Steven Starr: For love of water

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Tue, 04/07/2009 12:04 PM | People

JP/J.B. Djwan
Bob Marley’s anti-war activism was an inspiration for Steven Starr, but the US filmmaker went one step further, taking on a problem that causes more deaths worldwide than war: Lack of access to clean water.
Starr first met Marley in 1978; he became the concert promoter for Bob Marley & The Wailers and worked with the Marley family on various projects for 20 years, which, he told The Jakarta Post, was an experience that “changed my life”.
“Something in me shifted and from that point on all the work I have done has taken the form of helping people to express themselves, to find a way to communicate with others and to solve problems.”
Starr was in Bali and Jakarta last week for a lecture and screening of the award-winning film he produced, Flow: For Love of Water, a feature-length documentary about the global water crisis by French-born American director Irena Salina.
Starr, born on Long Island in 1957, studied media at university, before going on to build a career at William Morris Agency. He left the agency in 1991 to produce Johnny Suede, which won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival. His other credits include writing, directing and producing Joey Breaker, which won an Audience Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and the Ace Award-nominated series The State for MTV and CBS, which he co-created and produced.
He became well known for his approach to media democratization. As well as co-founding the Los Angeles Independent Media Center, Starr founded AntEye.com, a user-generated video site where video creators, voted for by their peers, were awarded micro-pilot budgets, and ChangeTv, a user-generated digital cable network designed to filter online video onto cable and reward creators.
One of Starr’s most acclaimed projects is Revver, a video-sharing website launched in 2005 that helps creators make money from their work by attaching short ads to their films. In 2006, Revver was named the Most Influential Independent Website by Television Week, nominated for an Advantaged Technology Emmy Award and praised by Red Herring as one of the 100 most promising startups.
“I’m a crazy man,” Starr said of his innovative projects. “I tend to approach a project from whatever curiosity I have.”
In June 2007, Starr stepped down as Revver’s CEO to concentrate on the postproduction of Flow, which he and Salina had begun in 2003.
“It was the time when all the filming has been finished and we have to do the postproduction work. It requires a lot of attention and focus and we were hoping that we might be invited to Sundance Film Festival. We really wanted to make sure it came out well.”
The film, released in cinemas on Sept. 12, 2008, premiered as a Grand Jury Prize nominee at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. It has won numerous festival awards, including the International Jury Prize at the Mumbai International Film Festival and the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary at the United Nations Film Festival.
Part of Flow’s success, Starr said, was “because many people are now using the film as an awareness tool”. As such, it was screened for the UN General Assembly on the 60th Anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and triggered a call for people to sign a petition seeking to include access to clean drinking water as a basic human right.
“We are lobbying them to open up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was written in the late 1940s in a time when water wasn’t even a consideration,” Starr said. “There is no mention of water at all in the articles. It is the single most important substance on the planet and our future is at stake.”
The 84-minute film maintains that the privatization of fresh water is unethical, a topic that Starr discusses passionately.
“Absolutely the film is anti-privatization of water. When you turn water into a commodity, your
responsibility is to shareholders and not to the people who need it,” Starr said.
“You can’t rely on commercial interests for your water supply: Water is more than commerce, water is life. If you hold up a bottle of water and you hold up a little bottle of gasoline — which do you think costs more?”
Flow not only identifies the problem and names the culprits, but also looks at the people and institutions providing local and practical solutions.
“Many issues around water are extremely local but the crisis around the world is similar: Limited water supply. It is not reaching the people who need it the most, and there are corporate interests that are aggressively trying to gain control over the local water supply.”
Starr hopes that the film will educate people about the planet’s water crisis, pointing out the film itself was never a for-profit venture.
“A documentary is an active passion. If you want to make a documentary, it cannot be from a hope to make money. It has to be from an opportunity to do something useful for others,” Starr said.
“The only reason we picked up our camera is because we wanted to learn, to answer a question. So you have to have a really good question and a lot of passion to carry you through whatever it takes to run around and get your question answered.”

Tience Sumartini : On the wings of a dream

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Wed, 04/01/2009 2:57 PM | People

Tience Sumartini is one of those lucky people who can build their businesses around their passion - in her case, flying.

Tience fell in love with flying when she was about 26. One day, in the late 1970s, she and her husband saw a glider in the sky. They followed the glider to where it landed, and asked the pilot for more information about gliding.

Later, with a group of friends, they set up a club and hired professional gliding instructors so they could learn in their free time.

So in the 1980s, when many housewives passed their time in malls or salons, Tience Sumartini hung out with her friends - mostly men - at Pelita Airport in Pondok Cabe, Tangerang.

"We really wanted to be pilots but we couldn't go to Curug flying school. Most of us had our own jobs and couldn't be locked up in a dormitory such as in Curug, so we hired instructors."

Tience did her first solo flight in a glider at Pondok Cabe in a schweizer aircraft. "I remember the instructors didn't tell us about it in advance so I was very nervous. But I did it anyway."

Two years after learning how to fly a glider, Tience went on to train to become a pilot of powered aircraft.

Her passion for flying also led her to learn how to make her own aircraft - she has built three planes - as well as set up a series of aviation-related businesses, such as PT ATS Buana Airtech, a company for aviation engine components. She also owns five private aircrafts, currently parked in Australia.

A busy schedule means Tience, now 55, has not flown for a while - her pilot license has expired - but her heart is still firmly within the aviation world.

So she did not hesitate when her colleagues and former Garuda Airways directors Robby Djohan and Wiradharma Oka asked her to join them in establishing a flying school in Bali.

"I had always dreamed about this flying school but it never happened because I was busy with a few businesses," she says. "I agreed to be part of it because I knew they were not only businessmen in aviation but also liked flying. Working with people who are passionate about what they are involved in means we speak the same language."

Tience, who is on the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's advisory board, says that despite a series of accidents and the current economic crisis, the aviation business climate remains strong because of the nature of the country and people's need to travel. Airlines have failed because of poor management, rather than decreasing demand, she says.

"Not all *airlines offering* cheap flights are managed badly but one should question why a flight is so cheap," she says. "The worse thing is if they cut down on maintenance, which is vital, to be able to win the price war."

Tience says that, according to world aviation data, the number of air travelers has been increasing: In 1998, six million people flew, while in 2007, 30 million did.

"We are as big as the US but we are archipelagic country," she says. "There is no choice if more and more people need to travel fast. They need to save time no matter what the price is. They can't spend days at sea."

Although there are several pilot schools in Indonesia, with about 140 pilots graduating each year, Tience believes the country "actually needs 400 pilots a year".

"Take for example Garuda Airlines, which is now in the process of purchasing 50 Boeing 737 new generation aircraft and 10 Boeing 777 aircraft. It will need more than 200 pilots."

The quality of pilot schools is another reason for her interest in setting up her own.

"What can we expect from schools that do not have their own runways and have only a limited number of airplanes and instructors?" she says. "The only thing they can do is to wait for their turn to use other people's runways, which of course lowers the quality of their training."

After about two years of preparation, the Bali International Flight Academy (BIFA) was opened in February. Twenty-one students have enrolled as the first batch of cadets, including one from the UK.

The academy offers the 16-week Private Pilot's License course, which qualifies graduates to fly a single engine aircraft in the noncommercial category, and the 48-week Commercial Pilot's License course, after which a pilot can fly professionally.

BIFA has its own training facilities at Letkol Wisnu Airfield, 65 kilometers west of Singaraja in Buleleng. The 7,000 square meter complex includes an aerodrome, a training center, a hangar, a dormitory and the latest generation of Frasca 142 flight simulators, which meet the US Federal Aviation Administration standard.

The academy, which is certified under the directorate general of civil aviation and the International Civil Aviation Organization, has a fleet of five Cessnas; 10 more will be provided by the end of the year.

The school hopes to gain international recognition immediately.

"I believe in less than 10 years we will able to attract students from all around the world to enroll in the academy," Tience says. "We must prove that we can sell more than just maids to the world. We can also sell pilots."

How the stars stay in shape

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Wed, 04/01/2009 12:57 PM | Body & Soul

Stay in shape: Actress and director Lola Amaria goes to a gym, practices yoga and consumes balanced diet to stay in good shape. JP/Berto Wedhatama

We might forget it sometimes, but celebrities are human too. Like the rest of us, they have to work hard to stay in shape, even as daily pressures, professional requirements and advancing years work against them.

