Faithful to Musicalizing Poetry
Ari Malibu (left) and Reda Gaudiamo
Ari Malibu, 56, and Reda Gaudiamo, 54, have been spreading poetry through songs for more than 30 years. Though they had momentarily felt low-spirited, now Ari and Reda are going through the busiest moments of their music career.
In the last week of March, they launched their third album, Suara dari Jauh (Voice from Afar), in a special show at the Jakarta Arts Building. “A building that is extremely intimidating. I’m nervous as hell!” said Reda, the singer, on Thursday (23/3).
Their on-stage position has not changed. Reda on the left from the audience point of view, while Ari is on the right with an acoustic guitar on his lap. Both are seated with their soles of their feet touching the floor. Between them and the audience there is a pole on which rests a book containing dozens of poems that are used as the lyrics for their songs. This is the main requirement of their act, which now go by the name of AriReda.
Slight nerves were seen before they started the seventh song. Reda said the title of the song was “Di Restoran” (In the restaurant). Ari, on the other hand, was playing the intro to “Aku Ingin” (I want to) up to the first bar, before switching to the right song. A heartbreaking song from the poem of Sapardi Djoko Damono eventually ended well even though it started rather awkwardly.
The building with a capacity of 400 people was crowded though not full. Those that bought the tickets priced at Rp 75,000 to Rp 100,000 stuck to their soft seats and watched the 21 songs that were performed in two rounds of performances.
The first round consisted of eight songs taken from old albums. After a ten-minute break, poet Goenawan Mohamad opened the second round. He was given the task of introducing the pair to the audience. “AriReda, through music, gave life to the sound element of poetry. That is no longer the job of the poet,” Goenawan said.
Goenawan was on the stage because the album launched that night used 10 of his poems written between 1961 and 1990 as its source. All of the poems were transformed into songs by M Umar Muslim. Umar gave Ari and Reda 24 of Goenawan’s poems that had been transformed into songs.
Reda selected poems which had words that would be good to sing. Ari chose based on melody and tone. The ten selected songs were chosen based on those criteria. The songs included “Z”, “Kwatrin Musim Gugur (IV)” and “Sajak Anak-anak Mati”. Umar, as well as Goenawan, has no idea which songs were selected until the final recording of the songs. The control was fully in the hands of AriReda.
Ari said the songs in the new album strengthened the character of their songs with a balanced role. The harmony of the high and low voices sounds beautiful in tune to the clear strum of guitar. Their curdling chemistry helped Ari and Reda finish their recording quickly. The recording process, which is scheduled to take four days at the Kua Etnika Yogyakarta Studio, was able to be wrapped up in three days.
Removing identity
Ten years ago, the pair released their first album, :becoming dew, which used Sapardi’s poems as the source for all of its songs. AriReda are closely associated with Sapardi’s poetry. For example, it is difficult to read the poem “Aku Ingin” without the melody of AriReda’s song playing in the reader’s head.
Through their third album, it seems like they are looking to break away from that identity. Intense interaction with Goenawan started when they performed in the International Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany, in October 2015.
Upon their return from Frankfurt, AriReda’s performance schedule was tight. They designed their own tour called Still Crazy After All These Years in May 2016 to introduce their second album, AriReda Singing Poetry, in six cities in seven days.
During the tour and other performance they would meet with old followers and new friends. Among them, there were young musicians who generally played folk music or acoustic pop. These musicians, such as Payung Teduh, the Teman Sebangku duo, Banda Neira and Frau, testified that they had been inspired by AriReda.
“A few of the indie groups that were on the rise said that they were inspired by us, even though we are not the same (musically). It seems as though we had given birth to new colors (of music),” Ari said.
“I feel that in the last three years we have staged more performances than we did in the previous thirty years, ha-ha-ha,” Reda said.
“Matched”
Their first performance came about because of the help of the late Ferrasta Soebardi, more popularly known as Pepeng. Pepeng, who went on to become a famous presenter and broadcaster, liked Reda’s vocals. He later “matched” Reda with his friend, Ari, who was a talented guitarist. Their performance in the University of Indonesia under the guidance of Pepeng in 1982 was the start of Ari and Reda’s adventure.
Pepeng would often helped them to get performance orders in art markets and campuses. They were still performing covers of famous songs such as those by the Bee Gees, Simon and Garfunkel, John Denver and Paul McCartney.
In 1987, the late AGS Arya Dipayana, an acquaintance of Reda’s, received a musicalized poetry project from Sapardi Djoko Damono and Fuad Hassan who at the time was the Education and Culture Minister. The project aimed to familiarize poetry to school and university students.
Arya Dipayana gave five songs that he had composed to be sung by Ari and Reda, including “Gadis Peminta-minta” (Beggar Girl) and “Di Beranda Ini Angin Tak Kedengaran Lagi” (The Wind is no Longer Heard in this Terrace).
The project was deemed a success and it was repeated in 1988 with more poems. They started to perform the songs “Aku Ingin” and “Hujan Bulan Juni” (Rain in June). These two songs made the Ari and Reda duet famous and they decided to continue to sing poems even though the official project was over.
“For me, it has been more than 50 percent successful. For junior high school students now, poetry is no longer something scary. They are starting to like it. That was the initial objective, familiarizing Indonesian poetry to younger children,” said Ari, who is often thought to be a graduate of UI, but is in fact a graduate of the Company Leadership Academy.
However, before they reached their heights of today, there was a period in which they disappeared. The pair was busy with their own respective activities and did not keep in contact. It was in 2006 that they met again and decided to make an album and in January 2007 the album :becoming dew was launched.
New circle
Even though they had an album, they were unsure what to do with it. They placed their albums to be sold in places which had mediocre sales rate. Performance requests were also rare. “Only when someone remembers (us),” Reda quipped.
To make things worse, someone had uploaded their song onto the internet without permission. They chose to ignore those unpleasant things. In 2011, they performed in Bentara Budaya Bali. They were pleasantly surprised to find a huge audience, made up of mostly teenagers who all seemed to know their songs. “It gave us motivation again,” Ari said.
The turning point was actually in 2014. They were invited to perform in the RRRec Fest in The Valley. The combined camping and music festival was spearheaded by art group Ruangrupa Jakarta. Indra Ameng, the show’s curator, invited them. From that show they found a new circle.
One of the people that were impressed was Felix Dass, 33, who writes a lot about music. He offered to manage AriReda. The managerial aspect of the band was designed together. It was also from that circle that they started to be connected to record labels which led them to produce their second album.
The journey to promote poetry has been started again. This time it is driven by the younger generation and the movement is much faster.
