Hearing the voice of
God
If Indonesians had the freedom to choose a religion beyond
the six approved by the nation’s politicians, then composer Slamet Abdul Sjukur
would have ‘music’ stamped on his ID card.
“I live music, I dream music,” he said. “When I wake I must not get up quickly but
take time to remember the notes. I don’t
want to write them down. I tell my
students to avoid notation. That can come later. Instead feel the emotion, the truth. That’s what’s important.
“There must be a sense of balance and discipline in
composition. This must come from within. After we play, we understand. Music
can be the voice of God.”
The lively musician has just turned 79 and to commemorate
the event his friends and admirers have been staging a four-day series of
concerts and seminars in Surabaya.
They’ve also published a 334-page festschrift to the man they call ‘the
father of Indonesian contemporary music’.
Inevitably he was accompanied by an attractive young woman musician
indifferent to the stares and half-century difference in their ages. For Slamet
also has a reputation for being a great lover, though he’s far from a George
Clooney lookalike.
He is short and crippled. He cannot use his left leg
following a childhood illness and carries a crutch. He has bad eyesight and worse teeth. His hair
is falling out. Offsetting all this is a sparkling personality, a nimble mind
and humble nature.
“I respect women, I treat them as equals,” he said. “I’m
honest with them. But they must be intelligent. We must communicate.”
Although he doesn’t wear a bowler hat he looks more like the
19th century French theater artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, an
image preserved in his birthday logo.
Slamet spent 14 years in Paris starting at the Conservatoire
with a French government grant. He only returned to Indonesia when invited to
lecture at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts.
However in 1983 he was awarded Hungary’s Zoltán
Kodály Commemorative Medal for his musicianship. That should have brought him
fame – instead he got the sack. For
Hungary was still under Russian control, and the Indonesian authorities in
Soeharto’s Orde Baru administration reckoned that someone praised by a communist
state must be out to infect Indonesian students.
Since then he’s been recognized by his own
country and is now a life member of the Akademi Jakarta, following numerous
European awards, including Officier de l'Ordre
des Arts et des Lettres from the French
government.
Slamet says he doesn’t know the source of his
talent, but attributes much of his outlook to his Eskimo grandmother Astikea
who married a Turk called Arsjad. How two people from such diverse countries
happened to encounter each other in Indonesia is another great mystery.
Their daughter Canna married a Javanese
pharmacist Abdul Sjukur. Their son Soekandar,
was born on the last day of June in 1935, but because he was sick he was
renamed Slamet (meaning ‘safe’ in Javanese).
“My grandfather was an eccentric, something of
a mystic,” Slamet said. “He taught me
numerology, which is significant in my music.
My grandmother taught me that I must have no secrets and do everything
with love because that’s the most important thing in life.”
As a child he studied the piano privately for
four years before entering Yogyakarta’s Sekolah Musik Indonesia (the Indonesian
music academy). Later he went to France.
On his return to the East Java capital he
helped establish the Alliance Francaise (which is still active) and the
Pertemuan Musik Surabaya (Friends of Music) which ran monthly concerts,
lectures and workshops.
His work is demanding. If a commercial television jingle is your
idea of music than you may struggle to appreciate Slamet’s work, though he has
composed for single instruments through to the gamelan, for stage, theater and
even a film score.
Some of his more esoteric pieces include
periods of silence, occasionally punctuated by a single note and not always on
a conventional instrument. A tinkle, a click, a sigh, a tumbling pebble, the
swish of a woman’s skirt; if it can make a sound then it’s at risk of being
conscripted into a composition.
Perhaps it was serendipity: While gamelan
players tuned up to record a Slamet composition at his birthday bash, with the
audience urged to hush, a kaki lima
(mobile food cart) cruised up and down the road blaring an over-amplified set
of discordant notes.
“I still meditate,” Slamet said. “If I desire
something I light a candle and get three papaya seeds. I put these in the flame – if they pop then
my wish will be fulfilled. Yes, it works.
“When I look back on my early work I’m not
ashamed. Even here (at the celebration) they’re featuring piano pieces I
composed in 1960 and 1961, and I’m playing.
“I’m now composing a work for a solo cello
because I love its singing tone. For me
creating music is a necessity, it is something that must be done. Perhaps I am
a magician.
“Music is the gift of life, but it must be
treated with intelligence. I chose to follow a quiet road that’s far from the
normal
“I’m not afraid of death – I’m too silly to
think about it, though I might like a requiem, and I’m too busy. (He spends two
weeks a month teaching in Jakarta.) Why
worry about age?
“The only problem I have is not having a
problem. My advice to the young is to seek the new, to live and enjoy the
moment, to maintain the spirit of togetherness.
“I don’t know if there is music beyond the
grave. I only know it is here and now.
This celebration of my life and work is beyond my expectations.
“What do
I want on my gravestone? Here’s
something said to me many years ago by one of my students: ‘Here lies an
artist. When we spoke, he listened and
understood.”
(First published in The Jakarta Post 11 July 2014)
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