The above is one of my favorite professional recordings of the Indonesian music known as Kroncong (also: Krontjong, Keroncong. For a truly worthwhile read, please follow this pdf link and read about the music's long and diverse history, a fascinating angle that I don't much address in this entry). It was also one of the first songs that exposed me to this music that has always felt both similar and foreign. While I now have other relations to the music, at first, it was simply Kroncong’s melodies and rhythms - its musical style - that drew me in.

I had long been familiar with Gamelan ("traditional" Indonesian ensemble music), and when I first heard the music known as Kroncong, I felt some of their pleasing similarities. While one style seemed to more closely resemble the saccharine and familiar melodies of western popular music (see 'Bengawan Solo' below, the most famous of all Kroncong songs), the audible likeness to Gamelan music seemed more pronounced in the Kroncong style known as Langgam or Langgam Jawa. In this form, the bass and kroncong (an instrument similar to the ukulele) seemed to mimic, in a more portable way, the sounds and rhythms of the massive gongs and percussion instruments in the huge Gamelan ensembles. Check 'Putri Gunung' above and 'Wuyung' below to listen to a few Langgam favorites from Andjar Any, Toeti HP and their Orkes Kroncong Bintang Nusantara.

While many hundreds of variations exist of 'Bengawan Solo,' a song originally written by Gesang, there was something about this recording and the singer's glances and voice that made this version stand out. The video also includes a variation of 'Jali Jali'. Below is another favorite, 'Wuyung.'

Both forms of Kroncong (there are others, as well) could indicate “somewhere else; somewhere new,” in a geographical way, but the “somewhere else” was, for me, almost entirely musical. The krongcong's use as a percussion instrument, the female singer’s emotional and fluid voice, the freely improvisational introductions of the violinist, the ample use of rubato - their forms felt different and hit me directly.

An old and rather beautiful shot of one variation of instrument combinations for a Kroncong band. For another well-researched essay on the history of Kroncong, please click here. While it can be difficult to follow, it's also oftentimes&nb… — An old and rather beautiful shot of one variation of instrument combinations for a Kroncong band. For another well-researched essay on the history of Kroncong, please click here. While it can be difficult to follow, it's also oftentimes fascinating.

Some music challenges us and multiplies the wrinkles in our brain, changing the way we hear and listen. Other music has a certain, mostly undefinable, power to resonate with our heart's own strings. Kroncong did and does both to me. The style has not loosened its affect on me, an influence that I trust is as deep in its impression as it is colorful.

Admittedly, the music also has a referential power, as it brings me back to the time I spent in Java, Indonesia, when I first met Timbil. As it would turn out, he would bring me even closer to the music. So let me, in an abbreviated fashion, extend that privilege to you.

I met Timbil Budiarto in Indonesia in 2014. Gintani Swastika, a curator and member of the Ace House Collective, introduced me to him at LifePatch, both of these organizations important and unique cooperative groups in Jogja, located centrally in the island of Java. At the time, we had an amiable conversation, enough to remember his face. Then, about two months ago, at an art performance in the hills of south Taipei, I was pleasantly shocked when I randomly recognized his face in a crowd. We reconnected for a bit and, over the remaining month that he was in Taipei, had the opportunity to spend time together and have a few substantial conversations.

In one of those conversations, when I mentioned my near-obsession with the Indonesian style of music known as Keroncong, he quickly replied, "My mom's a Keroncong singer." Hearing this, my heart jumped. Even better, he said he had brought recordings of her performing with her friends.

When he saw the extreme excitement on my face, I think he felt it was necessary to add, "She's not a professional singer." Certainly this was no problem, and in some ways it was more encouraging. The non-professional (or, more accurately, when players "play for fun" as opposed to aspiring professionals who have not yet reached the professional stage) seems to be very much in touch with what I think of as music and its foundation: a way to sonically celebrate and enjoy life, and create harmonies with other things and people. The professional and their output is ever-well documented, transmitted and available for purchase. The non-professionals, I fear, dwindle in number. So, too, do their ensembles, sing-alongs, and choirs as more and more of us only consume music, instead of take part in it. The professional trades their time for someone else's money. The non-professional trades their time for time. Certainly there's something to this, and I believe it can be felt when playing "for fun." Although, when Timbil mentioned his disclaimer, my response was an abridged, "not a problem at all, I want to hear the recordings!"

