Light the Fire in My Heart Again Mercyme
Endah Jaipong: Gongs, Gangsters, and Sex Work in Downtown Bandung
Location: Bandung, West Java
Sound: Jaipong (as well chosen jaipongan)
The roots of jaipong are shrouded in myth. The story goes that after first Indonesian President Sukarno banned all Western music in the early 1960s, the Sundanese producer and composer Gugum Gumbira took upwardly the president'due south call to create distinctly Indonesian forms of popular music to rival rock and ringlet. The outcome, the story goes, was jaipong, a flashy, sensual have on the traditional Sundanese village ensemble called ketuk tilu.
Regardless of its true origins (some dispute Gugum Gumbira's sole merits to inventing jaipong, suggesting it is pure cocky-promotion and that others were involved in its evolution), jaipong exploded in popularity after entering the national consciousness in the mid-to-tardily 1970's. This boom was remarkable for ii reasons: for one, regional styles ("musik daerah") rarely find audiences outside of their homelands, merely jaipong was huge almost everywhere, at least in the Western half of Indonesia; second, jaipong became a mainstream pop sensation without having an ounce of discernible Western influence (contrast this with Republic of indonesia'southward other popular sensation dangdut, which came to describe from sources as varied equally Bollywood and Western rock and roll.)
Indeed, I would telephone call the sound of jaipong intensely Sundanese. At its cadre, a typical jaipong ensemble is not far removed from the pared-down gamelan ensemble of ketuk tilu,the once widespread village ensemble named afterwards the three (tilu) ketuk gongs which play its looping, distinctive Sundanese rhythm. Just like near gamelan ensembles large and modest, jaipong's structure is rooted and divided by two hanging gongs (become'ong), with circadian melodies sketched out on bonang (a horizontal rack of melodic gong-chimes) and a pair of saron (high-pitched metallophones). Virtuosic vocal melodies are provided in gratuitous time past a sinden or female person vocaliser, with the bowed lute called rebab elaborating abreast her. An optional simply popular addition is the kecrek, two metallic plates (or, sometimes, motorbike brake disks) which are pounded for a vivid hi-lid-like consequence, cutting through the tapestry of gongs.
The heart of jaipong, though, is the kendang drum. The typical set-up consists of a large barrel drum (sometimes called kendang indung or "big pulsate"), plus ane or two smaller kulanter drums.With this armory at his disposal, a skilled kendang jaipongan histrion can unleash a staggering avalanche of polyrhythms, frequently amplified far louder than the rest of the ensemble for maximum effect. To the uninitiated, jaipong drumming can sound like pure anarchy, with the drummer seemingly bending and shrinking time despite the steady pulse of the other percussion soldiering on unchanged. Possibly the coolest trick is the manner the large kendang's lower head is manipulated with the ball of the player's foot, with changes in tension allowing for surprisingly rubbery, melodic sounds almost like an African talking drum.
I dug up this photo from my first visit to Endah in 2012...the place has been redesigned but near of the musicians are the aforementioned.
With this infectious sound and a sensual accompanying dance which takes cues from pencak silat martial arts, it'south no wonder that jaipong took the nation past storm. Every bit the genre grew, thousands of cassettes (far more affordable than the vinyl that preceded it) brought the music into people'south homes, with all sorts of spin-off styles flooding the market (in my collection I've got everything from jaipong India and firm jaipong, which is exactly what is sounds like). The cassette era was jaipong's historical zenith, and the music has inevitably been in decline from those ballsy highs ever since. Nonetheless, jaipong is still widely popular, especially among the generation that grew up in its golden age, and continues to be combined and reimagined every bit Sundanese music evolves into the 21st century.
Context:
Jaipong has e'er been dripping in sensuality. As Gugum Gumbira tells it, it was designed to friction match the raw sex appeal of Western rock, and male child did it succeed. The music is fueled by the virile intensity of the kendang's rhythms and the restrained passion of the female sinden (who, in jaipong'due south 1980's heyday, harnessed the sexy diva model of mainstream pop.) To back-trail this sensual audible feast, viewers of live jaipong are also treated to the supremely sexy jaipong trip the light fantastic toe (complete with gyrations and booty-shaking) which shook the nation decades before dangdut diva Inul Daratista's goyang dance moves became a national sensation in the 2000's.
The author equally a boyfriend (...five years ago) dancing at Endah Parahyangan
So I guess I shouldn't take been surprised to find jaipong existence played in a smoke-filled hostess bar in downtown Bandung. I first visited Endah Parahyangan in 2012, soon afterwards moving to Bandung. I went at the recommendation of Kai Riedl, an ethnomusicologist from Athens, Georgia who had recorded an amazingly produced jaipong album with Endah's firm band. Before visiting the place myself, Riedl's liner notes had gone over my head: describing jaipong as music "made to to move people on the trip the light fantastic floor and beyond," he goes on to describe the band as "the musical analogue to dark red lights [and] alcohol driven nights."
I still remember that earlier going for the first time, a new female friend had explained why she wouldn't go to Endah: "I'm afraid of the chickens." This was her faithful translation of ayam, literally "chicken" but as well a disparaging word for sex workers. Wink back to those "dark scarlet lights": Endah is in the thick of one of Bandung's red low-cal districts, with massage parlors and dangdut-filled hostess bars lining the nighttime streets. I've never totally confirmed it, but friends have described the venue as a brothel, with dancers' services bachelor to the overwhelmingly male person clientele.