And even though they have different strategies for staying fit and healthy, a common theme emerges – that no matter how busy you are, you should always find time to look after yourself.
Actress and director Lola Amaria, who once had to pile on six kilograms for a role, stays in shape through regular gym workouts, yoga and a balanced diet.
Lola joined a gym near her house in Bintaro, and tries to get there for a workout at least two or three times a week. But even if her busy schedule makes getting to the gym impossible, the Ca Bau Kan star still makes sure she does some kind of exercise every day.
“It doesn’t have to be excessive physical activity,” says Lola, who shifted her extra weight by jogging daily for six months. “A brisk half-hour walk every day will keep you healthy.”
The actress also finds yoga an important part of her routine. She learned yoga about five years ago and still practices it regularly. “It’s good for stress release,” she says. “Initially I was helped by an instructor but now I do it by myself at home.”
Yoga, she says, makes her more relaxed during the everyday life, “especially you get stuck in a traffic jam”.
Getting the recommended amount of sleep is generally out of the question for the busy filmmaker, so she naps when she can. “I try to sleep at least six hours a day but it’s quite impossible, so what I do is I have a little sleep in between, in the breaks.”
And when it comes to what she puts in her mouth, Lola admits she is very strict, and rarely touches greasy food or junk food. “If possible, eat fruit and fresh vegetables at least once each day,” she says.
She points out that vitamins and supplements are helpful for people living in a polluted city, but adds that even those who have no faith in supplements can do themselves a favor by consuming fresh and healthy food and drinking lots of water.
“Nutrients are not only from capsules,” she says. “We can get them in fresh water or fresh food.”
Actor and presenter Ferdy Hassan is one of the many celebrities who work with professional personal trainers to stay in shape.
As he entered his 30s, Ferdy noticed something common to pretty much everyone: His body was changing, and he needed to take action.
“I realized that as I’m getting older, it’s not as easy to control my weight,” Ferdy says. “That’s why I need a trainer.”
The 36-year-old, who never fails go to the gym at least twice a week, has followed a regime for two years, in which his trainer helps him with complete body training and dietary advice.
Ferdy had joined a gym in high school but then quit. He didn’t give it another go until his weight exceeded 90 kilograms. It took him four months of tailored workouts to lose 10 kilograms.
“I have tried many ways to lose weight but the gym is the most effective. After doing exercise, we can focus better on other things,” he says.
“We often can’t be bothered to exercise but believe me, you will feel so much better if you do it. There are lots of good effects. It’s also a life investment for us.”
In short, he says, “If you love your family, then do your exercise.”
He also finds reflexology beneficial, calling a massage therapist to his house in the Blok M area in South Jakarta about once a week. “All the reflections of our physical health are in our feet,” he says. “When you are getting [a massage], you fall asleep and when you wake up, you feel much more relaxed and refreshed.”
Ferdy does not worry so much about his diet, but when he feels he has been eating too much fatty food, he makes an effort to balance his diet, although that doesn’t stop his love of eating.
“I’m Sundanese and I like to try anything,” he says.
Similarly worried by the way his weight crept up with the years, actor and presenter Farhan also hired a personal trainer almost two years ago, shocked into action when the scales tipped 95 kilograms.
It took him about a year to get into the habit of doing jogging, weightlifting and crunches for 30 to 60 minutes a day.
“I needed a trainer at the beginning but now I do it myself,” says the star, who believes that when we’re young we can do whatever we want, but have to “pay everything back
after 30”.
The first thing that needs to be paid back, he says, is our diet. “I rarely eat rice at the moment,” he says. “I skip carbohydrates, sugars and meat. My friends say I’m like a goat that eats lots of vegetables but fortunately I never get constipated anymore.”
As part of his new healthy lifestyle, the 39-year-old also skips alcohol and cigarettes and always gets to bed early. “I only bergadang [stay up late] if I really have to,” he says.
But the gym and other forms of indoor exercise are not for everyone. Jazz singer Syaharani prefers to head for the great outdoors to stay fit and healthy.
Courtesy of Queenfireworks
“Fitness is boring,” the 37-year-old says baldly. “Our space is limited and we repeat our movements like ironing.”
A brisk early morning walk is Syaharani’s favorite fitness habit. Three to four times a week, she heads out in the early hours for a walk around her housing complex in Bintaro, South Jakarta.
When she finds time in her busy schedule – about once every two or three months – Syaharani and her friends get together to go hiking or trekking, most recently in Curug Panjang in West Java.
Also beneficial to her health, she says, is meditation, which she learned years ago when she lived in Bali. “I do it as much as possible because it’s simple but it clears your mind. Mediation and stretching the body … make us relax because they maximize the oxygen in our body.”
Syaharani says that when she moved from Bali to Jakarta in 1995, she stopped meditating, and noticed big changes in her daily life.
“I was trying to work out why I got tired and bored so easily,” she says. “Then I took up mediation again and I felt better. Mediation is good and it works for people in all sorts of professions, especially for a singer like me.” She now wants to learn more about yoga.
Syaharani likes to eat but she recognizes the importance of staying in control.

“I always remind myself that eating is not only for enjoyment but also for the needs of the body,” she says. “If in a week I have been having too much fatty food, I will balance it by having fresh fruit and vegetables.”
The singer especially likes mushrooms and broccoli because they are high in antioxidants and easy to prepare. “I always buy them when I go to the supermarket or ask for them if I go to a restaurant.”
For Syaharani, who has a medical checkup at least once a year, the first step in keeping healthy is stress management. “Stress contributes a lot to health problems,” she says. “Everybody has their own way of dealing with stress but they have to do it immediately.”
The second step is to do light exercise and the third is eating properly, she says. “Never skip breakfast because when you busy in the day, you will forget everything.”
Too many people lead lives that are out of balance, she says – overeating and under-exercising, often because they are under stress and use food as comfort.
The most common mistake, according to Syaharani, is focusing on appearance rather than on health.
“In fact, the important thing is your behavior: Stay active, eat right and feel good today,” she says. “The results will follow.”

Franki Raden: Building cultural bridges

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Tue, 03/31/2009 11:29 AM | People

JP/R. Berto Wedhatama

Franki Raden knows what it’s like to see the world from the other side.

With extensive experience and more than 16 years studying and lecturing around the world, he has earned the authority to judge the social engineering of Indonesia’s art and culture.

He agrees that the country’s indigenous art and culture have been abused by the state for propaganda about our heritage, but he does not agree that foreign scholars and artists should be permitted to exploit or study that heritage without contributing anything to its preservation.
“After all this time, we are so proud of our traditional art and cultural richness, we talk about it all the time, everywhere, but we do nothing about it,” Franki says.

“On the other hand, many scholars and foreign artists come here to learn about us. Some take their material from our culture and built their portfolio and work without even mentioning Indonesia.”

Concerned that the country’s art and culture were being undervalued by Indonesians and exploited by outsiders, Franki and his colleague Serrano Sianturi founded the Sacred Bridge Foundation in Jakarta in 1998.

“My concern is with empowering people who have been living with their culture for hundreds of years. It’s so ironic if these people have tremendous expertise but they can’t make a living out it,” he says.

“Why is it people who study computers for five years can make a living out of their expertise but not these people?”

The foundation has attracted the attention of many people concerned about the preservation of world culture, including Japanese national living treasure Tsutomu Yamashita, who become chairman of the advisory board of the organization, and the former director of Unesco Jakarta, Stephen C. Hill, who is a member of the advisory board.

Franki, whose real name is Franki Suryadarma Notosudirdjo, is an ethnomusicologist, composer, cultural critic and multimedia artist who has received numerous awards and fellowships from prestigious research and arts institutes including the Social Sciences and Research Council (SSRC), The Ford Foundation, The Henry Luce Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, The Arts Council of Jakarta (DKJ) and The Indonesian Film Festival (FFI).

Franki finished his studies in his music composition at the Jakarta Art Institute (IKJ) in 1986. Two years later, he became a visiting artist in New York sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. He later studied composition with Chou Wen-Chung at Columbia University and Stephen Dembski at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned his PhD in 2001.

His research has always focused on issues at the intersection of the arts, religion, the media and politics in Asia, as well as colonial arts and culture in Indonesia, and Asian-American contemporary arts. He spent two years researching jazz in the Afro-American community in Chicago, as well as teaching in the Fine Arts Cultural Studies program, at the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University in the UK and the Visual and Performing Arts program at the University of Toronto in Canada.

