A symphony of Indonesian love
Not all festschrifts travel well. Sometimes the contributors veer away from the subject, driving in another direction in search of their own interests.
Though not
with this beautiful book where even the format and design pays tribute to a
remarkable musician, photographer, entrepreneur, teacher, song-catcher and
above all lover of Indonesia, its people and music.
Jack! celebrates the life of the New
Zealand composer Jack Body, ‘his endless musical curiosity’ and ‘love of life’s
complexities’.
He died
earlier this year shortly after the book was completed and he’d been named a NZ
Arts Icon, the nation’s highest arts award and the first composer to be
recognized.
Although
the writers knew Body was ill and that the cancer he thought he’d defeated was
galloping back, Jack! is seldom maudlin or clogged by irrelevant
minutia.
Its one
hundred contributors record a life well lived and where the subject was still
thinking of compositions to come ‘about what the earth taught me, what the
plants said, what the birds said.’
In it Body
talks in interviews about ‘discovering a new sensuality’ in Indonesia where he
taught at the Akademi Musik Indonesia. He also found the love of his
life, Yono Soekarno. They lived together
till Body died.
‘We met in
the Yogyakarta Post Office on Boxing Day in 1976 …[Body had been recording
street musicians in the city]. He is
beautiful even though he is no longer the dazzling youth I first met. Oh my God, was I the envy of all, male and
female to have such a beautiful and desirable companion!
‘And the
miracle of it all is that he loved unlovable me! I like to point out to the young that love is
something that is learned, something that grows with time. Yono taught me how to love.’
One of the
many photos shows Body and Soekarno together shortly after they became a unit,
two handsome young men smiling and joyful, as are almost all the pictures. For
Body had an orchestra of friends drawn by his cheerful humility and unqualified
commitment to music – and the gamelan in particular.
Among his
friends were the three women who edited this book – Gillian Whitehead, Scilla
Askew and Jennifer Shennan who writes about Body’s ‘inclusive personality and joie
de vivre …a low tolerance for boredom, cliché and comfort zones’.
John
Stanley [Jack] Body was born in 1944 in Te Aroha, a dairy town in NZ’s North
Island. His father had a small farm and
also worked as an earthmoving contractor.
Though his
Dad ‘never really understood my interest in music … [he] certainly didn’t stand
in my way’. Body’s parents must have been farsighted because in those days
rural NZ was a masculine place where boys played rugby in the mud, swilled beer
and prided themselves on their toughness.
Despite
this young Jack was taught the piano and sent to board at the prestigious
King’s College in Auckland where his artistic talents were nurtured.
In his
final year he garnered a group of friends for a performance of Haydn’s [or
maybe Leopold Mozart’s] Toy Symphony. This work with its disputed
authorship includes birdsong and a cornucopia of sounds from toy trumpets,
whistles and other instruments.
It was a
sign of things to come; apart from his organisational skills and ability to
attract support for projects he developed an ear for the natural and human-made
noises of the world, particularly in Indonesia, and incorporated them in his
compositions.
At Auckland
University he graduated in music and then completed a master’s degree studying
composition and teaching.
He went to
Europe on a NZ grant to study at Cologne and Utrecht. On his slow way home overland he diverted
through Indonesia and his life’s direction was set.
‘The
experience of living in Indonesia and of being in a different culture, having
to learn the language, hearing the sounds around me, not only the musics but
the environment … that gave me a very rich resource.
‘Indonesia
was a total environment; it was the weather, the food, the friendships. I would say also the sensuality.’
In the NZ
capital of Wellington where Body eventually became a professor at the School of
Music on the campus of Victoria University, there was a gamelan.
It had been
donated in 1973 through the President’s wife Tien Soeharto after formal
relationships were established between the two nations. Instead of gathering dust in a storeroom,
where such government gifts are often abandoned, under Body’s leadership the
gongs, drums and metallophones have become a key component of Wellington’s
music, training hundreds of students and exciting many to study in Indonesia.
It remains
one of the better-known ensembles in the city, regularly playing in locations
as diverse at Parliament House, churches and concert halls. In a music
environment dominated by European traditions, the gamelan offers a splendid
alternative and a prelude to exploring the nation’s nearest Asian neighbor.
The NZ
players will tour Java next year. Since 1996 Embassy employee and local
resident Budi Putra has been the gamelan’s musical director bonding the
orchestra with its roots.
The gamelan
is not the only enduring legacy of Body’s involvement with Asia. He also became enchanted by the music of
Cambodia and China where he collaborated with the Forbidden City Chamber
Orchestra,
When funds
could not be found to bring composers and musicians from Indonesia and other
Asian countries to NZ, Brady used his own funds, as he did with the Asia
Pacific Festivals.
There are
several Indonesian contributors to Jack! thankful that their horizons
have been expanded through one man’s credo:
Music is the universal language that moves through political,
geographical and ethnic obstacles as though these barriers don’t exist.
This book
is a primer on how individuals can make a difference in cross-cultural relationships.
Jack! edited by Jennifer Shennan, Gillian
Whitehead and Scilla Askew
Published
by Steele Roberts, 2015 256 pages
(First published in The Jakarta Post 4 April 2016)
