Sundanese music joins with Japanese songs

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.