His studio work, which demonstrates his strong interest in combining elements from both Western and non-Western cultures, has been performed in Indonesia, Japan and the United States.

After years overseas, Franki decided to bring his family back to Indonesia, stopping for one year at the National University of Singapore, where he was a lecturer on studies in Asian Art and Popular Culture in Southeast Asia.

During his 10 years of back and forth to Jakarta running the Sacred Bridge Foundation, Franki and his colleagues designed and organized numerous events on a global scale, such as the legendary Sacred Rhythm Festival in Bali and Kyoto, the Interfaith Music Clinic and Concert at Borobudur Temple, and Cultural Healing for the Tsunami Survivors in Aceh.

The foundation’s programs, all of which take an interdisciplinary approach, are based on four domains: Intercultural dialogue, cultural education for children, preservation of indigenous arts and capacity building.

Franki believes Indonesia has great potential to contribute to world music but that no significant steps have been made.

“It takes the whole continent of Africa to have a variety of music heritages but it only takes one country, Indonesia, to have a thousand musical traditions. Why shouldn’t we do something?” he says.

“We don’t want to just be hired as an instructor if one of our original instruments is taken by a foreign artist or institution.”

Franki said his long-term goal is to bridge groups or cultures around the world to bring about a better future. “Indigenous cultures everywhere are a huge repository for cultural values and civilization, but they have been neglected everywhere.”

The best way to approach these cultures as an ethnomusicologist, says Franki, is to become an insider and work with people to empower their culture. He himself once lived in a Dayak community in Tanjung Manis, East Kalimantan, to reinvent their long-defunct mouth organ, which was generally used in rituals.

“We are not going to represent anybody or any culture, because every representation has its own bias and that’s very dangerous.”

But, he adds, indigenous peoples should not be left to deal with these problems on their own.

“They won’t be able to solve their own problems because it has become too complicated, requiring a multidisciplinary approach. They need people who understand their problems, understand how the system works and help empower them,” he says. “Government
can play a role here. They can think of a system where the economy is integrated with art and culture.”

Mining the world's musical riches

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Tue, 03/31/2009 3:23 PM | Features

On the move: Musicians practice during a rehearsal session of the Rhythm Salad Music Clinic held at the National Gallery Jakarta in 2008. Eighteen people from various musical backgrounds, both traditional and modern, gathered for a few days to find new possibilities for musical practice. (Courtesy of The Sacred Bridge Foundation)

In a world stuck in a musical rut, the rich traditions of Asia - especially Indonesia - could provide fresh ideas, with one group of musical experts setting out to make that happen.

Ethnomusicologist Franki Raden, who has spent more than 16 years studying and teaching world music both in Indonesia and abroad, says the world is waiting for a feed from Asia, especially from Indonesia, as artists in North America and Europe stagnate, regurgitating similar ideas in their work.

"Indonesia should make a larger contribution to world art and cultural heritage," Franki said.

He points out that Indonesian artists and musicians rarely come up with new work based on the country's tradition heritage, and that any such work rarely attracts international attention.

Only a few artists now in Europe or North America have been able to produce relatively new, interesting and original ideas and work, he said, adding that critics who have recognized and spoken out about this stagnation tend to be alienated by the larger community, "especially in Europe, with its old establishment, *where* new ideas are not easily accepted."

Indonesia, he said, should stand up and be heard on this point. "We should come up with something original but which has a global impact."

But this issue, he added, is too complicated and too big in scope to be managed by a few concerned parties.

"It is impossible to let it become the concern of a few countries or people only. We need collaboration between people who realize the importance of reformation in the musical world."

The concern about the lack of innovation in music, said Franki, began sporadically in the 1970s, but getting people together to come up with a solution was not easy.

But neither is it impossible.

Involving children: Children learn Saman, a traditional Acehnese dance, during an event for the cultural and psychological healing of tsunami survivors at an art center in Gampong Pande in Kuta Raja, Banda Aceh. The program, called “Rising Above the Tsunami”, was held by the Sacred Bridge Foundation in 2006. (Courtesy of The Sacred Bridge Foundation)

The Sacred Bridge Foundation, which Franki established in 1998, is setting out to address the issue by holding a workshop and musical clinic with the aim of providing directives for musicians of the 21st century.

"Gaung: 21st Century Global Music Education", to be held at the Bali Classic Center in Ubud from April 23 to May 2, will bring together internationally renowned experts in music and music-related sciences and technologies.

During the 10-day program, the experts will share and discuss their work, visions and experiences, ranging across topics such as musical and spiritual practice, acoustic science and technology, and creative musical thinking.

Among the facilitators and gurus involved in the workshop are percussionist/composer Stomu Yamash'ta, French composer Jean Claude Eloy, acoustician and scientist Yoshio Yamasaki, jazz-rock pioneer Larry Coryell, Zen Buddhist monk Yamada Sosho, Sufi maestro Marzuki Hasan and Kejawen spiritual guru Sumarah.

Franki Raden said the workshop and the clinic would focus on music, but approach it from the perspective of multiple disciplines, such as "the science of music, performance of music, the business side or cultural economics of music and even the ritualistic side of music."

"We are trying to combine the very advanced side, which is science, and the spiritual side of music," he said. "As far as I know, this is something very new."

Training ground: Musicians practice during a rehearsal session of the Rhythm Salad Music Clinic held at the National Gallery Jakarta last year. (Courtesy of The Sacred Bridge Foundation)

As well as classroom sessions, field work and self-exploration, the musicians will rehearse for concerts to be held. The concerts will be performed by different groups of participants as a means of exploring new combinations, based on technical capability, musical orientation and interest.

The performances will be presented as works in progress, with live audiences invited to provide direct feedback.

Ubud in Gianyar was chosen as the venue because of Bali's long contribution to the development of modern music, starting with performances at Europe's 1931 World Exhibition - most of the musicians who participated in the exhibition came from Ubud.

Franki said that many foreign artists who drew on Indonesia's musical heritage or collaborated with local artists produced phenomenal work although "some did not even mention Indonesia as the source of their work", he added.

One such internationally acclaimed work is Robert Wilson's visionary piece I La Galigo, a dramatic work inspired by an epic poem of the Bugis people of South Sulawesi.

I La Galigo has been performed in famous theaters around the world, from its world premiere at Theatres on the Bay in Singapore in March 2004 to its last production at the Teatro degli Arcimboldi in Milan, Italy, in February 2008.

It was also performed at Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam, Teatro Espa*ol in Madrid, Les Nuits de Fourviere Rhone France in Lyon, the Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna, Italy, NY State Theater in New York, Teater Tanah Airku in Jakarta and Melbourne's State Theatre.

I La Galigo features a cast of 50 Indonesian performers, with the music researched and composed by Indonesian Rahayu Supanggah. The project was by a team of scholars, from Sulawesi and abroad, who advised on the development of the epic for the theater.

"So far, the people who have drawn on Indonesian heritage have not been Indonesian," said Franki. "This is because we don't see ourselves from the outside so we never know what our position is."

No one can predict the final output of the workshop and clinic, said Franki, but it is expected to alter participants' perspectives and deliver new ways of performing music, or even a new instrument.

"It doesn't have to be a mainstream at all. What is considered mainstream now might have been alternative once," he said. "We are initiating a new thing so we do not expect it to be popular straightaway."

AMONG THOSE AT THE WORKSHOP

Stomu Yamash'ta will speak on musical synthesis, including about the spiritual, scientific and technological foundations of music.

During his career, Stomu has experimented with various musical genres including rock, jazz, avant-garde experimental and world music. In the 1970s, he founded a super group called "Go" in Europe; the other members were Al Di Meola, Klaus Schultz, Michel Reeve and Steve Winwood. In the 1980s, he developed a stone-chime orchestra called Sanukit. Since then, he has devoted his life to practicing Zen Buddhism.

Composer Jean Claude Eloy will speak on possible directions for music in the 21st century in the context of East-West cultural encounters. In the 1970s, Eloy co-founded an electronic music studio called Xemamu. Much of his work has been inspired by Asian philosophy and culture, and his orchestral pieces have been performed extensively in Europe and beyond.

Yoshio Yamasaki will be speaking on the development of music and technology, as well as new and future directions in music

Yamasaki is known as the inventor of the 16 and 1 bit digital portable recorder. A professor in physics at the Global Information and Technology Institute at Waseda University in Japan, he has been active in research in the field of music and acoustics.