Even before Gugum Gumbira supposedly pumped up the sensuality of ketuk tilu, sex activity, gamelan, and dance take been historically linked. As Henry Spiller writes in Erotic Triangles, a brilliant exploration of Sundanese male dance, historical accounts are total of descriptions of ronggeng, female singer-dancers who fronted like gamelan ensembles while supposedly doubling as hole-and-corner sex workers bachelor to the highest applicant. Information technology's difficult to tell how must truth there is to such accounts: the stories are always told by men, frequently foreigners. Regardless, the association is a strong 1 in the Indonesian imaginary, with many shows, films, and even novels based on the thought.
In some ways, jaipong has been scrubbed clean of its sensual paradigm by an increasingly bourgeois Sundanese society: information technology's not uncommon to meet young girls in headscarves performing reconfigured tari jaipongan ("jaipong dance") routines at school events, for example. But in the middle of Bandung, jaipong continues to exist in a hyper-sexual environment. "Most people don't come hither just to mind to jaipong," my friend told me on my first trip to Endah. "The music is just the foreplay."
Perhaps because of these associations, Endah Parahyangan is fiddling known, even by die-hard Sundanese music lovers, despite existence the only remaining social club in Bandung with live jaipong. Still, every night except Sunday the club is bumping, with one hr live sets switching betwixt keyboard-driven dangdut and pop Sunda (Sundanese pop) and onetime-school jaipong. The clientele is largely working form, angkot drivers, day laborers and preman (gangsters), many of them transplants from nearby villages (I've garnered this from many chats with almost unbearably friendly customers throughout the years.) The story of the women who work in that location remains uncomfortably untold: they sit down beneath a wall-length mirror to the side of the stage, chatting simply with the men who pay them to sit past their sides and calorie-free their cigarettes.
My commencement trip to Endah was distinctly uncomfortable. I was twenty-three, and had been in Bandung for but a few weeks. I'd just been in a handful of bars in my life, and of a sudden I was in this smokey place full of flashing lights and high-heeled dangdut singers enervating tips in a language I didn't sympathize. Two women sat with us in flowing dark-green gowns and huge Sundanese pilus-buns, lighting our cigarettes and pouring our beers. At the end of the night, I expected to pay around 3 bucks for a beer and got a 20-five dollar neb: I'd been paying for the girls' fourth dimension all dark without realizing it (I had naively thought they were just being nice!) A bouncer had to drive me to the closest ATM every bit I didn't even have enough cash.
V years later, and I'm a regular. I'm greeted with warm smiles and super-polite double-handed handshakes as I enter, and regular shoutouts to "Kang Palmer" betwixt literally every song (listen closely to "Wangsit Siliwangi" above and you'll hear my name dropped at least 3 times by the sinden, including "Kang Palmer, my darling!" - they like me, but they're mostly trying to get me to tip them once more!). I must be known as that bule who comes just for the music, and I'thousand shown and then much kindness and respect despite this strange role I play. In return, I change my cash into small change at the bar and nyawer as the other patrons exercise: that is, I shower the ring in small bills, "making it rain" as the beat out intensifies.
A birthday commemoration for one of the jaipong dancers. Photograph courtesy Mike Adcock.
Regulars, by and large center aged men, love dragging me up to dance as much every bit they love paying to have the small dance floor to themselves for that ultimate display of Sundanese masculinity, the ngibing tunggal or solo trip the light fantastic. With the space cleared of drunk youngsters who just know how to joget (dance in the Western style), these men bow once before the band and and so strut their stuff in a display that looks equal parts kung fu-esque pencak silatand freestyle breakdancing. The solo male dancer, sometimes called the bajidor, engages in a playful conversation with the drummer, with the dancer post-obit rhythmic cues in the kendang parts while the kendang player watches intently in return, skillfully matching the improvised flourishes of the bajidor.
Despite trip the light fantastic being a huge role of many musical traditions in Indonesia, I'thousand oftentimes guilty of ignoring it: and then much of information technology tin can experience stilted and perfunctory. Jaipong dancing, though, sets me on fire. I routinely sit spellbound, jaw literally dropped, as centre-aged men (bapak bapak as nosotros say here) drop virtuosic moves one after the other: pure, idiosyncratic expressions of virility and confident mastery. The female dancers who work at Endah rarely engage in this virtuosic manner, choosing to stick to piece of cake, pre-choreographed moves which they can perform without much thought. Occasionally, though, a woman will emerge from the audience and show all of the men how information technology's really done: the male posturing replaced past pure, intuitive grace, smooth yet full of confidence and power.
I'm moving across the island to Yogyakarta soon, so I've been thinking a lot about my fourth dimension at Endah and going as much as possible, bringing every friend who's up for it to experience the magic of the place. I'll never forget that first dark in Endah years ago, the electrifying feeling of live kendang explosions bursting my skull for the showtime time. If you're in Bandung, you take to become. Simply make sure to nyawer and make information technology rain - the musicians deserve it.
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Despite having literally no presence on the internet, Endah Parahyangan does exist: It's on Jl. Dalem Kaum near the Bandung Alun-Alun, beyond the street from the famous Queen Eatery. If you're in town, you have to get. Tell them Palmer sent you :)
As well huge thanks to Kai Riedl, whose wonderful Javasounds album series was one of the inspirations for Aural Archipelago.
Source: https://www.auralarchipelago.com/auralarchipelago/jaipong
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