which will proceed on to Bandung (Tuesday), Surabaya (Thursday) and Yogyakarta (Friday).

Raharjo said it would not be a jamboree, as the French musicians will not play together, but each will play separately with the gamelan. The exception will be Jaume, who will also perform with Charmasson as a saxophone and guitar duo.

Raharjo explained that each jazz artist created his own distinct osmosis with the meditative sounds of the gamelan, and that these were not meant to be combined. Selections from the CDs will be performed, followed by new improvisations, to reflect the mood of the moment.

Among sure bets to be featured is Rain on Gumuk, from the first album Borobodur Suite, recorded by Jaume and Raharjo in Yogyakarta in February 1995. In this tune, the clarinet mixes with loud gongs in the background to successfully produce a halo effect. In March, Jaume returned to Yogyakarta with jazz guitarist Charmasson in tow, to produce a second album, Merapi. In Dewa reggae, Charmasson's guitar is the metallic lead, swinging taut ropes over the watered ensemble.

"This has been an entire process, the meeting of the styles with these different French artists," Raharjo said. "With the saxophonist Jaume, it was all about creating melodies, creating conversations, even though we spoke different languages and played at different tones.

"The guitarist Charmasson started to enter our world by mimicking our sounds."

The next to arrive was the flamboyant Montanaro, who looks like a folk troubadour with his round glasses, scarf and beret. He is, in fact, a jazz revolutionary, bringing new color to the often-tired concept of what is known as "world music".

Montanaro plays many flutes, none of which are Javanese, but Raharjo said: "he was able to create a new color that blended into our spiritual backdrop. It was like a musical awakening."

After less than a month of workshops, the album Java was recorded.

The fourth musician to join was Grillo, who ventured even further by adapting to the local two-tone system of pentatonic scales. Grillo is not afraid of experimentation, performing regularly in subaquatic concerts -- that's right, literally playing underwater in a wet suit.

Grillo said he felt like an American uncle returning to his family.

He used every minute of one month in Java last year, recording an album with Raharjo and performing at both the gamelan festival in Yogyakarta and the percussion festival in Jakarta.

All French musicians have expressed surprise at how gamelan musicians really play as a group, interchangeably, and how it is inconceivable that one could practice alone.

"There is no leader, no solos, musicians answer each other," Jaume explained. "Each musician can initiate a new tune, it is really a collective process."

For Raharjo, the French experience marks a step forward for gamelan and its travel beyond local borders.

"It is making avant-garde music for the future. It is developing new sounds so that the West can come to appreciate the sounds of our own ethnicity. It has been my strategy and my obsession for a long time to make this come true."

Raharjo is ever the busy body in his own cause, readying the launch of a nationally syndicated ethnic music radio program, and the appointed president of an association for Indonesian composers.

"We have pop, we have dangdut (Arab-influenced music), but I believe our most powerful force is our traditional music, as it shapes itself into the fusion of globalism."