John H.G. Soe: Nobody's child, everybody's man

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , JAKARTA | Wed, 03/25/2009 1:59 PM | People

Some blame their parents for their misfortunes, others blame God. But John H.G. Soe has never blamed anyone for mistreating him, or for the polio that shaped his life.

It was because of this polio that his parents abandoned him at a hospital in Medan when he was four months old. The nurses took care of him for a few years, before sending him to a Catholic orphanage in the same city.

But when he was in the third grade, renovations to the dormitory meant families had to take the children home. No one came for John, who was then called “Kong”; he was nobody’s child.

“Not only that day, but every school holiday, other children were picked up by their family, but nobody ever asked me even to go outside the orphanage’s dormitory …,” John told The Jakarta Post.

A nun found his parents, but his mother rejected him, but the nuns couldn’t take him back because of the renovations.

“I was crying because I felt more comfortable with the nuns. I had no feelings whatsoever for my parents.”

He spent “a very bitter week” with his family. They kept him in the small backyard and he was not allowed to play with his sisters and brothers. He slept on the floor where the others had beds, and was fed differently.

“I was given rice and a bit of vegetables while my brothers and sisters got chicken or duck,” John recalled. He also remembers an occasion when he was dragged to the back of the house when a guest asked who he was.

After 10 days, his brother took him back to the orphanage. The nuns, shocked at his condition, never sent him back to his parents again.

In 1973, Dutch-Italian businessman Ted de Ponti, a Singapore-based Rotarian and former Red Cross volunteer, visiting one of the nuns at the orphanage, said he wanted to adopt an orphan who was “really abandoned but academically bright”.

“I want him to be someone,” he said.

The obvious choice was the boy who was crippled by polio, a boy who had never had anyone visit him, but was so clever he could repair his friend’s broken radio. “I remember it was Sunday June 13th. The nuns said ‘an uncle’ would come and meet me to adopt me.”

John put on his best clothes and dragged himself to the parlor to wait. “I felt so happy when he hugged me. He took me to the shop to buy me my first new clothes ever and a Timex watch, and held a dinner at a restaurant where he introduced me as his son to his friends.”

De Ponti covered all the boy’s expenses and visited him regularly, before arranging for John to be taken to Singapore for surgery.

When the nuns got papers from John’s parents for the passport, he finally learned his birthday — June 17, 1959 — the names of his parents and his eight siblings, and his own birth name: Soe Hian Ghe.

In December 1973, De Ponti brought the boy to Singapore. The Rotary Club had decided to pay for the operations and Rotarians in Zevennar, the Netherlands, sponsored the trip.

He underwent four operations; after eight months in the hospital, his right leg, which was bent like a bow, began to improve. His ankles started to function, and now he can even drive a car.

After the first operation, The Strait Times ran a story about him, including a picture of him munching chocolates. The chocolate company, pleased with the free advertising, sent him dozens of boxes of chocolates, which he sent to his friends in the orphanage in Medan.

Everything was done at no cost — even Singapore Airlines provided a return trip for free. The money Rotary had committed for his operations now went to his education.

A month after the final operation, John returned to school in Medan. As he was 14 years old and had a disability, only a girl’s school would accept him. “Only two of us were boys, we both had polio.”

He later studied architecture in Singapore and interior design in London. He planned to return to Singapore but because of the 1985 economic crisis, his foster father advised him to go to Jakarta instead.

The first thing he did was to look up his family, who had moved to the Indonesian capital. His mother was still cold to him. “I told them that I only wanted to make a family bond and had no intention of making them feel bad.”

A year later, his family asked for forgiveness. John felt the request was unnecessary. “The past is the past, let’s look to the future,” he said.

John soon began his career in an architecture firm, and within five years had set up his own architecture and interior design company, which he still runs.

He married in 1988 and has two children. Ted de Ponti died in 1990, two month after John’s first child was born.

“I still remember he was very happy when my son was born. My son was like a first grandson to him,” John said. “Ted gave me confidence and love. He changed everything in my life.”

Because of the help Rotary gave him, John wanted to become a Rotarian, a dream realized when a client recommended him for membership in 2003.

Since he was indicted in 2004, he has held several important positions, including club secretary and club president; he is now the assistant governor for the Jakarta region.

He was been active in Rotary’s fight against polio, especially during the joint Rotary–Health Ministry campaign for the national immunization program in 2005 and 2006.

Looking back, John has no regrets or bitterness.

“I always think there is always someone who is experiencing something worse than me,” he said. “Everything is a blessing in disguise. I wouldn’t be what I am today if my parents did not leave me at that hospital.”

Comments (5)

Emmiwaty L (not verified) — Fri, 03/27/2009 - 12:39pm

Leonard Theosabrata: Simply the best

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Mon, 03/23/2009 1:08 PM | People

JP/Matheos Viktor Messakh

If anyone has proved George Earle Buckle’s assertion that “to simplify complications is the first essential of success”, it is Leonard Theosabrata, whose philosophy of simplicity in his furniture designs has brought him international acclaim.

The 31-year-old is now recognized as one of Asia’s top product and interior designers, the only Indonesian to be included in the hefty 2006 German publication Young Asian Designers.
His designs have won him several prestigious international awards, including Germany’s red dot design award in 2003 and Italy’s Well Tech Award in 2006, and his work went on display at the Science and Technology Museum during the 2006 Milan Fair.

For his achievements in design, he was chosen as one of five young Asians to be the face of Deutsche Welle’s new channel, DW-TV Asia+, launched in Jakarta last Wednesday.

Leonard’s path to the international stage was not immediately obvious. After he graduated from high school in 1997, his parents sent him to the United States to study graphic design at the Art Institute of Houston in Texas.

“Ever since I was in high school I was always interested in art. Not necessarily design but art,” Leonard says. “It sounds very typical but it’s true. Because it develops into an interest in design.”

But after two years of studying and working in Houston, he found he did not enjoy graphic design as much as he had expected.

“I started to think about changing my major but I still didn’t know what was best for me. Whatever, I wanted it to be in the best school in the US.”

His father encouraged him to move into product design and “I thought ‘Why not’.”

A search turned up the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, but without a product design portfolio, he could not enroll into a product design major.

“I only had a graphic design portfolio at that time, so I enrolled in night school for six months preparing my product portfolio.” The night school was provided by the college. “Apparently there are a lot of people like me who have an interest but not necessarily have a portfolio to show.”

After finishing the three projects necessary to meet the entrance requirements, Leonard was accepted in 1999.

He studied product design for three and a half years, during which time he won several competitions at the school including a team project doing the interior design for an Airbus 383, sponsored by Singapore Airlines. He also had the opportunity to do an internship at Japanese toy manufacturer Bandai in Tokyo.

“At that time it was difficult to get a job and also very competitive,” he says. “I didn’t even bother to look for work.”

He was close to getting an offer from Apple but, being an “entrepreneur type” and unwilling to work for other people, “I thought that going back and starting on my own would be much more valuable.”

With personal reasons helping the decision – “My sister was getting married at the same time” – he returned to Indonesia in 2002.

Soon afterward, he started his own brand of furniture, Accupunto, making chairs – lounges, dining chairs, benches and stackable chairs – based on the principles of acupuncture. The pieces are characterized by a simple form that can fit any room. For Leonard, it was an idea already tried and tested: “I used it for my final project at university.”

Leonard says his designs are greatly influenced by the Bauhaus movement in Germany from the 1920s to early 1930s, one of the most important design movements of the 20th century which influenced subsequent developments in art, architecture and design.

“One of the principles of the Bauhaus movement is that ‘form follows function’,” he says. “It simplified radical forms, emphasized rationality and functionality, and initiated the idea of mass production.”

The experience of creating his own brand took him to Europe, which he calls the center of interior design and product design.

“Even though I studied design in the US, I always wanted to go to Europe. Finally, I was able to live my dream of taking part in European shows and being alongside the brands that I admired.”

During Accupunto’s second year, Leonard took part in one of Europe’s biggest design shows, the International Meuble Messe in Cologne. There, his design won the red dot award, whose recipients regularly include established brands such as Nikon, Sony, Ferrari, BMW and Porsche.

Leonard became the second Asian, and only Indonesian, to win the award, defeating nearly 1,500 entrants from 28 countries. Winning was, he said, “a huge honor” because the award is “becoming a symbol of excellence in design everywhere”.