A week or so passed before I invited him over to my home with a number of other friends. After casually drinking, snacking and lounging around, he told me that he had brought his hard drive that included some of his mother, Sumini Soerapto, and her friends' Kroncong performances. Eagerly and without hesitation, I brought Ruei and Timbil into my studio. After copying the folder containing the media onto my computer, I loaded one video.

As we watched the home video, it was hard for me not to get emotional. It was difficult not only because of the intervals, scales and the melodic rhythms of the musical style that, before, had already had an extremely inebriating effect on me; it was also hard because I was considering and feeling the strange intersections of that moment. Watching the same video together at the same time, Ruei, Timbil and I were certainly affected in entirely different ways. Physically and musically together, we were also consciously isolated. Timbil, of course, was affected in a very personal and direct way; as he watched, he pointed out his mother and his father. Also, when certain musicians' faces came into focus, he would softly add, "he's now gone," "so is he," amplifying the enigmatic power of documentation - something gone is still, in a lesser form, here.

It was a privilege to share what seemed so personal. The different sounds and images produced many different intersections in the short time we watched together. There were dissonances and harmonies, the krong krong of the kroncong instrument (this is where Krongcong gets its name from), and leisurely breaks between songs. Sometimes they were performing under a small roof outside during the day, breathing the fresh air as they performed with their feet to the ground, having removed their shoes when they stepped onto their stage. There they laughed together, played, stopped, started and, at times, looked directly into the camera. And we, the viewers, looked back.

***********************************************************************

These videos will have different affects on you as they had on me.

Or Ruei.

Or of course, Timbil

(much less his mother),

but I feel very happy to be able to share this with you and I have to thank Timbil Budiarto and his mother, Sumini Soeprapto, for allowing me to do so.

His mother shared her voice with her fellow musicians;

They recorded it and shared it with her son;

her son shared it with his new friend,

and his new friend now shares it with you.

While the music doesn't start until around 0:40, I highly recommend you watch from the beginning to get a sense of the surroundings. Along with any of these videos, if you'd like to see them larger, just click on the link on the top edge of the video and watch it full-size at youtube.

I took the liberty to post a snippet of the first take of this song. The singer's focus and the movement of her eyes and hands seem to synchronize so comfortably with the music. Her reaction to missing her queue towards the end is fun to see in a "I know exactly how that feels" kind of way. Her recovery into the perfect take 2 is in its complete form below.

This is Timbil's mother, Sumini Soeprapto, and my favorite recording of these performances. Her voice is incredibly affecting for me and the rhythms of her ensemble mates at 2:48 that lead into the changes at 3:50 are so comfortably driving. It's the intervals like those of this song, (as well as 'Putri Gunung,' and 'Wuyung' above) that are the most gripping and moving I've encountered in Kroncong. Watch this video to the end.

Extras,

for those who still want more:

In late March, a friend and I visited Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon or HCMC). I had wanted to go for a long time.

When I was a child, my Dad and his high school classes compiled oral histories of people affected by the Vietnam War in our little corner of Wisconsin. Also, some family members and many of my neighbors were veterans of that war (called, by the Americans 'The Vietnam War' and by the Vietnamese, 'The American War' or the 'American War of Aggression'). At that time, the prospect of a trip to Vietnam was very different, the Vietnamese reforms of Doi Moi having not yet made a ideological impact on tourism. And yet, when I was young I had known more, or at least had heard more, about "Vietnam" than any other country in Asia - unfortunately only because of the war. Additionally, La Crosse, Wisconsin, my hometown, was the home of many refugees (my Dad taught many of their children in a separate class for ESOL at the local high school). Their origins - from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos - helped remind us that the war was not just in Vietnam.

This month is the 40th anniversary of the end of that war. When I walked around HCMC, I could still see many parts of life and society affected by the war. Discussing my intense emotional feelings and thoughts about The War (to the detriment of describing Vietnam the country), can reinforce what was done to a lot of us when we were children - it equated Vietnam and The War as one and the same. That's not to say that we should forget The War and its aftermath - for that, it's discussed with much more clarity and experience by others. [For instance, Viet Thanh Nguyen's recent editorial Our Vietnam War Never Ended is a perspective that should be seen by many eyes.] Alternatively, it is to remember that there is more to Vietnam than The War and more to The War than Vietnam. This trip helped take away decades of that imagination and helped me start to see it more clearly as another culture and community.

