New Jakarta Ensemble crosses cultures

By Emilie Sueur

JAKARTA (JP): Tony Prabowo seems to bristle when utterances of "new music" are used to describe his music.

But there was no conventional categorization for his compositions performed Tuesday by the New Jakarta Ensemble at the Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) for the Pasar Tontonan Jakarta 1997.

All six pieces did not fall under the strict definitions of either Western or traditional music.

The musical backgrounds of the ensemble's members reveal a straddling of Western music and traditional works.

Tony Prabowo, born in Malang, East Java, in 1956, started playing violin when he was eight. He soon realized that he had found his life's vocation and quit school at an early age to focus on Western traditional music studies.

The New Jakarta Ensemble was formed when choreographer Linda Hoemar asked Tony to compose a percussion piece for her dance performance Lalu? (So?).

Tony asked Epi Martison, a choreographer and percussionist specializing in traditional music of West Sumatra, to join him.

Four other young traditional percussionists, Musliwardinal, Armen Suwandi, Anusirwan and Desmal Hendri Caniago, also became involved. All of them received formal training at the Academy of Traditional Music in Padang.

The group performed for the first time during the Indonesian Dance Festival in Jakarta last year.

In May this year, the group was invited to perform at the Sufi Music Festival in London. Tony wanted to add vocals and asked soprano Nyak Ina Raseuki to join.

Ethnomusicology

Nyak had worked with Tony on ornamentation exploration, the focus of her research in ethnomusicology.

Her musical path symbolizes the spirit of the group. She started studying Western classical music but soon turned to traditional forms.

"Traditional music offers more alternatives and possibilities to explore," she says.

Artist Teguh Ostenrik also plays an important part in the performance. He organized all the choreographic aspects of the show, and the musicians' bodies become musical instruments in themselves.

Tony may not like the description, but the coming together of the seven musicians has resulted in the creation of a new music, born from the gathering of Western and Eastern traditional elements.

Their music is the artistic outcome of the fusion of two cultures and musical worlds.

Tony's knowledge of Western contemporary composers such as Pierre Boulez and Arnold Schoenberg provides the Western perspective.

But Tony says he is sensitive to traditional Indonesian music, whose influence on his composition work "doesn't come from formal studies but lies in the heart".

All ensemble members were involved in the creative process for the pieces, throwing ideas back and forth among themselves.

The group relied on the oral tradition in retaining the musical compositions, in contrast to how it is meticulously recorded in written form in the West. "There has been no written notation for the percussionists," Tony says.

Tony would describe a mood or timbre, and the musicians would propose musical interpretations. This was only possible because of the excellent memories and musical ear of members.

Vocals were the only part to be written, but Nyak was still given leeway to make her improvisations.

"Western music is a world of composers, but the traditional Eastern one is of players," Tony says.

First contact with this new music may be at once amazing and disturbing. The sounds are intriguing, the vocal strains unusual. But, the listener will find cultural points of reference by opening up his soul.

Actually, the marks are there because of the diverse essence of the music. The compositions come from the fusion of different cultures. Rapid flamenco rhythms find their cultural soulmates in Asian tunes.

The musicians play instruments from all over the world -- Indonesian gamelan, Chinese gongs, Arab guitars or Caribbean steel drums.

There is something for everyone in the diverse musical forms. The New Jakarta Ensemble takes the common denominators that link people across their divergent cultural background.

Tony will next compose the music for an opera to be performed by the New Julliard Ensemble in New York in December next year.

Poet Goenawan Mohamad, whose poem Di Pasar Loak (At a Flea Market) inspired Tony in the composition of one of the pieces performed at the TIM, will write the libretto.

Those ready to cross the cultural divides in music can catch a the New Jakarta Ensemble next month at the Utan Kayu Theater.