Sundanese music joins with Japanese songs

By Kafil Yamin

BANDUNG (JP): Music is not merely a composition of contrived sounds. It is also motion. Music is more than just an artwork composition of colors, it brings with it lovely tunes.

To Dedi Sundara, a Sundanese choreographer, the motion of melodies is so obvious that he is able to embody flowing music into a dance.

Some years ago, a Japanese artist produced a musical piece while staring at paintings on a gallery's walls.

Amazingly, the music Sundara translates is not culturally close to his artistic environment -- Japanese music. And the dance he brings to life turns out to have a totally local identity: Tari Layang-layang (Kite Dance).

And then there is the personality of music, which lives and develops under a certain cultural environment but can meet and fuse to become new music. Nano Suratno, a kacapi (Sundanese string instrument) master, accompanies a number of Japanese traditional songs with his kacapi. When you hear it, you would never guess it was a mixture of two different cultures.

"Sundanese and Japanese music have a lot in common," said Suratno, on the sidelines of his rehearsal. "The two are dominated with minor tunes."

Suratno does not have to adjust his kacapi notation to the Japanese music scale (mia kho bus) to accompany Japanese tunes. The koto's (Japanese string instrument) notation setup is very similar to that of the kacapi.

Under the surface of pop culture, kacapi music actually develops and diversifies from an inseparable part of Sundanese socioreligious life into an autonomous musical domain. At one time, kacapi music was performed in the palace of the Sundanese kingdom. It was played by Sundanese nobility and exclusively developed among royal family circles. Kacapi Cianjuran or kacapi tembang, usually combined with the flute, is derived from this.

Kacapi music then fused with Sundanese oral art. The instrument was used to accompany narrative story telling, which included pantun (quatrain). This music, later called kacapi pantun, became popular among the upper class.

The music had long been part of the paddy harvest ceremony. It accompanied the prayers of farmers. It developed to become what is called kacapi jentreng, which was played by ordinary people.

Kacapi jentreng then gave birth to kacapi warung kopi, which was packed with humorous utterances.

Since 1964, Mang Koko, a kacapi music innovator, created what is now called kacapi kawih. He initiated the creation of electric kacapi, which is popular nowadays.

Despite such a development, Suratno believes the kacapi will not blend with pop music. For one thing, even though it can be adjusted to diatonic tunes, kacapi remains indifferent in pop music. For another, music also defends its diversity.

"You can have experiments. But elements within music will naturally decide whether or not they can get along," he said. "So let kacapi have its own world. Don't rape the instrument".

So he prefers to develop the Sundanese musical instrument in a suitable cultural and artistic environment, which he found in Japan.

During his one-year music study in Japan, Suratno discovered a number of Japanese traditional musical instruments were very similar to that of the Sundanese. Besides the koto, which resembles the kecapi, the sakhuchi (Japanese flute) can be compared to the Sundanese suling (flute). "The melody from the koto sounds like the suling's tunes being played by Sundanese shepherds," he noted.

It has been found that the Sundanese gamelan is compatible with Japanese children's songs, which will be demonstrated in a free show organized by the Japanese Cultural Center, Summitmas building, Jl. Jend. Sudirman, Central Jakarta, on Saturday, Oct. 10. Unless you pay attention to the lyrics, you would think it was Sundanese children's songs you were listening to.

Along with Tari Layang-Layang, Suratno's experimental music highlights the cultural event, which features other performances -- some of them blending Sundanese-Japanese art elements.

For those who expect to see Sundanese original artworks, the merak dance and the jaipongan dance will enliven the event. Suratno is convinced that Sundanese ethnic art will prevail despite the invasion of popular culture into almost all walks of life. "That's because Sundanese art has been growing not only as ethnic art. It has become a personality, just like Japanese art."

Despite the adjective "ethnic", music elsewhere has the potential to express itself without words. Choreographer Sundara is well aware of the potential.

He was completely ignorant of the Japanese language when translating take into motions of rope pulling and paying out that turn out to be Tari Layang-layang. "What I recreate is the rhythm, not the words," Sundara told The Jakarta Post. Often, rhythm is more telling than words.

The proceedings will not only be a showcase of art universality. More significantly, it will demonstrate local artists' capability of adjusting their artistic intelligence to other cultural elements.

Suratno and Sundara are indeed local geniuses without official approval. Apparently, they do not want it. They may only want their works to be appreciated properly and treated as stepping stones for further artistic innovation and process of creativity.