Gamelan gangsta

Amrih Widodo and Ariel Heryanto. Photo by James Giggacher.

New beats for old sounds on the island of Java are redefining and reviving local identities, writes JAMES GIGGACHER.

The ghettoes of Los Angeles and New York’s concrete jungle are a million miles from the rice fields, tropical jungles and smoking volcanoes of Java. But if you listen carefully you’ll hear a beat on the streets of the Indonesian island which echoes a staple of urban culture in both American megacities - hip hop.

The artists don’t rap about police ’whirly birds’ watching their every move from the sky, drug deals gone wrong or drive-by shootings. Their music is about everyday life on the Indonesian island.

One of Indonesia’s most infamous and popular hip hop groups is the Jogja Hip Hop Foundation (JHF) - a collection of activists and artists from the Javanese city of Yogyakarta. The group’s work is like a sonic nasi goreng, a hodgepodge of familiar ingredients mixed in with local fare.

In its music JHF samples traditional instruments like the gamelan and performs to shadow puppet plays. The group’s lyrics are based on traditional Javanese poetry, classic literary texts and the nursery rhymes they heard as children.

Last year the Foundation performed at a conference hosted by the Island Southeast Asia Centre in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific and convened by Associate Professor Ariel Heryanto. His colleague, Amrih Widodo, was responsible for the hip hop workshop and hopes to organise an even bigger Indonesian hip hop performance at ANU later in 2012.

Widodo says that JHF’s work is a reinterpretation of the globally popular American art form - that, having ridden the wave of globalisation, has recently washed up on the shores of Java.

"It is a reaction to globalisation, increased access to the media and new communication and recording technology," he says.

"The kind of music, the lyrics and the rhythm JHF use was already there before hip hop was born. It is only a slight change of instrumentation, a bit of arrangement, that makes it sound like hip hop."

JHF has reached international fame without being signed to a major record label. The group uses social media to spread its music. One of JHF’s most popular songs is Jogja Istimewa or Jogja, the Special Province - a reference to the special administrative status of the region, currently under threat of abolition by Indonesia’s central government.

According to Widodo and Heryanto, JHF challenge social hierarchies in both the words and the language they use.

"They perform only in Javanese, their mother tongue, and not Indonesian, the national language. And they don’t care if their audience can’t understand what they are singing. It’s a rebellion against both the Jakarta-dominated Indonesian language and the Javanese court culture," says Heryanto.

This new music is also a manifestation of freedom, adds Widodo.

"They want to be free, which is quite a paradox because Javanese culture and Javanese language is full of restrictions. It’s the combination of sophistication and the way you constrain your movements that makes Javanese dance beautiful. In speech it’s in the way you reveal and conceal without really clearly stating what you want or your intent. And finally the hierarchical level that you choose, the vocabulary you use. This group want to be free to express themselves, even if they have to violate regulations and conventions."

And that’s one of the most exciting elements of the group. JHF is not just practising a form of DIY political performance, but helping to carve out a place for Javanese culture in a new Indonesia. It won’t be long until everyone is marching to the beat.