I. Introduction

Lost in the cacophony of news and headlines about riots in Papua and student protests that turned violent in late September was an announcement that dozens of musicians would stage a concert called "Musik Untuk Republik" (Music for the Republic). The announcement was made after these musicians, which included God Bless legend Ahmad Albar, Sandy Andarusman of the Pas Band fame and seminal rapper Iwa Kusuma, met with President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo who would be sworn in for his second term in office this October.

Other performers joining the gig include some of the biggest names in rock like Slank, Jamrud and Edane. The star-studded line-up prompted some to bill the concert as the Indonesian version of the Woodstock 1969. In an ideal world, the inclusion of Slank, Pas Band or even Ahmad Albar would certainly raise an eyebrow, because how it is even possible for an indie performer like Pas Band or an erstwhile anti-establishment outfit like Slank to perform for an event whose sole purpose was to celebrate the reelection of Jokowi, however popular the incumbent President was (and for those who follows Indonesian politics, Jokowi has lost almost all of his political capital even before starting his second term for doing nothing to stop an amendment of a law that would weaken Indonesia's anti-corruption commission and allow the military domination to continue in Papua).

But fans of these bands and the general public has lost their capacity to ask the right question or even be outraged with the circus. If anything, they all have seen this movie before. In 2014, it was these same musicians who staged a massive concert at the Bung Karno Sports Stadium, with a sole objective of mobilizing voters fo cast their ballots in favor of Jokowi. The move was effective, Jokowi won the election with a slim margin.

"Musik Untuk Republik" is the latest instance where musicians, even those who brand themselves as anti-establishment figures, have to respond to political demands and more often than not they submit to everything that political establishment want from them. "Musik Untuk Republik" in fact mirrored what transpired during the early days of the authoritarian New Order regime. In 1971, the ruling Golkar Party, the political vehicle of the New Order regime, commissioned the release of "Souvenir Pemilu 1971", a compilation album which carried subtle message for listeners to cast their ballots for the ruling party. Some of the big names who joined this projects were Bing Slamet, Tanty Josepha and Ellya Khadam. The practice of using music for promoting New Order regime's political agenda persisted throughout the duration of Soeharto's authoritarian regime. In the early 1980s, under the coordination of Edy Sud, the chief music propagandist of the New Order regime, a slew of musicians recorded new music to be included in a compilation titled Golkar-ku Golkar-mu! Lagu-lagu Pop Golkar. Also in the early 1980s, during a period when the New Order regime reached its apex, musicians regularly paid tribute to Soeharto, and chief among them was Titiek Puspa, which wrote and composed a couple of songs for the strongman. The most legendary was Soeharto Bapak Pembangunan (Soeharto, the father of development), which included lyrics like this: "Terima kasih dari rakyat semua//Di belakangmu kami siaga//.

And if you think that musicians bowing to the power that be was a recent phenomenon and started only during the New Order regime, you are wrong. In fact, it was Soekarno's fever dream of nationalism which kicked things off in the early 1960s. When he decided that Paul Anka, The Ventures and later The Beatles were too decadent for Indonesia and proclaimed that only Irama Lenso would be allowed to be played on radio and televisions, musicians swiftly rallied around him and crafted their own version of Lenso and other concoctions of what could be deemed indigenous by Soekarno's cultural apparatchiks. Oslan Husein album "Tahu Tempe" begins with a liner note quoting Soekarno in all caps, that "INDONESIA DENGAN RAKJATNYA TIDAK AKAN LAPAR, KARENA INDONESIA BANJAK MAKANAN." As a musician who grew up with Western music, Oslan managed to sneak in some cha-cha and mambo, but as an ultimate tribute to the Great Revolutionary Leader, the album was billed as an indigenous music that support revolutionary cause.

But the single biggest about-face in music was committed by Jack Lesmana, a jazz disciple of Gershwin and Dixieland. A dyed-in-the-wool jazzman, who have recorded music with giants of Indonesian jazz like Bubi Chen and jazz expat Tony Scott, Jack was the brain behind the album personally commissioned by President Soekarno, "Mari Bersuka Ria dengan Irama Lenso." Soekarno himself wrote the first track in the album "Bersuka Ria" sung by Bing Slamet, Titiek Puspa, Rita Zahara and Jack's Wife Nien Lesmana.