The Accupunto Arm Chair won several other awards such as the Interior Innovation Award 2004 from the German Design Council, G-mark from Japan and the 2003 Indonesia Good Design Award.

Leonard has since expanded into interior design and counts international companies among his clients. He and some colleagues have also set up D5, an interior and architecture design consultancy.

“As a designer, I like a design to be functional, simple but with added value,” Leonard says.
Influenced as he is by the Bauhaus movement, aesthetics are not his top priority.
“A good product should prove itself. If it sells, it means the design works.”

Swara Maharddhika is back with a new face

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Sat, 03/21/2009 2:22 PM | Entertainment

After a break of more than 20 years, Swara Maharddhika is back - but with a new face and without their maestro and founder Guruh Soekarnoputra.

The members of the group, known for its spectacular musical, dance and dramatic performances during the 1980s, will perform a musical drama based on the East Java fable Jaka Tarub at the Graha Bhakti Budaya, Taman Ismail Marzuki, on March 27.

Swara Maharddhika gained a reputation for glamorous Broadway-style shows, but this time, said artistic director Tanti Horii, the group would present "more traditional Indonesian art flavored with some contemporary touches".

"There are so many high-quality contemporary art performances, but traditional art is our strength," she said. "If we are too contemporary, probably many out there are far better than us, but nobody will go to see it, especially younger people, if we present an excessively traditional performance."

As many of the original members of the group are too old to take part in the musical performance, said Tanti, only 10 percent of them would perform. The other dancers were selected through auditions.

The theater company members were provoked into a comeback by the fact that many performances brought from abroad receive a great response here in Indonesia.

"We want to prove that what we have here is as good as anything brought from abroad or even better," Ai Syarif, one of the performance directors and a member of Swara Maharddhika, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

The performance will use traditional dances from around the country such as the Balinese legong, pendet and lasem, the piring dance from Melayu, the giring-giring dance of Kalimantan and the pakarena dance of Makassar, but with a modern twist.

"Eighty percent of the dances in the performance will be traditional dances but we combine them with new choreography and also a new combination of costumes so they will appear as contemporary as possible," said Syarif.

The choreographers are Frank Rorimpandey, Kris Suwardjo and Ai Syarif.

Frank, from the group's XII cohort, works for Liga Tari Krida Budaya at the University of Indonesia and is a member of Sumber Cipta ballet group. He performed as one of the emerging young choreographers during the 2008 Indonesian Dance Festival.

Kris Suwardjo, also from the XII cohort, is a dance lecturer at the Jakarta Art Institute and the Jakarta National University (UNJ). He took part in Robert Wilson's adaptation of the Bugis epic I La Galigo.

Ai Syarif has worked for Namarina Dance Company since 2002 and has been a fashion stylist for 16 years.

The music will be performed live by musicians from the Jakarta Art Institute, some former members of Swara Maharddhika and several freelancers.

Costume design will be supported by noted designers Adjie Notonegoro, Anne Avantie, Samuel Wattimena, Barli Kusuma and company member Jazz Pasay.

Swara Maharddhika, which Guruh founded on March 27, 1977, had it last performance in July 1987 with a colossal show titled Gempita Swara Maharddhika at the Jakarta Convention Center, which was then known as Balai Sidang Senayan Jakarta.

The group later became a foundation, Swara Maharddhika Foundation. Since the group halted its activities in 1987, many of its members went off to make their own paths, although most of them remained in the dramatic world.

Guruh, for example, continued his work with dance and musical performances through his company founded in 1989, Gencar Semarak Perkasa (GSP). His colleague Denny Malik formed Pentasindo Dancers, and Ati Ganda established her Studio 26.

"Fortunately we had time so we prepared well, and we have decided to keep going after this," said Syarif, who said the group had received several invitations to perform for Indonesian embassies abroad.

Although Guruh will not be at the event, his songs will be used, but with new musical arrangements by music director Anusirwan, who was also music director for Robert Wilson's I La Galigo.

The play's protagonist, Jaka Tarub, said to be the ancestor of the kings of the Mataram kingdom of Mataram, appeared in Babad Tanah Jawi, the traditional text on the history of the kingdom. Jaka Tarub is a son of Ki Ageng Kembanglampir, who was raped by Jaka Kudus.

Kembanglampir dies after giving birth to her baby. After being abandoned a number of times, the baby boy is finally found by a woman called Nyai Tarub, who names him Jaka Tarub.

One day, young Jaka Tarub goes hunting in a jungle and comes across seven angels bathing in a pond. He steals the selendang (clothes) of one of the angels so she cannot fly back to khayangan (heaven).

Jaka Tarub marries that angel, Dewi Nawangwulan, and they have a daughter Retno Nawangsih.

Later on, Nawangwulan discovers that her husband was the one who stole her selendang. Angry, she decides to return to khayangan, but plans to return occasionally to breast-feed her child.

Although the original tale has a sad ending, the Swara Maharddhika performance, said Ai Syarif, would be modified so that it has a happy ending. "Jaka Tarub will have to accept the fact that every encounter has its end," he said.

"We don't want people to be sad," said Tanti Horii. "We called it *artainment', which is a combination of art and entertainment. We don't want people to be serious as if they were watching an opera, but we also don't want it to be too light as a mere entertainment."

The beauty in the tragedy

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Mon, 03/16/2009 4:27 PM | Lifestyle

Undak Langit, Drepung Monastery, Tibet, by Krish Suharnoko

It is rather ironic that a photography exhibition about Tibet and Dharamsala is being held in Jakarta.

It is ironic because Indonesia is guilty of having done the same thing that China is still doing to Tibet. And it is ironic because even as the world professes to care about the plight of Tibet, it clutches more and more tightly at China's economic and political power.

The exhibition, titled "Heaven in Exile", displays the works of four Indonesian photographers - Enrico Soekarno, Jay Subyakto, Krish Suharnoko and Yori Antar - who visited the Tibetan capital Lhasa in 2003, and then the Dalai Lama and his followers in exile in Dharamsala and Ladakh in India in 2006.

"We have held several events as a show of solidarity for the Tibetan people several times but this time is special because it is held around the time of the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising that began on March 10, 1959," Enrico Soekarno told The Jakarta Post.

"We mean for the exhibition to tell our people that freedom is the right of every nation, as stipulated in our own Constitution. We have been accused by many as being agents for Tibet or anti-China. That's not true. We are only trying to be on the side of the oppressed."

What makes these pictures stand out is that they were taken by four different people from different backgrounds who have all caught the spiritualism and intangible exotic heritage of Tibet in their photography.

The images by Yori Antar, an architect and photographer whose major concerns revolve around the preservation of heritage buildings, for example, capture the magnificent Potala Palace from a beautiful angle without sacrificing the impression that the palace has been infected by the Chinese government's modern constructions.

Yori succeeds in capturing the deathly quiet of scenes around various monasteries in Ladakh or mountains, all with nothing but Tibetan religious attributes and flags. The shots send a message about the prettiness of Tibet, while at the same time standing witness to the absence of the Dalai Lama from his land.

Yori's images of life in Ladakh, India, which mostly portray children, clearly hint at the enduring hope in exile, even though nobody knows how long it will last.

In his work, noted director Jay Subyakto plays with black and white, focusing mostly on the presence of people, but still managing to powerfully convey the cold and sunny sights of the land known as "the roof of the world".

Tarian Gunung, Shanti Monastery, Leh, Ladakh, India, by Enrico Soekarno

Enrico Soekarno also plays with black and white but with a stronger political flavor. Included among his shots are the barbed wire surrounding the Potala Palace, a military building with a Chinese star and a child in the street holding a picture of the Dalai Lama.

The journey to Tibet, Ladakh, Nepal and Dharamsala was originally planned for more than 20 people, Enrico said, but in the end only the four of them made it there.

The sophisticated setting and the installation of the photographs adds to the exhibition, thanks to the members of the Antara team that decided the size and installation of each picture.

In the doorway of the gallery, a poster covered with transparent cloth reads "China's record in Tibet. More than a million killed! More than 6,000 monasteries destroyed! Thousand in prison! Hundred still missing! China, get out of Tibet!"

"The oppression of Tibet was caught in a very subtle way by the young Indonesian photographers," said Mudji Sutrisno during a talk on "Visual power in moral movement" on Tuesday, held in line with the exhibition.

