'Keroncong' breaks Tugu people's isolation
By Johannes Simbolon
JAKARTA (JP): Arthur Michiels, 26, displayed an old phonograph record released in 1972 in the Netherlands. Its worn-out cover features a group of musicians posing behind a cloth banner reading "Tugu Village, the Birthplace of Kroncong Music".
The group called Moresco, was a legendary keroncong band in its time. It was dissolved late in the 1970s at the passing away of its leader Jakobus Quiko.
Arthur has at least two reasons for basking in pride over the record. In the first place, the group member playing the violin was his father. In the second place, he has followed his father's path, playing keroncong.
"Keroncong music was born here and is now accepted as part of Indonesia's cultural legacy. We, as the children of the Tugu people, are determined to preserve it," he told The Jakarta Post.
It has been centuries since Arthur's ancestors first settled in Batavia, as Jakarta was called during the Dutch colonial period. Hailing from the Portuguese colonies in Goa, Coromandel, Malabar, Bengal, they were first enslaved by the Portuguese as sailors, guards, etc. before being freed on baptism into Christianity. Thus, they were called the Mardijkers, derived from the Malay word merdeka or free. They were also mockingly called "black Portuguese", because they had thoroughly adopted the Portuguese culture despite their non-European looks.
Although they were initially Catholic, most converted to Protestantism under pressure from the Dutch. They even changed their names to Dutch ones, like Abraham, Andreas, Cornelis, Michiels, Salomons, Saymons and Browne.
They settled in an isolated area surrounded by woods in Tugu village, close to Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta. The village is now packed with housing complexes, slum areas, storehouses and even the Kramat Tunggak prostitution compound.
In an effort to amuse themselves in the midst of the loneliness of the once isolated area, thus the story goes, The "black Portuguese" of the first generation made small guitars out of the wood of the kenanga trees which abundantly grew there. They then composed lots of songs in Portuguese, or in a mixture of the Malay, Dutch and Portuguese languages. The small, five- stringed guitar later came to be called keroncong because it produced tones which sound like "crong, crong, crong".
"I once saw the same instrument in Hawai, which they called 'ukulele'. The natives also believed it originated from the Portuguese culture," recalled Samuel Quiko, 57, a former member of the Moresko group.
The Dutch people reportedly became excited about the new kind of music and danced to its accompaniment. Apparently they grew to love it very much. From that point in time, keroncong music gradually spread across the archipelago from Java to Maluku. Thus this music no longer belongs exclusively to the Tugu people.
In coincidence with the spreading of their music, the prolonged isolation of the "black Portuguese" gradually came to an end; albeit through a tragic course of events.
During the war for independence of the 1940s, indigenous Indonesians, who mostly considered the Tugu people "strangers" or "friends of Dutchmen" because of their customs and religion, persecuted and killed them. For their safety, the British troops, which landed in Indonesia in the wake of the World War II to strip the Japanese of their weapons on behalf of the victorious Allied Forces, moved them to the area behind Pejambon, Central Jakarta.
After the Dutch acknowledged Indonesia's independence in 1949, some of these people returned to Tugu, but many moved to Irian Jaya, formerly called Hollandia, which was under Dutch control until 1961. When the region was unified with Indonesia, most of them chose to leave for the Netherlands.
Today, according to Samuel, there are only four Tugu families in Jayapura, 150 families in the Netherlands, around 500 in Greater Jakarta, including 30 in Tugu village. Of the 500, most of them have married people of other ethnic groups, something which had never happened during the Dutch colonial period. None of the 500 families speak Portuguese or Dutch any longer.
Yet these Tugu people are still very proud of their music and try to preserve it. There are two keroncong groups now based in Tugu, the first, called Cafrinho, is led by Samuel. The other, Keroncong Tugu, is led by Andre J. Michiels, 28. Both men have had to face the facts that there is a lack of talent among the Tugu people and that they have to accept outsiders into their bands, a thing their ancestors would never have considered.
"There is no exclusiveness any longer. Anyone who wants and is talented can play in my group. Besides, keroncong is already part of our national culture," said Samuel.