'Keroncong' breaks Tugu people's isolation

'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.