Musical Worlds of Yogyakarta

3. Music Groups

3 Music groups Many musical performances that project across public space are socially inclusive. But as Martin Stokes (1994:9) reminds us, so too can the crashing sound of one group be a deliberate ploy to enforce the boundaries between groups. Such inclusive and exclusive ploys and their effects also featured at Sosrowijayan-based musical groups’ rehearsals and public performances. One example of this in the kampung was the long-running kroncong group, which rehearsed most Saturday evenings in the Old Woodpecker restaurant at the north end of Gang One. Friends and relatives often sat in, sometimes taking the lead singer role, all of which helped to elevate the atmosphere from that of a formal rehearsal to a music-oriented social gathering. During my research however, passing pengamen in Sosrowijayan did not join the Old Woodpecker gatherings, even though they shared the repertoire. Furthermore, becak drivers and street guides seldom if ever participated in these sessions. By contrast, a couple of groups I was introduced to shared more in common with becak drivers and street guides respectively, and thereby warrant attention here. These were the Sekar Wuyung and Shower Bands. the sekar wuyung group I first saw Sekar Wuyung perform outside the Sultan’s Palace, and later came to know them in Sosrowijayan. They rehearsed on Thursdays and Sundays from two until five-thirty pm at Pak Wawan’s under-patronised guesthouse along an alleyway between Gang Two and the red-light area. There were 15 members, including the singers, most of whom were in their mid-30s or older. Reflecting the influence of context on intersections between taste and genre outlined earlier, the term they applied to their repertoire alternated between campursari and dangdut Jawa. The group’s | Musical worlds in Yogyakarta 70 founder and manager owned two hotels in the area, and was attempting to buy and incorporate a set of gamelan instruments. Given that Sosrowijayan no longer had a gamelan set, this was a particularly popular prospect among regionalists. In the meanwhile the instruments, all played by men, included the keyboard and the tabla-style drums typical of a dangdut group (Sedyawati 1998:128; Weintraub 2010), and Udin on mandolin (cuk) added a kroncong sound. All songs were sung with Javanese lyrics and, with the exception of the manager and a member’s daughter in primary school, all singers were the wives of the instrumentalists. The singers generally determined the choice of songs, as was the case with most groups that aimed to perform a more traditional entertainment function. Sekar Wuyung’s regular practice sessions involved the surrounding kampung in various ways. Rather than closing off their rehearsal space, they placed the large public-address speakers at the guesthouse entrance, thereby booming the sound out across the neighbourhood . The musicians squeezed around the open spaces inside the guesthouse proper, while the singers sat in the guest room at the front and, when singing, alternately faced the band and looked out onto the alleyway. Young sex workers at a nearby rooming house, along with a few children and older women up and down the alleyway, sat outdoors during the rehearsals, mostly on the steps of their premises. Some of the Sekar Wuyung musicians had grown up outside Java and married Yogyanese women, including ‘Murni’ from Europe, Wawan from Bali, and Visnu from Sumatra. Playing in Sekar Wuyung seemed to ‘Jogjafy’ the musicians, both in the music they played and in how they projected themselves publicly. But not everyone in the neighbourhood could become a member; for example, a streethardened sex worker with a large tattoo on her right arm told me she once tried to join the band but was refused. Nonetheless, for those in the band at least, the rehearsals were social as much as they were musical occasions. During the midsession break, which lasted for at least half an hour, members would chat over tea and snacks, with topics of conversation gradually gravitating toward band matters such as song details and upcoming or potential performance engagements. At the first rehearsal in which I participated, a number of the musicians apologised that they had only been playing together for the past six months. Indeed, as I was to learn, a number of their acquaintances thought the group, most notably the singers , needed considerable work. The group nonetheless took their music very seriously. As time went on they posted their organi- 3 Music groups | 71 zational...