Rock band Dewa 19 celebrates its first decade of success
By Helly Minarti
JAKARTA (JP): They began as teenagers, singing on school stages and playing in festivals for five years in their hometown of Surabaya. They then made the leap to the big time by moving to Jakarta.
Dewa 19 then released four successful albums in five years.
The most recent, Pandawa Lima, released in January, earned them their highest record sales of 800,000. They marked their 10th anniversary last month with a fan gathering in Poster Cafe, Central Jakarta, and a musical bash attended by many popular Indonesian musicians in Balemang Cafe, South Jakarta.
Dewa 19 today does not sound the same as a decade ago. After busy imitating the 1980s trend by playing jazz music (similar to Casiopea or Jakarta's Krakatau and Karimata) during their school band period, they turned to rock music and sought a producer. They did not have to go through the painful process of rejection as their talent was recognized early.
The original lineup was Dhani Manaf (keyboard), Erwin Prasetya (bass), Wawan Juniarso (drum), Andra Ramadhan (guitar) and Ari Lasso (lead vocal). Their name was culled from the first letters of each of their names (Dewa is Indonesian for god) and their average ages.
Their debut album, Dewa 19 (1992), had a bona fide hit, Kangen/Ku Kan Datang (Longing/I Will Come), a sweet rock number with mushy lyrics. It carried sales up to 250,000, an impressive achievement indeed for a rookie amid the existence of other popular groups such as KLA Project, Slank and Java Jive. Dewa 19 received a BASF Award as the best alternative rock group and the best newcomer of the year.
Their second album, Format Masa Depan (The Format of the Future) in 1993, enjoyed comparable sales to the first. They also maintained the early tunes and beats, the mainstream sweet rock with poetic-yet-shallow lyrics. This was despite their claims to alternative rock.
Terbaik Terbaik (The Best, The Best) released in 1995 showed distinctive exploration in sounds, themes and ways of singing. Though love in its banal sense remained at the center of songwriting, the group had begun to come up with other ideas, such as the blunt criticism of worldly materialism in their hit Cukup Siti Nurbaya (Enough with Siti Nurbaya) and classic musings on life's meaning Hitam Putih (Black and White).
They won the BASF Award for best rock music, best arrangement and best recording. Their video clip of Cukup Siti Nurbaya was nominated for the MTV Asian best music videos competition.
Wong Aksan, a new drummer, came along at the end of the album to replace Wawan Juniarsa, whose place had been filled on the previous two albums by other musicians. Aksan is the son of famous choreographer Farida Oetojo and the late film director Sjumandjaja. He cowrote several songs and enriched some sounds in the fourth album Pandawa Lima by doing the final mixing in Essen, his college base in Germany, together with Manaf.
Pandawa Lima (it refers to the five warriors in the Mahabharata), is said to be their masterpiece. Their music sounds new and fresh -- the basic rock is still there, but fleshed out by other elements of 1990s' synthesizers. "It's only more progressive in the technicality. We're getting better at execution of composition and arrangement," explained Manaf, who composed several songs and most of the lyrics.
This "progressive spirit" can be traced back to their new video clips. Kirana in surreal-like with typical MTV images. The second is the sublime pop Aku Disini Untukmu (I'm Here for You), featuring a futuristic green scene with its smart visual allegory of contemporary niceties. And the third is the light pop-ballad Kamulah Satu-satunya (You're the Only One).
The improvements are obvious. Compare them with their first video clip of Kangen/Ku Kan Datang, in which they appear wet- behind-the ears rockers with uniform long hair.
"We were just kids from the provinces, and I still feel the same way," said Manaf, who doesn't deny his leadership role in the group. "And we were only 19. Not every 19-year-old can do what we did."
Except Aksan, who graduated from Folkwang School of Music in Essen, the other members learned music by themselves. Manaf, for example, only took a six-month piano music lesson. "I have listened to my father's good records since I was a child," he said. His father introduced him to musicians like Jerome Kern, and he built on those musical awakenings by enjoying tunes of people like Joe Coltrane in junior high school.
Once they dreamed of being a band as solid as Queen, the 1970s British rock band they adored for their songs and unchanged formation until the death of lead singer Freddy Mercury. In this decade, they developed a fascination with Ireland's U2. "Does it sound weird if we say that we only learned from both groups to play better music?" Manaf said.
Having tasted commercial success, members of Dewa 19 are broadening their visionary dream, as Manaf stated, to be a legend on the Indonesian music scene. "Like Koes Plus, with commercial success lasting for decades," Manaf said in reference to the enduring Indonesian pop music group from the late 1960s.
Unlike other Indonesian musicians, going international is not on their agenda. "We just want to be the best in Indonesia -- the best music group which composes the best hits," Manaf said. " To reach that alone is not easy."