Sapto Raharjo to perform in France

Sapto Raharjo to perform in France

By Izabel Deuff

JAKARTA (JP): Sapto Raharjo, one of the country's most
innovative gamelan players, is currently in southern France to
join a series of summer festivals.

Upon the invitation of Aide aux Musiques Innovatrices (Aid to
Innovative Music) in Marseille, Raharjo and his Yogyakarta-based
group will collaborate with French musician Miqueu Montanaro for
a performance today in the MIMI Festival at Theater Antique in
Arles, Provence-Alpes-Cte d'azur.

The collaboration will continue on the next day, when they are
scheduled to take part in the Festival de Groux Les Bains in
Groux-les-bains.

Raharjo and his group will entertain the public again at the
Festival Musiques Sacrees du Monde at St. Pons, Languedoc-
Roussillon, on Sunday, Aug. 2.

Besides playing gamelan instruments made of brass, they will
also play the krumpyung, which is made of bamboo. This bamboo
gamelan is made by Sumitro from Kulon Progo, Yogyakarta.

France is not a new area for the 43-year-old Raharjo.

Two years ago, Raharjo was invited to the Banlieues Bleues
music festival, where he performed a jazz and gamelan music
concert titled Borobudur Suite.

Since then, he has always been connected to France and
collaborated with French jazz players.

In late-1996, at Central Jakarta's Taman Ismail Marzuki, he
played in a gamelan ensemble with French saxophonist and
clarinetist Andre Jaume and guitarist Remi Charmasson in Du
Gamelan dans le Jazz. He was joined in the gamelan by Sonny
Suprapto, Poernomo Nugroho, Gatot Djuwito and Setyaji Dewanto.

This same group, except for Gatot, who has been replaced
with Setyanto Prajoko, is accompanying him in this summer's
French tour.

The success of his two-and-a-half hour show near Paris for the
Banlieues Bleues music festival, as well as sales of the show's
four CDs, should herald well for this summer's performances.

The collaboration with Miqueu Montanaro brought a new color to
Raharjo's world music style, as it could be listened to on
Stupeur et trompette, a CD which was released in 1996.

MIMI Festival, which is being held for the 12th time, started
on Thursday. According to Arielle Galand of Aide aux Musiques
Innovatrices, the event is divided into five nights, depending on
the musicians and the style of music they play: the Belgian-Czeck
night, the cafeine night, the sweet 'n sour night, the night of
the northern samba and one note night.

Raharjo and his gamelan will play on one note night, when you
are invited to the wedding of Provence and Java, which reveals
the magic of distant cultures. Miqueu Montanaro plays galoubet,
flute, accordion and saxophone serving as vehicles for Provenal
flagrance, beautiful landscapes and cicadas' chirrs, while
Raharjo and his gamelan will weave exotic and soft musical
sounds.

Apart from participating to those festivals, Raharjo is to
study the radio coverage and the organization of a much bigger
festival, Le Festival Interceltique de Lorient (The Inter-Celtic
Lorient Festival) which is one of the most famous summer festival
in France.

Raharjo, as a broadcaster for Radio Geronimo FM, will be
accompanied by Pandan Yudhapramesti of Radio Mera, Bandung, Setia
Buddy of Radio Nebul, Palu, Esther L. Siagian, an ethnomusician
from the Jakarta Institute of Arts, and Hanefi, an ethnomusician
from the Indonesian Karawitan Music Academy, Padangpanjang. They
were selected from 20 students taking part in advanced courses
for traditional art broadcasting production in Yogyakarta.

The radio coverage is sponsored by Radio France International
and the Ford Foundation.

According to Jean-Pierre Richard, director of the Inter-Celtic
Lorient Festival, about 350,000 people are expected to attend the
10-day fiesta, which take places at 12 sites in Lorient during
the first half of August. It will have 4,500 musicians, singers,
dancers, visualists, artists, professors and film producers from
Celtic countries.

Not only do these artists, coming from Scotland, Ireland,
Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Galicia, Asturia and Britanny,
feature present-day Celtic cultures through traditional, jazz,
rock, country and symphonic music but also through visual arts
and films.

The success of this event is all the more noticeable in that
it has been organized for 28 years by a 400-member non-profit
organization, which gets 73 percent of its budget, up to US$3.3
million (Rp 43 billion), from festival revenues.

There are 260 events in the festival with publicity delivered
in 35 countries.