Harry composes a melody with audience
By Johannes Simbolon
JAKARTA (JP): Harry Roesli surprised the rock music lovers packing the Classic Rock Pub near the Blok-M Bus Terminal in South Jakarta on the eve of Independence Day by involving them in the composition of a melody to be dedicated to the 50-year-old Indonesia.
Everyone showed enthusiasm when Harry urge them to contribute a word, phrase or verse to the lyrics of the would-be song. None had the slightest idea of how the song would be turn out. Yet the room, which is usually filled with high-voltage tunes of Western rock songs, was all at once transformed into a freedom of speech forum.
"Fifty years of Indonesia's independence," shouted one guest. "Debt!" exclaimed another. "Monopoly," "Revolution fund," "Anxious Indonesia," "Fat Harry," "Travel ban for Ali," "Ines, the secretary, is available," etc. Harry jotted down dozens of words and verses from the bar's visitors.
Then he sang to the accompaniment of a guitar. One by one the verses came out of his lips in an improvised tune.
Harry subsequently continued to another "strangely" improvised melody with lyrics peppered with socio-political protests and rather obscene words. The bar's visitors elatedly clapped their hands, giggled, whistled and shouted in response.
At the end of the song, he surprisingly inserted a patriotic, solemn melody, well-known to all Indonesians Satu Nusa, Satu Bangsa (One Homeland, One Nation). Silence then settled on the room. Had Harry stopped protesting? No way! He changed the last verses of the song into cynicism, bringing the room back into an uproar.
That was how Harry celebrated Indonesia's golden anniversary that night.
After the show, the man who loves wearing black in his shows, sipped bottled tea outside the bar, heaved a heavy sigh, and watched the street vendors who were still busy working in the early hours.
"Our country has still too many shortcomings. We don't deserve celebrating a golden anniversary with great festivities," he told The Jakarta Post.
The 43-year-old musician then mentioned the shortcomings one by one: the wide gap between the poor and the rich, the poor mentality of the people in general, the repressive governmental policy towards democracy, the government's preference of high- tech technology over efficient industry, etc.
"I celebrate this anniversary crying," he concluded, sipping his tea.
For his outspokenness regarding socio-political affairs, Harry has long been regarded by the public as a protest musician. His humorous criticisms have made his fans laugh, but they have made the authorities, the Bandung authorities in particular, angry. Thus, he has often been imprisoned for as long as three months at a time. By his own admission, the town's authorities still ban his shows. Even, he said, some "unidentified" persons occasionally watch over his house, especially when there are gatherings inside. But he can play in other towns relatively freely.
"I don't know why the Bandung authorities treat me so. Maybe, I haven't yet worked hard to lobby them. But, you know it is not easy to lobby them. A military chief is replaced ever so quickly. The longest tenure for a chief is two years and by that time we haven't yet finished approaching him, when the new one comes," he said.
Harry is a musician in the first place. And for his music he draws inspiration from socio-political occurrences around him.
"Music is for me a medium through which I channel my concerns. Nothing is particular in that I have concerns with socio- political affairs because all well-educated people have them," he said.
With music, too, he now aggressively campaigns here and abroad against nuclear use in general and the Indonesian government's plan to set up nuclear plants here.
"We are not prepared to have nuclear plants. How can we handle it if we cannot even manage toilets and public buses?" he argues at every opportunity.
Born in Bandung in 1951, Harry started playing music at the tender age of six. His father, a military member who later retired as an army major general, bought his four children a set of musical instruments. The youngest child, Harry, curiously tried all the instruments.
At a junior high school of his hometown, his music teacher, Suhardi, quickly recognized the boy's talent. The teacher, Harry said, was the first man to introduce him to music. The teacher asked him to take additional training for clarinet from him at his quarters three times a week after school.
"My mother angrily reprimanded me for coming home so late. On the other hand, I dared not disobey the teacher," he recalled.
His music activities intensified during senior high school. He played many gigs with schoolmates -- too many, it seemed, that his parents interfered by allowing him to play only twice a week.
"As usually happens with adolescents, the more my parents forbade me from playing music, the more the urge to play was reinforced," he said.
After high school, he enrolled in the civil engineering department at the prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology, while all his siblings learned medicine to follow in their mother's footsteps. After four semesters, he quit ITB to dedicate his life to music. In the beginning, his parents took issue with his decision. "Band players are drunkards," his father argued. Harry's his father eventually gave up trying to discourage him. "But don't play music with the intention of making a profit," was his advice.
The grandson of Marah Roesli, Indonesia's first modern literary man, started to become engaged in "serious" music and made many experiments. To polish his talent, he studied music in the Netherlands on a scholarship, and obtained a doctoral degree from Rotterdam Conservatorium in 1981. His thesis was focused on the negative impact of music on a high school student's endurance for studying.
Music lovers were shocked when he turned everything into musical instruments, from cans to pieces of broken bottles. In one show, for example, he continually pushed and pulled a door in such a way as to produce what he called "lulling" music.
The "strange" music, coupled with his humorous, critical lyrics, is really amusing entertainment. Moreover, he often presents his music in theater shows. But none of his recorded works ever achieved commercial success.
"My music is not selling because it is an experiment, analysis and concentration," he said.
He has produced dozens of albums, of which the most-critically-acclaimed ones are Titik Api (Focus, 1976), Ken Arok (1975), Cas Cis Cus (Chatter, 1992). He has never bothered to find out how many albums were sold.
Today, as a musician Harry tries to intensively revive Indonesia's traditional music, which he said has been in the process of vanishing due to the influence of western cultures.
"Our sense has been uprooted from our own culture. That's why many musicians are now vying to revive their own cultural music," he said.
As for his socio-political concerns, the father of twin sons promised that he will be consistent with his outspokenness. He is not afraid that because of his criticisms he will someday be sacked from his job as music teacher at the state-run Bandung Teachers Training Institute.
"No need to be afraid," he calmly said, "The system in the bureaucracy has already deteriorated that in order to fire a civil servant, the process will take five to ten years," he concluded.