The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Fri, 04/11/2008 12:32 PM | Lifestyle
ANANDA SUKARLAN
Composer and pianist Ananda Sukarlan is baffled as to why the country has not been able to create its own identity in classical music.
"I must say that they (dangdut artists) are more representative of Indonesian culture than, let's say, me or my colleagues of 'classical music' who are pretentious enough to be searching for things such as 'what is Indonesian classical music?', 'what is Indonesian opera?' and other useless soul-searching questions. Dangdut is our identity!" he writes on his blogspot.
Although they are not necessarily ambiguous, his words reflect two different things -- confidence and frustration.
The self-effacing pianist, who resides with his wife and daughter among the hills of Cantabria in Spain, believes that his home country has a rich, distinctive musical tradition, just like dangdut.
Living abroad, giving recitals and working with world-class composers throughout the globe and now composing music for the 2008 Olympics, Ananda still feels a little discomforted when coming home to Indonesia, where most of its classical music aficionados think that as the music "comes from Europe" it "can only be played by European musicians", not by some "incompetent" local players.
"When I came here from Spain and met Giring (the vocalist of Nidji), I just found out that Indonesian pop music has already become a host in its own country.
"Classical music has not been able to do so. But this actually is our own fault, the classical musicians," Ananda said.
"We are still reluctant to play the works of our own composers, like Amir Pasaribu, Trisutji Kamal and Mochtar Embut. To me, their quality is no less than that of European composers," he added.
The United States had composers such as Alan Copeland and Leonard Bernstein who found their own classical music different from that of their European counterpart, and even the Japanese and Australians, who happen to be influenced by Indonesian folklore music, had found their identity in classical music, he said.
He calls (contemporary) classical music musik sastra in Indonesian to avoid the impression that it is an outdated music genre and exclusively European.
"If those countries have found identities that are embraced by their people and their musicians, who play the works of their own local composers, why can't we?
"We have to stop being conceited about playing our own music or we will never find our identity and will continue be invaded by music from other countries," he said.
Ananda has done more than just talk. In the last few years, he has been performing, recording and introducing piano compositions by older Indonesian composers who have previously been ignored and forgotten.
On June 10, Ananda, who graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Den Haag in 1993, will celebrate his 40th birthday.
A series of events have been prepared for the celebration in his homeland, and are all dedicated to promoting classical music to a wider Indonesian audience, Ananda said.
The Indonesian Opera Society will for the first time perform an "idiosyncratically Indonesian" opera at Usmar Ismail Hall on Aug. 8. The opera was composed by Ananda based on a play script by author Seno Gumira Ajidarma, entitled Mengapa Kau Culik Anak Kami? (Why Did You Kidnap Our Son?).
A piano competition will also be held in July in search of new local talent, named the Ananda Sukarlan Award in his honor, and participants will be required to play one of his folk song-inspired pieces, Rhapsodia Nusantara.
In search of a wider audience, Ananda will also hold a solo piano recital titled The Greatest Hits of Ananda Sukarlan at the Alila Hotel on July 17 and collaborate with alternative band Nidji in their concert to celebrate the country's Independence Day on Aug. 17.
"I consider all of that as a gift and I want to give something back to my colleagues. I want them to be more appreciative of our local musicians," he said.
His own arrangements draw inspiration not only from earlier compositions -- an act of stealing as he describes it -- , but also from other types of art, such as poems by Joko Pinurbo or paintings by Picasso.
Ananda appears to have received the needed recognition to develop the country's appreciation of classical music. But can a country with a population of more than 200 million people, with, according to the World Bank, about 40 percent of them living on less than two U.S. dollars a day, really enjoy classical music?
Ananda himself admits it is all about taste and some may think that his works are too formidable to digest.
"They say (classical music) is like a wine or whisky. At first, it tastes awful but as you drink it more and more, you'll get addicted to it, without which some people can't even live. This is what people call an acquired taste. This is the secret of musik sastra and other good art forms," he said.
"You may not be able to enjoy it at first. But, hey, an art that can be instantly enjoyed usually gets boring fast."
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