"The language of photography leads us to silence and contemplation that in the 21st century, there is still much oppression in many parts of the world," he later told the Post. "These pictures of Tibet as taken by the four photographers are pictures of a dying culture."

The pictures, Mudji said, succeeding in conveying the inner voice of the Tibetan. "It appears in the emptiness and striking silence, which makes the sky seem to be endlessly crying."

However, he said, the pictures still caught the beauty in the tragedy. "These photographs reveal that one civilization can injure another civilization, but they still caught the beauty inside every part of them."

The weakness of the works, according to Mudji, is that they are not accompanied by enough narration.

"They will not become a bridge for those who know little about Tibet, or could become a barrier for those who are skeptical about the issue, especially young people. They might say *Why not look at the nearby problem we have with the mudflow in Sidoardjo instead of Tibet?'"

On each Saturday during the exhibition, eight documentaries on Tibet provided by Yayasan Atap Dunia (Roof of the World Foundation) were screened.

The films were Leaving Fear Behind by Dhondup Wangchen and Gyaljong Tsetrin, Shadow Circus; The CIA in Tibet, A Stranger in My Native Land, Dreaming Lhasa, The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, as well as classics such as Wheel Of Time by German anthropologist Werner Herzog and the award winning documentary Cry of the Snow Lion by Tom Piozet.

One of the films, Leaving Fear Behind, is an undercover movie directed by autodidactic Tibetan filmmakers Dhondup Wangchen and Gyaljong Tsetrin. The 25-minute film exploring Tibetan sentiments about China, the relevance and symbolism of the Olympic Games and the return of the Dalai Lama was smuggled out of Tibet before the March 2008 riot. The two filmmakers are still in jail.

Another film Dreaming Lhasa was directed by Tibetans Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam. It tells the story of Karma, a female Tibetan director from New York who went to the Dalai Lama's place of exile in Dharamsala in India to make a documentary of political prisoners who fled from Tibet.

One prisoner she interviewed is Dhondup, a former monk who came to India to fulfill his mother's final request to find a long-lost freedom fighter. The journey leads not only into the history of Tibet but also into the discovery of oneself.

It seems that the exhibition, held as it is in a historic building in a busy part of the city, resembles the situation of the Tibetan: Once inside, one can see clearly the loneliness of the Tibetans, while the world outside is too busy to truly care about their plight.

But more or less, the four photographers have brought home the message needed to be shared, as the Dalai Lama once said: "World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not the absence of violence. Peace is the manifestation of human compassion."

- photos Courtesy of Geleri Foto Jurnalistik Antara

Heaven in Exile

Galeri Foto Jurnalistik Antara No. 59 Pasar Baru, www.jtja.org, Central Jakarta

Until March 21

Traditional massage therapist finds a place with doctors

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Wed, 03/11/2009 2:04 PM | Health

Ten-year-old Bowo was playing with his friends in the schoolyard in East Jakarta when he felt a pain in the lower part of his stomach and could barely move his feet. His parents were called to the school and the boy was taken to hospital.

The doctor could do nothing for the boy other than diagnose a hernia. However, the hospital knew of a health clinic that had a Cimande massage therapist. The desperate parents and grimacing boy saw no other option; they headed straight to the clinic.
"After less than one hour of massage and with pain relief medication, my boy was able to go out and play again," the boy's father, Rasyid, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
Like many forms of traditional massage in Indonesia, Cimande massage has developed a reputation for its ability to cure bone-, joint- and muscle-related complaints.
The type of massage is named after the village in Bogor, West Java, where many of the massage therapists come from. The skills have been handed down from generation to generation, a tradition accompanied by a kind of mystic aura.
Muhammad Si In, a 48-year-old massage therapist from Cimande, said he had received training in the technique from his grandfather, Abah Emang, from when he was 20 years old, but he was not allowed to practice it until he had his own family in 1987.
"We promised him that we would only practice it when we got married and had children of our own. I don't know why, but I obeyed."
Si In, who is popularly known as Bang Mamat, said that he received the training together with 12 other children, but he was the only one who passed the test allowing him to treat the public.
The preparation his grandfather gave him, Si In said, went for nearly a year and involved numerous rituals, prohibitions and taboos, including 40 days of fasting and not being allowed to eat rice or any vine fruit.
He has since come to be the therapist at a certified health clinic in East Jakarta, after beginning in 1987 practicing at his own house in Bogor, before becoming a therapist in Indramayu, West Java, for one year. From 2000, he was the therapist for the Bogor regent.
Since 2006 he has been working for a Gran Ananda clinic in East Jakarta, where he works alongside doctors helping treat complaints ranging from sore muscles and stiff tendons to more serious bone and muscle problems such as fractures, sprains and hernias. He treats patients in a simple room, with nothing but a thin mat and pillow.
Si In said between five and 10 patients visit the clinic for massage therapy during the week, and 10 to 15 during the weekend. The clinic also gets some patients from abroad.
Adi, the coordinator of Gran Ananda clinic, said that initially doctors at the clinic were reluctant to work with Si In, but after he succeeded with several patients, they started to cooperate with him.
After all, Si In does also hold a license from the East Jakarta health service agency permitting him to practice his traditional skill.
The therapist, who never finished high school, said he had no interest in learning about muscles, bones or human anatomy or to enrich his skills from books or other modern sources - he believes the knowledge gained during that year of training with his grandfather is enough.
"I just have to learn from the patients that come to me," said Si In, who has been part of the health team for Bogor municipality's regional sports week (Porda) contingent since 2000.
Even professional massage therapist Sugiat Mulyosudarmo admires the Cimande traditional therapists. He said he often visits them to "steal" their skills.
"They have the talent, even though they might know nothing about muscles or bones. I always learn from them and never underestimate them," said Sugiat, who holds several licenses for sports massage, including from the International Olympics Commission in 1998 and 2002.
Sugiat, who has been a massage therapist for the Indonesian badminton team for many national and international events since 1987, said that if traditional massage therapists had their own institution to update their skills and promote them, they would be as widely accepted as professional therapists.
"They have the knowledge; they just don't know how to explain it. They are smart because they never stop learning."
This lack of knowledge about human anatomy, said Sugiat, is the traditional therapists' only Achilles heel.
"Sometimes, they treat different illnesses with the same treatment. We can feel pain in the same part of our body but the cause could be different so the treatment should be different."
However, Si In said that passing his grandfather's rigorous selection process was enough for him to become a therapist.
"We can feel it in our hand if we have the skills and in time we can also know the problem just by looking at the patient," he said. "Even if someone had done something with it already, we will know if it is totally fixed."

Stefano Bollani: Taking risks for jazz

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , JAKARTA | Sat, 03/07/2009 12:58 PM | People

(JP/J.Adiguna)

Not everyone can make their childhood dream come true, but Italian pianist Stefano Bollani certainly has.

“My childhood dream is to be exactly what I am now,” Bollani says, “a musician who can also sing and write a novel.”

When he was only six, Bollani was accompanying himself on the family keyboard, and at 10, he recorded a cassette of his performance. He sent it to his childhood idol Renato Carosone, along with a letter explaining his dream. To his delight, Carosone replied advising him to listen to a lot of blues and jazz, and so the little boy from Milan did.

“I think he was very surprised receiving a letter from a very younger fan,” Bollani says. “He was very famous in Italy in the 1950s and had been retired for about 20 years but surprisingly he had a 10-year-old fan.”

At age 11, he enrolled at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory of Florence, and at 15, he started performing professionally, playing mostly pop music while studying jazz at Siena Jazz.

“Jazz is not a kind of music but it’s a language of improvisation. It’s good for me to talk about jazz because I feel it’s a great big thing and you can have a lot of things inside,” says Bollani, now 37. “Reggae, rock ‘n’ rolls or blues are genres of music but jazz is a language and you can use it to say whatever you want.”

The first thing about jazz, says Bollani, is improvisation, which means a musician has to be ready to expect the worst to happen in any performance.

“This also means that the main thing is changing and you have to be yourself. If you are tired, angry or fall in love, the music is going to change.”

Pop music is predictable, classical music is always seeking perfection, but jazz is always changing and challenging, says Bollani, who made it to the cover of the May 2008 edition of the weekly magazine Topolino for his ingenious and sparkling character, and his natural gifts as an entertainer.

The decisive moment in Bollani’s career was meeting Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava at the Teatro Metastasio in Prato in 1996.

