Jak-Jazz '95 revives debate over essence of jazz

Jak-Jazz '95 revives debate over essence of jazz

By Johannes Simbolon

JAKARTA (JP): The old debate over the essence of jazz and its possibility to blend with ethnic music has resurfaced as the Jak- Jazz festival nears.

To date, the Indonesian music community is still split into two groups; those who argue that both types can't fuse because of their essentially different characters and those who argue otherwise.

On the part of the organizers, their intention to give a stronger ethnic color to the festival this year is clear: They want to make a trademark.

"We want to make Jak-Jazz different from all other jazz festivals throughout the world, a jazz festival with a strong Indonesian flavor," Ireng Maulana, chairman of the organizing committee which initiated the festival, said.

Billed as the Red-White Jak-Jazz, this year's festival tries to answer criticism which states that, so far, Jak-Jazz does not mean much to Indonesia except as a venue. The soul of the music remains in the West. It's an event where Western jazzers show off their virtuosity and where local musicians display their "cleverness" at imitating them.

According to its critics, that's what the Jak-Jazz festival is all about.

Since it started in 1988, Indonesia's biggest and most prestigious musical event has routinely brought on stage local jazzers who use ethnic music in their gigs, like the Bandung- based Krakatau and Karimata.

If anything, the festival has produced surprises by presenting foreign participants who adroitly used ethnic elements in their works.

During the 1991 Jak-Jazz, for example, the New Jungle Orchestra from Denmark involved 12 gamelan players from Bali, whom they had met several days before their appearance.

Yet, all the past festivals were undeniably dominated by conventional jazzers.

Bill Saragih, a regular at Jak-Jazz, is one of the local jazzers who dismisses the attempt to fuse jazz with ethnic music as a failure.

"The use of modern instruments together with traditional ones will only produce a synchronization or fake blend, one like water and oil in the same container," Bill was once quoted by The Jakarta Post.

As such, the audiences only hears two kinds of music played simultaneously but independently of each other.

The fake blend, he said, is because both kinds of music are essentially different, in that the modern instruments use the diatonic scale, while the ethnic ones the pentatonic scale.

"I once tried, in the 1960s, to blend both types, but I later quit because it didn't work," Bill said.

Although many musicians like Bill have given up, there are still a lot of musicians here, especially the younger generation of jazzers, who keep experimenting with indigenous music.

Ethnic jazz

The music critics coin the term "ethnic jazz" for this new genre.

Bandung-based guitarist Tan Deseng, one of the fervent supporters of ethnic jazz, says the disavowal of ethnic music by the jazzers results more from some kind of inferiority complex.

"We were once colonized by Westerners. So, we think all from the West is the best, and anything that comes from our tradition is in the second-class level," he told The Post.

Deseng, still a little-known jazzer to the public, was once hailed by Remy Sylado, the country's most respected music critic, as the first man in Indonesia to be able to find the perfect way to play Sundanese ethnic music with the guitar.

Deseng made his first, yet stunning public performance in Jakarta at the Jamz pub a month ago and will perform at this year's Jak-Jazz.

According to Deseng, jazz originates from the African blues scale which is also pentatonic in nature.

"The history of jazz also shows that in its development jazz has also adopted ethnic music using the pentatonic scale from Brazil, the bossa nova. The leap needed to fuse Bebop with Sundanese ethnic music will amount to the same leap Bebop has taken to bossa nova," he said.

Deseng said the essence of jazz is improvisation and the harmonious presentation of the various musical scales by the players.

The failure of some local musicians to blend ethnic music with jazz, he said, is because they have not mastered ethnic music when they try the fusion.

"As a matter of fact, our ethnic music, like jazz, gives each of the players ample chance to improvise during gigs," Deseng said. Since his performance a month ago, Deseng has received several offers to play in abroad.

Franky Raden, also an ardent supporter of the fusion of jazz and ethnic music, saw the case from another point of view.

Lately, he said, many jazz musicians have introduced a new genre, called free-jazz, where the musicians have considerably freed themselves from conventional principles of jazz.

"Why should we oblige people to stick to conventional principles of jazz and oppose the effort of searching for jazz with Indonesian color?" he said.

While the jazz community debates the possibility of marrying ethnic music with jazz, the other group of musicians here, categorized as contemporary musicians, have long, successfully fused local music with western music in their search for innovations.

And not a few of them have gained recognition abroad.

This seems to prove that fusion is not necessarily doomed to failure.

Some of these contemporary musicians, including Ben M Pasaribu from Medan, Harry Roesli from Bandung, I Wayan Sadra from Bali, and Inisisri from Banyuwangi, will also perform at Jak-Jazz. The organizers will provide a special stage for them.

"By involving them, we hope a meeting will happen between them and the jazzers who are now seeking to weave local colors into their music, Franky said. Franky is organizing this year's Jak- Jazz programs.

The 1995 Jak-Jazz is only one phase in the Indonesian journey of searching for its own identity in the growing popularity of imported jazz.

The task is now left for local musicians to seriously use the chance and exercise their creativity as fully as possible.

JakJazz '95 will be held in Plaza Timur Senayan, Jakarta, today through Dec. 10.