Trio Dingo proves music knows no boundaries

Trio Dingo proves music knows no boundaries

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The greatest achievement for musicians in a live performance
is their ability to build chemistry between themselves:
Individual craft is employed purely to build a harmonious whole.

Australian genre-evading band Trio Dingo is an outfit of three
dexterous musicians who excelled in demonstrating that their
musical marriage is greater than the sum of its parts.

In their evening performance at Gedung Kesenian, Central
Jakarta, last Saturday, music from the trio evolved into an
organic entity that had a life of its own.

Combining traditional music from Southern India, Turkey, the
Balkans, the Middle East, Java and Bali, the trio, wind
instrument player Kim Sander, percussionist Ron Reeve and multi-
instrumentalist Blair Greenberg, delivered flawless performances
comprising free-form tunes suffused with drama.

The musical matrimony was so pervasive that the instruments
from which it was built made little difference, be it the ney
(traditional sufi flute), kaval (long wooden flute), tenor
saxophone, tabla, Scottish bagpipes or more familiar acoustic
guitar.

Such a marriage was perfectly captured, for instance, during
Noam Chomsky Auto Focus Boogie Wooegie, the second item of the
one hour-plus performance. During the tune's middle course,
Greenberg's guitar strumming accompanied a sublime duet in which
Sander's tenor sax playing was backed by Reeve's supple pounding
on his traditional Javanese percussion kendang.

The trio lifted the audience to a higher transcendental plane
with a Turkish tune titled Kermezuk Gul.

"We were in the eastern part of Turkey; the temperature was
minus 40 degrees Celsius and we sat by a fire playing this
music," said Sander, the tune's composer, as he talked about its
germination.

Building its drama from the ney, the tune produced an eerie
sense of despondency that gave it a funereal character. Reeve
abandoned his kendang to play the kaval, which provided a
haunting monotone throughout the number.

Contrary to routines in regular pop gigs -- where lengthy
solos are often played as part of ego trips -- the protracted
solo in Trio Dingo's performance was intended to enhance the
dramatic atmosphere.

After taking the audience on a journey to exotic territories,
Trio Dingo landed firmly on their feet with a number titled
Burning.

Composed by Greenberg only six months before his Sydney
apartment caught fire, this was the most accessible number on the
trio's playlist that night: a conversational, yodeling piece
backed by Greenberg's plucking on an acoustic guitar and
occasional sax, barely audible in the midst of Reeve's
percussion.

In the finale, a heavily percussive South African tune, the
trio invited pop singer Oppie Andaresta and percussionist Jalu to
join them on stage.

Apart from their impressive musicianship, the trio also had a
good sense of humor, as shown in their frequent jokes thrown to
the floor. Reeve who served as MC throughout the performance,
regularly cracked jokes in fluent Indonesian.

Before a rendition of The Impossible Dream of Sonja, Sander
gave an introduction that made the audience giggle. "This song
was inspired by graffiti we found on a Sydney bus. It said
'Sonja, Sonja let me own ya.' Poetry doesn't get any better than
that," Sander said.

Sander has studied and performed in Turkey, the West Balkans
and China. He is a specialist in Turkish Sufi music.

Reeve lived for many years in Indonesia, studying traditional
music from Bali, Java and Sumatra and specializing in Sundanese
kendang.

Greenberg has played djembe, steel drums, marimba and guitar
in Africa, Europe and Australia, including with an ensemble
known as the Paranormal Music Society.