“I played with him and at the end he asked for my phone number. It was like a love affair really. He was a very famous musician at that time and I was like a desperate little girl.”

Enrico invited him to play in Paris with him, saying, “You’re young. Take a risk, give up pop and devote yourself full-time to the music you love.”

Bollani took the advice and threw himself into jazz, with dynamic success, triggering a career that has included no less than 80 collaborative albums and 18 solo albums, performances on the world’s most prestigious stages, and awards and critical acclaim across Europe, Japan and North America.

His music often reflects irony, an evident characteristic of all of his work, some of which is quite bizarre and offbeat. Consider “Gnosi delle fanfole”, a recording in which, along with songwriter Massimo Altomare, he set to music the surreal poetry of Fosco Maraini in 1998, or “Cantata dei pastori immobili”, a sort of musical comedy for four voices, narrator and piano, based on texts by David Riondino, published in 2004.

Above all, he says, his music is “an attempt to take inside and as soon as you come inside I will try to escape.”

But it’s not all music — he has books to his credit also. In 2004 he published L’america di Renato Carosone, a tribute to the history of swing and jazz in Italy and, especially, to his idol Carosone. He followed this up in September 2006 with his first novel, La sindrome di Brontolo, which he had been working on for four years.

“I write because I have lots of free time while I am traveling. I write because I have no musical instruments with me. If I had a piano in my hotel room, I would play all the time.” Or reading: He confesses he brought eight books on his six-day visit to Jakarta.

September 2006 also marked the release of Piano Solo, Bollani’s first CD for the famous German jazz label ECM. The album went straight to the top of the jazz charts, landing in 31st place in the Sorrisi e Canzoni chart. In 2007, he made another album for ECM with Enrico Rava, called The Third Man.

That year, even more accolades poured in across the world, as his musical risks paid off. American magazine Downbeat ranked him eighth among the world’s new jazz talents and third among the young pianists. The New York magazine All About Jazz named him one of the five most important musicians of 2007, alongside monstres sacrés such as Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins. And in Vienna, he was awarded the Europe Jazz Prize, as European musician of the year.

His philosophy about unexpectedness and change means he has great admiration for legend Miles Davis’ attitude, if not always his
music.

“He was always trying to change all the time. He once made a masterpiece and then one year later he made a record that is not a masterpiece at all just because he was trying to improvise. I don’t like all of his records. I like the idea of taking the risk of changing every time. I don’t believe in evolution,” he says.

“I’m not sure that musicians get better. They simply do different things.”

His most recent work defined his vision. An incursion into popular Brazilian music, Bollani carioca was recorded in the slums of Rio de Janeiro with prominent local artists, making Bollani the second international musician to play a grand piano in a slum area in Rio (the first was Antonio Carlos Jobim).

The concert itself has great memories for Bollani. “If you have ever seen the movie City of God, that’s what the area looked like where we performed,” he says. “We could even hear shooting guns when we performed.”

Stefano Bollani is appearing at the Java Jazz Festival 2009 with his quintet I Visionari, with Mirko Guerrini on sax, Nico Gori on clarinet, Stefano Senni on double bass and Cristiano Calcagnile on drums.

The little known prime minister

The Jakarta Post | Tue, 03/10/2009 12:26 PM | People

It’s official: Sjahrir (left) is shown signing Linggadjati Agreement documents in Jakarta on Nov. 15, 1946, while Dutch-appointed special commissioner general leading the negotiations, Willem Schermerhorn, looks on. Courtesy of Rushdy Hoesein

Surprisingly enough for a nation’s first prime minister, Sutan Sjahrir receives few mentions in Indonesia’s history book – even though his diplomatic skills were responsible for the nation being recognized by the international community.

“Sjahrir, who became prime minister at the age of 36, is little known by the public,” Sjahrir’s daughter Siti Rabyah Parvati Sjahrir said at the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Sjahrir’s birth at Balai Agung in Jakarta on Thursday.

“Sometimes he has been misidentified as [literary critic] Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana or Sjahrir the [late] economist.”

Sjahrir was born in Padang Panjang, West Sumatra, on March 5, 1909, the son of an adviser to the Sultan of Deli. He studied in Medan and Bandung, before moving to Leiden in The Netherlands around 1929 to study law.

In Holland, he gained an appreciation for socialist principles, and joined several labor unions as he worked to support himself. He was briefly the secretary of the Indonesian Association (Perhimpunan Indonesia), an organization of Indonesian students in the Netherlands.

He returned to Indonesia in 1931 without completing his law degree, and helped set up the Indonesian National Party (PNI). Around this time, he became a close associate of future vice president Mohammad Hatta.

His nationalist activities saw him imprisoned by the Dutch in November 1934 for many years, first in Boven Digul, then on Banda. In 1941, just before the area fell to the Japanese, he was moved to Sukabumi.

At the time when Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta were compromising with the occupying Japanese forces, Sjahrir was involved in a clandestine movement that he believed would help prepare the nation for independence when the time was right.

In November 1945, then president Sukarno appointed him prime minister, a position he held until June 1947, during which time he worked on winning international recognition for the newly independent country.

Sjahrir is shown during the campaign for the 1955 general election.

Sjahrir founded the Indonesian Socialist Party in 1948, which, although small, proved to be influential in the early years after independence because of the expertise and high education levels of its leaders.

But after January 1950 Sjahrir no longer held any government positions, and his party performed poorly during the 1955 elections.

After a 1958 revolt known as PRRI or “Revolutionary Government of Indonesian Republic” in 1958, his relationship with Sukarno deteriorated, and the president banned his party two years later.

At 4 a.m. on Jan. 16, 1962, Sjahrir was arrested at his house in Jakarta. Three months later, he was sent with other political prisoners to Madiun, Central Java, before being moved back to Jakarta in 1965.

Despite his long and fervent political career, Sjahrir was always devoted to his family — he had two children, Kriya Arsyah and Parvati. He wrote in his prison diary on June 3, 1963, “My thoughts and my memories again and again turn to home, to my children. I want them to grow up to be happier and have a better life than me. … I want them to be honest, upright and loving, and not be obsessed with titles and stars.”

Sjahrir’s daughter, Parvati, was just two years old when her father was arrested. “I had to take a train back and forth from Solo to Madiun just to meet Papa,” she recalled. “When my father was moved to Jakarta, it was not easy for my mother to get a permit letter to visit Papa.”

The imprisonment, she said, was unjust. “Ironically, after Independence, he was detained without facing trial. He was accused without verification.”

As he was ill, Sjahrir was allowed to go to Zurich, Switzerland, for treatment. He died there on April 9, 1966, “far away from the country he co-founded, from the country he dearly loved, from family members and friends”, Parvati said. “Sjahrir went to Zurich as a political prisoner and returned to his homeland as a hero.”

He was a hero for his daughter as well.

“For me, Sjahrir, Papa, was a moral character who deserves to be emulated,” she said. “He was honest, brave and consistent with what he fought for. He did not fight for his own interest or for power or wealth. He fought for the freedom and the maturity of people to be free from oppression and the exploitation of others.”

—JP/Matheos V. Messakh

Sutan Sjahrir: Teacher of the nation

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Tue, 03/10/2009 12:09 PM | People

The leaders: Sjahrir (left) is pictured with Sukarno (center) and Mohammad Hatta.

It has been said that if Indonesia had paid greater attention to the wisdom and lessons of its first prime minister, it might have avoided decades of authoritarian rule and human rights abuses.

A closer look at Sutan Sjahrir’s life and thoughts, and at the testimonies of those around him, reveals that Sjahrir was more than the first prime minister of Indonesia — he was a defender of humanity and rationality.

Sjahrir is many things in this nation’s history — a national hero, founder of the Socialist Party of Indonesia, the first prime minister — but perhaps his greatest contribution to the nation lay not in the titles conferred or the positions held, but in his thinking about nationalism and humanism.

Only two months after Indonesia gained independence, Sjahrir felt the importance of emphasizing what freedom meant to the nation, Kamala Chandrakirana, chairwoman of the National Commission

on Violence against Women, said at the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Sjahrir’s birth on Thursday.

He did this in an article in October 1945 titled Perdjoeangan Kita (Our Struggle).

“Freedom does not only mean that Indonesia has become an independent state, but also is now free from tyranny, hunger and misery,” Kamala said, quoting Sjahrir’s article. “A national revolution is only the result of a democratic revolution, and nationalism should be second to democracy. The State of Indonesia is only a name we give to the essence we intend and aim for.”

