Rock band Dewa 19 celebrates its first decade of success
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."