Tumbuh besar di Australia dengan latar
belakang budaya campuran
Australia-Indonesia bisa menjadi
perjalanan yang unik, terutama ketika
seseorang mencoba menjaga koneksi dengan
akar budaya Indonesia. Bagi Ria Soemardjo,
musik tradisional Indonesia menjadi
jembatan yang menghubungkannya dengan
budaya sang ayah. Ria adalah seorang
musisi Australia yang juga pesinden.
Bagaimana perjalanan musikalnya dimulai?
Apa yang membuat musik Jawa begitu spesial
bagi Ria? Dan apa pesannya untuk generasi
muda Australia-Indonesia yang ingin
mengeksplorasi identitas budaya mereka?
Berikut perbincangan saya dengan Ria. Awal
mula Ria menyukai dunia seni Indonesia
tidak terlepas dari peran sang ayah.
Sewaktu kecil, ayahnya sering menyanyikan
lagu-lagu Jawa dan memutar kaset gamelan.
Ayahnya kemudian mendorong Ria untuk
belajar tari Jawa dan gamelan. Dan Ria
mengatakan ayahnya sangat bangga
melihatnya terlibat dalam musik
tradisional dan mendalami budaya
Indonesia.
I really love learning and playing music
from around Indonesia and I also play and
create my own music as well for theatre
and dance. So, I grew up in Melbourne and
my father was not a musician, but he would
sing Javanese songs around the house and
play cassettes of gamelan music and he
encouraged me to learn Javanese dance and
gamelan and we actually could learn that
here in Melbourne with Pak Budiono. And so
from a young age I was learning Balinese
dance and Javanese dance, and just around
the music, and it was really fun. My
father was proud of me, you know, being
involved in traditional music and, you
know, very encouraging of me to learn
-about his cultural background.
-Ria mengatakan meskipun dia bernyanyi
dalam berbagai gaya musik dan menciptakan
musiknya sendiri, bernyanyi dalam tuning
Jawa sangat spesial baginya. Karena
bernyanyi dengan gamelan Jawa memiliki
perasaan yang sangat kuat seperti mengajak
untuk melambat, menemukan ketenangan, dan
-meluangkan waktu.
-Yeah, I like singing in a lot of different
styles of music. I sing my own music, but
it's really special to sing in the
Javanese tunings. Yeah, it's really
special. I've always really enjoyed that.
It's actually-- it's challenging, yeah?
Because it can be unfamiliar to the ear,
but they have such a special feeling when
you sing with the gamelan. Javanese
gamelan has a very powerful feeling for me
and it's a really, like, "Okay, slow
down." [tertawa] And find some, you
know... Take some time. Like, Balinese
gamelan is really fast, which is great,
but Javanese is very reflective, and it's
very grounding and beautiful instruments.
The sound of the gong and other
instruments is really beautiful for me.
Yeah.
Ria mengatakan bahwa vokal klasik Jawa
yang ia nyanyikan, yaitu Sindhenan, sangat
unik. Meskipun melodi untuk banyak lagu
sudah ditetapkan, penyanyi tetap bisa
membawa ciri khas mereka sendiri ke dalam
musik tersebut.
So, Javanese classical vocal, which is
called Sindenan, is really quite unusual
the way it works, because it is for a lot
of pieces, it is set. So you have melodies
that you have to sing, but at the same
time you can really bring some personal
kind of style into it, particularly in the
way that you use ornaments. So the trills
and things like that, you can really
bring, like, your own flavour into that.
Ketika ditanya mengapa dia tertarik pada
karya kolaboratif yang menggabungkan musik
dengan tari, teater, dan seni visual, Ria
menjelaskan bahwa inspirasinya datang
dari budaya Jawa di mana musik, tari, dan
visual, seperti wayang kulit selalu
terintegrasi. Ria sangat menyukai
menciptakan karya seni yang menghadirkan
pengalaman utuh di mana penonton bisa
mendengar suara dan melihat tarian dan ada
-alur cerita.
-I really love performing and learning
traditional music, but I also... It's
really exciting to create your own music
as well. And I love working with visual
and with dancers to create a whole
experience, not just a music concert. And
really that some of the inspiration for
that is often from my experience of
gamelan and Javanese culture where music,
and dance, and the visual, like Wayang
Kulit, the shadow puppets are integrated.