Sjahrir’s article, said Kamala, was a response to the public’s desire at that time to take part in the building of the nation — a desire still evident 64 years after Independence.

Now, Kamala said, as the general elections approach, is the appropriate time to reflect on the nation’s “struggle”, as discussed by Sjahrir.

Sjahrir’s notion of struggle is not a narrow and specific construct, but a global and universalone; as he wrote, “only the nationalism carried by justice and humanity can lead us into world history”.

But evidence documented by several human rights bodies has demonstrated that, instead, it was the militaristic and narrow-minded notion of nationalism that Sjahrir so feared that took root in Indonesia for so many years.

Political oppression and political silencing of women during the New Order era and the mass rapes of Chinese women during the May 1998 riots, Kamala said, were evidence that the nation upheld what Sjahrir described as an “attitude of hatred toward alien groups in our population or foreigners and people of foreign descent”.

“Hatred for foreign groups and people,” Sjahrir warned, “is indeed something one finds voiced in every nationalist movement, especially among a movement that intoxicates itself with a passionate hatred … in order to gain power.”

Courtesy of Rushdy Hoesein

To Sjahrir’s list of “more or less alien groups in our population”, Kamala said we should add Papuans, the Ahmadiyah community and others in the nation whose right to equality has been neglected.

Rocky Gerung of the University of Indonesia also commented on how Sjahrir’s politics were directed more toward greater human freedoms than to mere national freedom.

“The evidence that this nation has never had human freedoms is that people first bring out their primordial identity when dealing with others,” said Gerung.

Sjahrir wrote in “Nationalism and internationalism” in 1953 that nationalism was a source of
new life and strength for less developed peoples. But, he warned,
as soon as a nation achieved freedom, it was confronted with the problem of adapting nationalism to the human needs for peace, progress and prosperity.

“If this fails,” he wrote, “this nationalism will become a negative factor, a factor of conservatism and reaction. Then it will become egocentric and degenerate into intolerance and self-glorification.”

The dangers that accompany the nationalism of a newly independent nation can still be tasted in the air in the current political situation, Gerung said, stating that the deficit in modern Indonesian politics is a deficit of rationality, whose dangers Sjahrir repeatedly noted.

“Democracy should be handled rationally, but we see now that the public is getting more and more irrational. Even a political analyst on the TV screen will say something just plain obvious or something that has already been analyzed by journalists.”

Gerung raised the concern the quality of Indonesia’s current political leaders has strayed from Sjahrir’s ideal of politics as having “complete and tidy ideology and theory”.

“What we have now are people with the tendency to solve problems using articles from sacred books rather than articles from the Constitution,” he said. “We should have political leaders in this country but instead we only have political dealers. Politics is full of advertising.”

As for the current 12,000-odd political candidates, Gerung compares them to the thousands of people seeking a miracle from child “healer” Ponari in Jombang.

“Both are expecting miracles to happen. People with a gamut of health problems are expecting
a miracle from Ponari, and the political candidates are expecting miracles from the next legislative election.”

Political activist Fadjroel Rachman, the editor of Guru Bangsa (Teacher of the Nation), a book dedicated to Sutan Sjahrir, said that if Sukarno were the father of independence and Mohammad Hatta the father of cooperation, then Sutan Sjahrir should be named the father of welfare.

“The program of his Cabinet was the program of a welfare state,” he said “One of his programs was progressive tax, which means that the higher the income, the higher the tax imposed.”

Unfortunately, Rachman said, Sjahrir had no time to implement his programs during his term as he was kept busy defending the nation’s independence and increasing its international legitimacy.

“If he were alive today and still in power, I’m sure he would create programs that directly addressed basic rights, combated poverty and narrowed the social gap — such as free education, providing employment and social security, and free housing and healthcare,” he said. “The money would definitely come from the progressive tax.”

Photo Courtesy of Rushdy Hoesein

Lola Amaria: The handmaid’s tale

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Sat, 02/21/2009 10:15 AM | People

Lola Amaria: JP/MATHEOS V. MESSAKH
Actress, director and producer Lola Amaria is happy to explore women’s issues in her films, but hates being called a feminist.
“I don’t like being put into a particular category,” Lola says. “What I did in my films just shows concern with the reality around us.”
Check out her filmography and you will see that all her films concern the struggle of women from a range of backgrounds, with each role – whether stripper, nurse, courtesan, rape victim, postgraduate student or mentally ill woman – demonstrating her genuine concern.
Her latest film The Detour to Paradise, in which she plays an Indonesian maid in Taiwan, opens in Taipei today. The film, produced in Taiwan by director Lee Tsi-Tai, has already been selected as the opening film for the Singapore International Film Festival in April.
“I’m so happy and proud because I’m the only Indonesian who took part in the film,” Lola says. “But at the same time I’m also anxious because none of the crew are Indonesian. I would be more proud if the whole team were Indonesian because the film is about an Indonesian maid.”
Lola says her experience with the film gave her the insight to produce another film with a similar theme – migrant domestic workers – but in a different setting, this time Hong Kong.
“I don’t take potshots at the government or anybody in the movie. It will be purely about the reality of life as a migrant worker in Hong Kong. It’s about the human side of migrant workers, which is totally different from what we usually believe,” she says.
Lola, who has been traveling to and from Hong Kong since early 2007 to conduct research, says strong laws ensured Hong Kong employers treated migrant workers relatively well.
“It would be impossible for us to make a film about migrant workers in Saudi Arabia or in Malaysia, for example, without bringing violence into it. But in Hong Kong you hardly find that,” she says.
Her team is currently working on the script. Lola will direct and star in the film, which is scheduled for release in August.
Lola was born in Jakarta on July 30, 1977. Although she once wanted to be a diplomat, she soon found a place in the entertainment world, as the 1997 winner of Wajah Femina, an annual model contest held by Women Magazine Femina.
Her acting career began in 1998 when she played Sila, a stripper, in Nan Triveni Achnas’ TV movie Penari (Dancer). After five television roles, including in the 1998 Indonesian Sinetron Festival award-nominated sinetron (soap opera) Arjuna Mencari Cinta, Lola turned to the big screen.
“I see a different spirit in big screen movies, in terms of working together with people, the quality requirement and the challenge of the work, which I would not have if I only worked in sinetron,” she says. “With movies I can explore my abilities as an actress, a director, producer or in learning another role. Film has its own challenges so I have to learn. I got nothing from soap opera except instant results and lots of money.”
Not that she doesn’t need money: “I just needed another way to earn money but one that also gave me some experience and knowledge.”
Her first movie role, in Tabir (Curtain) in 2000, was as a victim of the 1998 mass rape in Jakarta; after three years of production, the project was abandoned. In the same year, she starred in a Japanese film Dokuritsu as a nurse struggling between loyalty to her homeland and the Japanese colonial government.
A year later, she played a psychopathic girl, Beth, the title character in an art house movie that the censorship board banned from general cinema release.
Her biggest acclaim came for her performance as Tinung, the wife of a Chinese trader, in Nia Dinata’s award-winning 2002 film Ca Bau Kan, an adaptation of Remy Sylado’s best-selling novel. For Lola, it was a demanding role. “For Ca Bau Kan, I had to learn the Betawi language, which has at least four dialects. I also learned Chinese dance, I learned Chinese history and culture including fashion, furniture, even how people talked.”
Lola, who admires American independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and late director Teguh Karya and whose own favorite films are Three Colors Trilogy: Blue, White, Red by Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski, turned to producing and directing in 2004.
Her first effort as producer was for Novel Tanpa Huruf R (Novel Without the Letter R), in which she also played the lead role. In the same year, she directed Betina (Female), which won her a Netpac Award at the 2006 Jogja-Netpac Asian Film Festival.
Lola, who professes a love of dogs – she once had five sheepdogs – and ice cream, and a hatred of durian, says she wanted to try her hand at directing because it’s a “genius profession”.
“Being a director means you have to visualize all your ideas. All the components, such as sound, music, acting, photography and editing are put into one and the director is the captain.”
Although she has already performed in two foreign Asian movies, Lola is looking for any opportunity to venture outside Indonesian cinema again, although “if possible I would like it not to be an Asian movie”.
Another potential project would be a documentary on Indonesian women, should she find the opportunity to produce one – not that that would make her a “feminist”.