Gesang stays true to his music

Ahmad Solikhan, Contributor, Surakarta, Central Java

Anytime one hears the popular Bengawan Solo (Solo River), a clear picture of the famous river flowing through the Central Java town of Surakarta, which is better known as Solo, will come to mind.

Though written in the 1940s, the legendary song is still popular today, and is often sung by popular artists.

Today, the river might be not as clean as depicted in the song. But at the time, its composer, Gesang Marto Hartono, sailed along the river to witness its beauty for himself.

"The Bengawan Solo is no longer as beautiful as when I wrote the song. There are many people who like this song, not only here but also overseas. Most are disappointed to learn that the song is no longer true," Gesang once said.

Now, despite his gray hair and wrinkled skin, at 85 Gesang still has music close to his heart.

Born in Kemlayan, Surakarta, on Oct. 1, 1917, Gesang was given the name Soetadi by his parents, who owned a batik business in the city. But his name was later changed to Gesang, meaning alive, after he recovered from a serious illness while still a baby.

His decision to take up a career in music was not supported by his parents, who wanted him to help them run the family business.

But his willpower was strong. Little Gesang showed great interest, especially in keroncong, Javanese traditional tunes. He loved to sing to himself, or watched local keroncong groups. Later on, after finishing school, he secretly joined keroncong groups like Marco, Sinar Bulan and Monte Carlo in Surakarta.

Now he has dozens of songs to his credit, including Si Piatu (The Orphan) -- the first song he composed at the age of 21 telling about an orphan who led a miserable life under the Dutch colonial government, and others like Roda Dunia (Wheel of the World, 1939), Saputangan (Handkerchief, 1941), Tirtonadi (1942), and Jembatan Merah (Red Bridge, 1943).

His songs not only made him famous here, but also abroad. Songs like Saputangan and Jembatan Merah were used as film soundtracks. He also traveled to many countries. In 1963, he went to China and North Korea as the Indonesian art envoy and in 1972, he introduced Bengawan Solo to Singaporeans. He also traveled as far as Japan and Malaysia to perform his songs.

"When I performed in Singapore, the response was warm, even from young audiences," recalled Gesang, who is recovering from a broken leg and now suffers from diabetes.

His music is created through a unique process since Gesang cannot even read music and can only play a single musical instrument, the flute. In composing a song, he uses his flute and then improves it by singing out loud.

"In composing a song, I cannot say whether I start with the lyrics and then a melody or the other way around," Gesang said in his simple home. In a keroncong performance in Bandung in 1980, his flute was auctioned for Rp 10 million to an anonymous fan.

Gesang started to gain a wider audience after he started singing on radio. He sang on a radio station owned by Mangkunegaran (SRV) and on SRI, which was owned by Kasunanan.

When the state radio RRI was set up in 1950 in Surakarta, Gesang was asked to perform a keroncong program alongside a group from the then Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI) and another one by the People's Arts Council (Lekra), which was set up by pro-PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) artists and writers in 1950. But due to Lekra's political connections, Gesang was no longer allowed to sing on RRI. He was back to the station after he returned with his groups Bunga Mawar and Irama Sehat.

Later on, Gesang appeared regularly alongside the Bintang Surakarta group under popular keroncong singer Waljinah and Radio Orkes Surakarta (ROS) for the local RRI station.

When after the 1965 tragedy people linked his name with Lekra, the great composer seemed to isolate himself. But recently, as people realized that it was the organization that manipulated Gesang's reputation for its own purposes, he finally received the recognition he deserved.

Now the composer lives alone in the house that he inherited from his father, tending to his grocery kiosk. He married his neighbor Waliyah in 1941 and the wedding lasted for 22 years before the two divorced, with no children.

In his leisure time, he has witnessed many developments in music, especially the emergence of campursari -- a blend of keroncong and gamelan traditional orchestras, which actually resembles Langgam Jawa -- keroncong songs in Javanese. Gesang's Kalung Mutiara is one example of this popular Langgam Jawa, which usually has simple lyrics and is easy to listen to. Its performers are usually singers from Javanese shadow puppet shows, or ketoprak, traditional Javanese drama and keroncong singers.

But later on, as he watched television and live performances, Gesang found that campursari had changed. Not only were the musical instruments more modern, including electric guitars and drums, but the lyrics had become duller -- dominated by love themes, the music had become too noisy while the performers swayed their bodies too much, even suggestively.

"Actually, I like seeing this new development. But I think it would be better if the 'swaying' were adjusted to match the songs' lyrics," said Gesang, whose Javanese song Pamitan (Goodbye) was later rendered into Indonesian and performed by the late Broery Pesolima in 1998.

He said campursari could be much better, with lyrics touching one's emotions, not simply catering to market demand.

"If I had only catered to the market demand, I would have written thousands of songs."