And an incredible place it was. It reminded me of something an Indonesian friend said, "there's something about being nearer to the equator." That many people in a warm climate packed together in a metropolitan community has a type of energy and strength that I've rarely experienced in cooler climates.

Certainly, as a casual and brief visitor to any country, there are many dangers in describing things as they seem at first. That being said, much of what we see, experience and say is superficial as well as the photos we take. The reality, as always, is only attainable by experience. The rest are imperfect references.

Below are a small collection of photos and field recordings - which I will use as very imperfect references - of my time in Ho Chi Minh City. It shows a bit of the amazing parks in the city (almost always full of people and action), some beautiful places of worship, and a few other locations, people and animals I saw along the way.

In addition to taking photos, ever since a 2006 trip to Japan, I've been doing field recordings while I travel. So here I will include just a few, for atmospheric interest. The details and setting are listed below the audio.

In the center of the city is Tao Dan Park, a beautiful and inspiring public space (the photo of the three animals above is from the Chinese temple inside the park). It's full of people, including a perfect outdoor cafe (if it's outdoors, the boundaries are more open and there is no need to decorate). Many of the city's residents were exercising, sitting, chatting, playing badminton and dancing, among other things. After my third visit there, I felt somewhat comfortable and at home among the beautifully curated grounds and ancient trees. Not able to bring myself to leave, I walked to the group of ladies dancing to the music of a portable sound system. The song above is the one playing as I stopped by to watch for a second. A club anthem of some sort, strangely the song arrested me to the scene. Because I'm unable to share the experience with you, I'll share the song with you. You can hear some sounds of people and their machines (car horns), but the loud music dominates the recording.

I thought the song would be lost to the ages, but I was able to find the track online. Here's our star singing it live in a club.

And, a little more digging yields that the song was written by Nguyễn Ánh 9. Here's a different version by the excellent Elvis Phuong.

On the western end of the skinny Công trường Quách Thị Trang (park), there is a beautiful church (you can also see it in my photos above - the photo of the scooter driving into the church grounds). The name is Nhà thờ Huyện Sĩ and it's full of more beautiful art than I've seen in the majority of all my trips (although it is devotional art as opposed to market driven work, so this may help explain). On one of my last nights in HCMC, after a very long day of walking, all the neon and spotlights were on, illuminating the different religious figures. There was a church mass outside, complete with a concert. I went in and recorded a little. Above is part of the recording.

This is straightforward - a friend correctly pronounced the common family name Nguyen five times for me. It's a tough one, but the complex sound is almost musical. Here's a slightly edited version of the description via the ever-academic wikipedia:

The Vietnamese pronunciation is [ŋʷǐˀən] in northern dialect or [ŋʷĩəŋ] in southern dialect — in either case, pronounced as a single syllable. [ŋ] is the velar nasal found in the middle of the English word "singer". [w] is the glide found in the English word "quick". [iə] is a rising diphthong. Finally, [n] is the same sound as in English.

Besides these vowels and consonants, Nguyễn is also pronounced with a tone in Vietnamese. In Southern Vietnam, Nguyễn is pronounced with the dipping tone, meaning the pitch of the voice first drops from a mid level to the bottom of the speaker's range of pitch, then rises back to mid. In Northern Vietnam, it is pronounced with the creaky rising tone, meaning the pitch of the voice rises from mid level to the top of the speaker's range of pitch, but with constricted vocal cords, akin to a glottal stop in the middle of the vowel. See Vietnamese tones.

The pronunciation of Nguyễn is commonly approximated by English speakers as [wɪn].

I walked past another park in HCMC, the outside ring full of street vendors and the inside full of students wearing white tops and black pants. Besides the usual lively atmosphere, many of the gathered groups were informally playing music using wooden boxes, hand claps, or hand drums for the rhythm and ukeleles and guitars and a lot of singing for melody. Like observing Tai Chi, synchronized dance or other group exercises from the outside, I was shocked by the sense of freedom and the lack of self-consciousness. When I moved from USA to Taiwan, if I had any real goals, one of them was to get rid of my restricting self-consciousness - and seeing, and sometimes being a part of, these groups exercises certainly loosens the collar.

Before I get too off track, the above recording is a small snippet taken from that night in the park, after I sat down in one of these groups, disarmingly smiled, listened and enjoyed.

[g] Keroncong, with special guest

Extras,

[p] Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam