'Indojazz' still in the air despite heavy foreign presence

'Indojazz' still in the air despite heavy foreign presence

By Johannes Simbolon

JAKARTA (JP): The performance of the Benko Dixieland Band from Budapest, Hungary at the 1995 Jak Jazz festival, which closed on Sunday evening, seemed at odds with the festival's mission.

The group played Dixieland, a style of jazz in a two-beat or four-beat rhythm originally played in New Orleans, despite the festival's intention of marrying jazz with Indonesian ethnic music in the effort to find Indo(nesian)jazz.

Band leader Prof. Sandor Benko said Hungary also has its own ethnic music and the group once tried to mix the ethnic elements with Dixieland.

"But it was soon lost to the New Orleans original style," said Benko.

Ironic, in Indonesia at least, is that the group has enjoyed fame through what many Indonesians might call a lack of nationalism.

The group has attracted millions of fans around the world and received many international awards, including the grand prix at the 9th Sacramento's jazz jubilee in 1982. Even President Ronald Reagan once complimented them for what he called their promotion of American traditional music throughout the world.

Indonesian jazz players were encouraged to achieve this level of accomplishment through Jak Jazz 1995 and the development of ethnic jazz.

"If local musicians just imitate the American artists without developing their own style, how can they compete in the international fora? American musicians have all the means, including numerous schools and a long jazz tradition, to develop their skill much better than Indonesian musicians," said Franky Raden, the festival's program organizer.

The festival opened with the Dwiki Dharmawan Orchestra performing with the Novi Budianto Gamelan Orchestra. Indonesian jazz players who have experimented blending jazz with ethnic music, including Krakatau, Elfa's big band, Sketsa, Tan Deseng, followed. Then came contemporary musicians who could never be categorized as jazz players, including Jadug Ferianto, Inisisri with his group Kahanan, Ben M Pasaribu, I Wayan Sadra and Harry Roesli, who is strongly oriented toward ethnic music.

The musicians were of two minds in their assessment of the ethnic-jazz goal of the festival.

"People can play jazz with modern and traditional instruments as Jadug Ferianto, for example, did. But music genres produced by two kinds of instruments only loosely cling to each other. They are never married," insisted Harry Roesli.

Nick Mamahit, a veteran Indonesian pianist, concurred, saying that unless the traditional instruments are technically engineered to play the diatonic scale aside from the ethnic pentatonic scale, jazz and ethnic music can never be solidly integrated.

While many local musicians dismissed the ethnic-jazz experiment as a failure, foreign musicians like Arturo Sandoval saw the effort as viable.

"When I was at the hotel I heard people in the lobby playing a music which I am not familiar with. I thought it was Indonesian ethnic music. I soon returned to my room to compose a melody with the ethnic color," said Arturo Sandoval, a Cuban-born musician, who played jazz with rich Latin flavor during the festival.

Some argue that the marriage woes of ethnic music ad jazz can't be solved on a theoretical level, like the incompatibility of pentatonic and diatonic scales.

Benko said the feeling of the audience is the prime criterion, not the feeling of the musicians.

"If the audience feels good, then the music works, whatever the style is," he argued.

What's wrong with Indonesian musicians, he added, is that they play modern jazz, which requires full attention, seriousness and a lot of knowledge about jazz for the audience to understand and enjoy.

"This requirement is too much for the Indonesian audience, who are mostly newly acquainted with jazz," he said.

"They should start with traditional jazz, which is not too serious. After that, they can bring the audience to a higher level of jazz," he said.

According to Benko, there are 15 times the people who love traditional jazz than those who love modern and free jazz in the world.

While Benko emphasized the entertainment value of the music, some local musicians put the audience's enjoyment second.

"First of all, we should find out the most suitable style of jazz for us. After that, we should think of how to make it palatable to our audience," said Franky, who is known as a contemporary musician.

Indonesian musicians' search for self-identity has been limited to ethnic-jazz experiments, which they have received acclaim for at several overseas musical events, including the North Jazz Sea festival.

They will remain strangers in Indonesia if they continue to focus on entertaining foreign audiences while overlooking the local market.

Once local audiences grow, it will be far easier for musicians to experiment seriously.

If the audience's taste is the reference, it will not matter if jazz is blended with ethnic music or stays purely American, provided people love it.

"The concept of Indonesian music is actually still indefinite. In my opinion, music can only be judged as Indonesian music if all Indonesians love it," said Nick Mamahit.

After all, is nationalizing jazz a very serious thing? Benko Dixieland Band has gained success not by playing their own ethnic music but by playing excellent Dixieland.