You know, you don't have music without
dance or a story. It all goes together.
Yeah. And so I really love bringing that
into contemporary work as well. And also a
sense of-- a sense of ritual. There's
something very ceremonial about Javanese
gamelan that I really love. And I'm
interested, well, how do we find that in
the contemporary music when we don't have
maybe a religious, you know, practice? How
do we create a sense of ceremony, of
ritual, of something very special
happening with audience and the
performance?
Kemudian Ria mengatakan musik klasik Jawa
berasal dari sejarah yang sangat panjang
dengan banyak upacara dan simbol.
Sementara musik kontemporer lebih baru dan
membebaskan artis untuk berkreasi. Akan
tetapi untuk seni kontemporer buatannya,
Ria ingin penonton bisa merenung dan
merasakan sesuatu yang dalam seperti
ketika seseorang menyaksikan musik klasik
Jawa.
When you perform music from
this Javanese classical music, it really
comes from a very long history. There's so
many... there's so much kind of in the
music that is about ceremony and the
yeah. The images that come from the music
every- everything, you know, is developed
over a long period of time. Yeah. And so I
also really like music that's new and
creative, but I also really want to have
sometimes a sense of people being able to
reflect, you know, when they listen to
music and feel something that is quite
deep and old, but you can also create that
or can you also create that with
-contemporary music and dance?
-Selain bernyanyi, Ria juga memainkan musik
-perkusi.
-So, I really love to learn percussion
instruments, and so I also play
instruments in the Balinese gamelan as
well. I don't sing with the Balinese
gamelan and, you know, there's many
different instruments. So yeah, I really
love the learning to play instruments as
-well as singing.
-Saya sempat berjumpa Ria di acara
Gathering of the Gamelans di Melbourne.
Ria sempat mengatakan bahwa acara tersebut
sangat menarik dan merupakan pencapaian
besar karena biasanya grup-grup gamelan
yang berbeda di Melbourne tidak saling
bertemu dan berada di ruangan yang sama
untuk berbagi musik dengan satu sama lain
dan dengan pengunjung.
Today is really exciting. Having eleven
groups is really, you know, it's such an
achievement for everyone to be in the same
space together and playing music for each
other and the audience, because we
don't-- you know, if you're learning
Balinese gamelan, you might not know that
there's another group in Melbourne playing
Javanese, or you don't meet those
players. And it's really special to be all
in the same room and sharing our music.
And each gamelan style is so different.
There are similarities. Some of the
instruments look the same, but each one
has a different feeling, and, you know,
different language often. It's really
-exciting to discover something new.
-Untuk diaspora muda yang ingin
mengeksplorasi warisan budaya Indonesia,
Ria mengatakan menikmati atau memainkan
musik tradisional mungkin dapat memberikan
pengertian tentang asal usul keluarga,
cara mereka menjalani kehidupan di
Indonesia dan menjadi bagian dari
-komunitas.
-So I am meeting a lot more people who have
a similar background to me. So my
father's Javanese, my mother Australian.
And I do, you know, encourage them to
actually experience more of traditional
music culture because it gives you a real
sense of maybe where your family came
from, and some of their ideas, and the way
they experience life even. Yeah, there's
so much you can learn just by... It
doesn't matter if you're a really good,
you know, musician or player or dancer,
but just to experience that and what it's
like to be part of a community. It's yeah,
it's really fun and it's a great way to
-get to know a part of yourself.
-Ke depannya Ria akan fokus mempelajari
musik baru dan sedang menciptakan
komposisi baru dengan kelompok gamelannya.
So this was a really big event for us and
I was performing in three different
ensembles [tertawa]. And so now it's we
can actually learn some new music again.
And also come back to the pieces we played
that we didn't... You know, some of them
we played today for the first time and
need to revise again. So there's always
something to learn. So learning more
And I'm at the moment creating a new
composition. And so with Gamelan Dananda
and so that's really exciting. So it's
going to be with some of the softer
instruments and it's going to be inspired
by the creek where in our area is...
Yeah, the natural kind of spaces where
Gamelan Dananda is. There's some really
beautiful spaces around there in Darebin.
So yeah.
Demikian tadi pendengar, rangkuman terkait
musisi Ria Soemardjo yang dibawakan oleh
Anne Parisianne untuk SBS Indonesian.