So what is it about Indonesian music, indie or otherwise, that makes it susceptible to pressure from any political regime and why in the end the pockets of resistance as always could only be found in the periphery as in the case of Bandung's Homicide or Palembang's Semakbelukar?

II. Rich man's burden: pampered origin of Indonesian pop and rock

Any discussion on any cultural phenomenon will leave us nowhere if we don't talk about its social origin, the socio-economic foundation that will form the consciousness of any social and political agents. Call this crude determinism, but this point of view will certainly help focus our understanding on the absence of any revolutionary bent in Indonesian pop.

Rock and roll has had its anti-establishment streak for almost seven decades, right from the moment Elvis shaking his pelvis to when Jimi Hendrix delivered his incendiary rendition of the Star Spangled Banner in front of the Woodstock crowd in '69. In the seventies, punk upped the ante in the fight against the Man, declaring that there was "no future" for everyone.

With Elvis, Hendrix, Johnny Rotten and even Kurt Cobain, the source of their angst and alienation was obvious. Their working-class roots has equipped them with sense and sensibilities that when the time is right it would explode and drive their creative process. It is easy to see that the seeds for "God Save The Queen" was Johnny Rotten's working class background that informed his antipathy towards monarchy. We can also tentatively surmise that Kurt Cobain's revolutionary sound and his feminist outlook could only result from his anger towards toxic male masculinity that took over American rock in the 1980s. But it could also result from his anger towards Reagan's neoliberal revolution that has rendered him poor and orphaned in the Pacific Northwest circa late 1980s.

Indonesian pop only has privileged background. You can pick any big names in Indonesian pop and rock scene and you will be surprised on how uniformed their socio-economic background was.

The most infamous example of how Indonesian music was driven by privileged rich kids was how the trio of Chrisye, Yockie Soerjoprajogo and Eros Djarot, operated out of Menteng neighborhood in the late 1970s. You can also add the name Guruh Soekarnoputra into the mix. These four young men were responsible for some of the best records that the Indonesian music scene ever produced. Together, Chrisye, Yockie and Eros, wrote, composed and recorded "Badai Pasti Berlalu" arguably one of Indonesia's pop albums of all time. On his own Chrisye wrote and composed "Sabda Alam," also one of the best pop records ever to be recorded in the 1970s, which was followed shortly after by "Jurang Pemisah" by Yockie Soerjoprajogo, another standout in Indonesia's classic rock catalogue. Yockie and Chrisye also had a hand in the production of Guruh's "Guruh Gypsy," a masterpiece in progressive rock which has been widely reissued in the Western collector's market.

Guruh's last name could easily explain his background. He is the youngest son of Soekarno, the country's first president, who despite his father's ban on Western music, could continue get access to the latest trend in the west and a steady stream of vinyl records purchased by his handlers at the State Palace. And although his father was deposed in a coup in 1965 he was privileged enough to live in Menteng, the richest neighborhood in Jakarta. Chrisye, whose real name is Christian, is a Chinese Indonesian, whose father had home in Menteng, while Eros is a friend to Bambang Trihatmodjo, the son of Soeharto, who prior to making music went to Germany to study engineering and later to London to study film. It was also in Menteng where Guruh befriended the Nasution brothers, Keenan, Odink and Debby, who all played key roles in Guruh Gypsy. Yockie himself is the son of a police general who ran away from home because he disliked his father's strict disciplines.

Another big name who has military family background is Iwan Fals. Early in his career, Iwan may have spent his time busking, but he is the son of an Army Colonel, who was in charge of a sugar factory in Central Java. Later in his life, Iwan may have produced keen observation on the lives of poor people and wrote songs that became anthem of resistance against the New Order regime like "Bento" and "Bongkar" but when push comes to shove, when the pushback begun too difficult to handle, he had no problems aligning himself with Setiawan Djody, a crony of Soeharto who moonlighted as a globe-trotting rock impressario who befriended Mick Jagger and David Bowie. Given this background it did not surprise us at all that Iwan Fals, now 58-year became a typical old man. This is what he tweeted on Sept. 24 responding to massive student protest. "Bisa gak ya demo tapi gak ganggu fasilitas dan kepentingan umum...wah klo bisa keren tuh..." Case closed.


