'Gambus' music played for secular purposes

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Jakarta was born over 400 years ago in the midst of bustling trading activities between the Middle East and Chinese merchants and it soon become a thriving city port given its strategic position in the center of the spice-rich archipelago.

This endowed Jakarta with the opportunity to absorb the multitude of influences that came along with the trading activities. Hence, Jakarta is a melting pot rich with traces of foreign cultures that make up the local Betawi culture.

Among the traces of the foreign cultures that are familiar to locals is Gambus, a musical ensemble playing Middle Eastern tunes that has significantly influenced the most popular and commercial musical genre in the country, dangdut.

To revisit the metropolitan's roots, organizers of the 478th anniversary of Jakarta invited one of the country's oldest Gambus ensembles Al-Fannada led by seasoned musician Munif Bahaswan to take the stage at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta last Friday.

In more than one hour and a half, Al-Fannada not only took the audience back to Jakarta's innocent past, it took them on a trip to a sun-soaked desert, flew across the blue skies over the Atlas mountains and breathed in the South Yemeni sand-filled air.

The majority of the concertgoers who occupied the empty rows of GKJ's seats most likely closed their eyes during the trip and only opened them when two female dancers performed a lively belly dance during the fourth song Tahwilah as they could not help clapping along to the heavy percussive beat.

From the first no-vocal opening composition, the musicians, who were mostly over forty gave an unassuming delivery with an extraordinary result.

Two violin players played a rich melodic rhythm section that heralded a more breathtaking trip.

The two violins sent forth a wailing and caressing sound that seeped into everyone's mind like uninvited company.

The opener made way for a two-piece arrangement Nawwarti Ayyami and Ya Habibi performed by female singer Faizah Haris.

Opened with a keyboard intro that instantly evoked the sight of Bedouin fires at night, Nawwarti was an upbeat and mundane tune although it had the feel of an ode to God with the singer repeatedly chanting the name of Allah.

And with three male dancers wearing black Muslim caps and long-sleeved shirts, joyfully swirling around the singer, although the tune was an offering to God, it seemed to have been conceived so that people could dance to it.

Nawwarti, which was followed by the exuberant Ya Habibi also evoked an exhilarating feeling about Jakarta's rich past, which unfortunately has been forgotten by most of its population, particularly those who missed the show that night.

It was not until the fifth song, a Yemeni tune, Ma Yehtag from male singer Husein that the show revealed Gambus in its truest form.

The song opened with a heart-rending plucking of a stringed instrument from which the name of the music is taken, Gambus.

A lengthy intro from the fretless twelve-stringed instrument with gentle Harpsichord-sounding tones sent shivers down the spine of everyone present that night. From the slope of the Atlas mountain, the concertgoers were now taken on a carpet ride to its peak.

Mu'nis husky vocals gave a lyrical effect to the song.

Approaching the song's end, its tempo heightened. Gone now was the restrained manner usually adhered to by frequent visitors to the GKJ. Those in the front rows nodded their heads and clapped their hands to the groove.

The ambiance prevailed until the show wrapped up with a rendition of Bintil Baidah from first singer Haris.

Already a part of the country's rich culture, Gambus is a direct descendent of Middle Eastern music. The original sound of Arabian music borrowed extensively from the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Sumerians. Many of the instruments now used are similar to those depicted in the wall paintings and carvings of these past civilizations.

The present forms of these instruments evolved primarily in the eighth century through to the tenth century, during that creative zenith of classical Islamic civilization known as the Golden Age.

The exotic sound of the music has attracted artists from the pop domain to incorporate it into their works. The most famous and probably finest example of that marriage is what heavy-metal legend Led Zeppelin had done in their 1975 hit Kashmir.

In 1994, during MTV unplugged performance, Led Zep's Robert Plant and Jimmy Page rehashed Kashmir and all their biggest hits with the support of a Marrakech and Egyptian ensemble. The ensemble delivered a lengthy coda in Kashmir that constituted a Middle Eastern interpretation of the song.