Music lovers walk out of 1997 JakJazz in droves

JAKARTA (JP): A young man studying in Jakarta took his visiting, Jazz-loving father to the JakJazz festival Friday night.

But after moving from one stage to the next for nearly two hours the father turned to his son and asked: "Where's the jazz?"

The first two nights of the 1997 JakJazz have been marred by low attendance and uninspiring music which is the farthest thing possible from jazz.

Organizers have dubbed this year's festival "more than jazz", but from most of the performances so far it would have been more apt to dub it "anything but jazz".

These shortcomings have been compounded further by a complete disarray in organization, not to mention a poor sound system.

Organizers' efforts to introduce an eclectic nuance by introducing dangdut music evolved into a sour experiment.

Audiences stayed on out of curiosity when Trakebah featured a potpourri of ethnic-dangdut-jazz music by noted Indonesian pop stars.

Arrangers Indra Lesmana and Dewa Budjana should be commended for trying.

But the scant audience left the main stadium in droves when singers Hamdan ATT and Iis Dahlia began playing pure dangdut.

Despite JakJazz organizer Peter Gontha's earlier assertions that dangdut "has jazz elements" it is clear that dangdut has no place in a jazz festival.

Organizers seem willing to bear the criticism of introducing dangdut to the festival for the sake of giving it an "Indonesian identity".

Keyboard player Indra Lesmana himself was quite pragmatic in his approach to the whole scene, saying the event was "really more of a general music festival than jazz festival".

Most of the foreign acts played well but failed to leave any lasting impression.

Bad organizing frustrated fans as schedules kept changing.

One featured act on opening night, the LA Allstars, performed one hour earlier than scheduled. By the time most of the fans had entered the stadium, the band was nearing the end of its performance.

The 14-member band, fronted by Earth, Wind & Fire guitarist Al Mckay, consists of mainly session and backup musicians from other groups in Los Angeles.

Their set was anchored by Earth, Wind & Fire songs, in particular September, Let's Groove Tonight and Boogie Wonderland.

Their performance brought fans to their feet boogeying to the hits of the 1970s and 1980s. But what might have been a good vocal performance was buried under the percussion and brass section due to poor sound mixing.

Whether they were simply rusty or unprepared, the LA Allstars had to resort to playing a song twice for their encore.

Other performances by foreign acts like singer Phil Perry and Japanese group Jimasku & Watanabe were good. No one could doubt their musical virtuosity.

But frankly, they seemed to merely be going through the motions of the enjoyable but uninspired show.

Real jazz lovers could perhaps quench their thirst for authentic music more at the free show staged in the food court of Pasar Festival than at the three stages.

Here -- where music clinics are held by celebrated local jazz musicians -- Batuan Ethnic Fusion, a band consisting of Balinese musicians, blended just enough traditional sounds with serious jazz technics.

The result: free entertainment for happy jazz lovers. (team)