III. Selling pop by the Pound

If musicians themselves have mostly never been revolutionaries to begin with, music labels are in worse predicament. Yockie Soerjoprajogo said it best in his song "Musik Saya Adalah Saya," released in 1979. A satire towards how music industry operated in the 1970s, the composition takes aim at greed shown by music producers towards their artists and not in a subtle way. If anything, by today's standard such a criticism could easily be categorized as racial slur. In the song, music producers are certainly cast in negative light as money-hungry Chinese who demanded artists to sacrifice their idealism in favor of writing pop songs. "Haiyyaaa... Oey suda willang sama mussissi mussissi. Kalo nyi wikin lagu yangan sussa sussa. Yangan sok yenni. Wikin lagu cukup pake ji samm su," portion of lyrics from the song goes.

It will be very disingenuous to believe that music label, independent or otherwise, doesn't want to make money from their enterprises. Unless you are Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff of Blue Note, who championed artistic integrity over anything else, every music executive wakes up in the morning with the sole purpose of making money. But even Ahmed Ertegun or David Geffen have a good sense of what makes art art.

Music labels in Indonesia then and now is run literally by toko kelontong owners or those who have grown up to be music moguls, they started their business as small business owners. They are in the business of making money above all else. When no one was interested in distributing "Badai Pasti Berlalu", a small business owner name In Chung, who opened his cassette distribution shop in Jakarta's China town of Glodok, came to the rescue and struck a distribution deal with Chrisye and Yockie. So if you wonder how a critically-acclaimed album like "Badai Pasti Berlalu" was being distributed by a relatively unknown label like Irama Mas, a moniker which sounds like a small-time cassette shop, it is because Irama Mas is a small-time cassette shop.

Music labels were set up, mostly by Chinese-Indonesian during the late period of Dutch colonialism was mainly to play to role of importing and selling US-made Colombia phonographs and when local "indigenous" businessmen trying to open their own record labels, big names like Irama, Dimita and Remaco, all was trying to capitalize on new formats, first vinyl and then cassette to move the biggest amount of units that would help their bottom line. In the early 1960s, these labels made most of their money from recording keroncong and middle-of-the-road Western performers like Pat Boone and Paul Anka. Early music from Koes Bersaudara recorded for Irama and Remaco was mostly an imitation of the Everly Brothers and when the Beatles invasion started, the band shifted gear by modeling their tunes after the Fab Four.

And when politics begun to interfere with their way of making money, record labels would have no problems kowtowing to the authorities. When the Soekarno regime imposed ban on Western-influenced music dubbed as musik ngak ngik ngok, boss of Remaco Eugene Timothy made it his priority to get close to the Soekarno family. In 1965, Remaco recorded an album by a band called Trio Bintang, led by Soekarno's oldest son Guntur Soekarnoputra, who was then a popular drummer and student of the Bandung Institute of Technology. The type of music that Guntur's band played was derivative of the popular contemporary sound of Anglo-American trend. "Because I was regarded as a friend of the President's son, none of my other productions faced any obstruction...I don't know whether my production then were ngak ngik ngok or not," Eugene was quoted by Krishna Sen and David T. Hill in Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia. 

Another example of record label starting its enterprise as a purely business entity is Musica Studio's, which to this day remains one of the biggest music label in Indonesia. Since its inception in the mid 1960s as Metropolitan Studios and Music Studios in the 1970s, Musica has been home to some of the biggest names in Indonesian pop and rock from Ahmad Albar, Iwan Fals, Chrisye, Yockie Soerjoprajogo to Peterpan. The label was set up by Chinese Indonesian Yamin Widjaja, who started his business running an electronic store and distributor of records in Pasar Baru, Central Jakarta. And it was this boss of Musica that Yockie was railing against in his song "Musik Saya Adalah Saya."

IV. Conclusion

Remaco, Musica, Irama and Irama Mas were the only recording labels Indonesia had until major music labels arrived in the country in the early 1990s. Having said that, they could easily fit into our definition of independent music labels, simply by looking on how they operated. And even if we don't agree to that definition, fact of the matter is that these labels have held dominance for almost five decades and have played key roles in Indonesian culture in general. And in tandem with musicians and artists who represented creme de la creme of Indonesia's elite, they operate only to make money and bring pleasure to the masses. Social and political consciousness be damned.