How Symphony Orchestras work in Indonesia...
Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 2:12 am
I saw there was a posting up here describing the woes of a symphony orchestra in Santiago, Chile. In the mid 1990s, I was working in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, as a teacher of instrumental music and English as a foreign language (that's what my business card said). We took every opportunity in the world to support the local arts programs. Now what I am saying in this posting was true up through 1997, when I left Indonesia. Things may have changed, but I doubt it. There have been three Presidents for the country since that time (Soeharto, who was President when I lived in the country, was in that position for well over 35 years!)
Like many countries, Indonesia has a policy that if a local citizen can do a job, there is no reason to hire a foreigner. Hence, expatriates usually come to work as English teachers (as native speakers), advertising people (usually for tobacco companies--usually non-smokers who take these jobs!), and corporate attorneys.
When I lived in Bogor, which is about 30 miles south of Jakarta, it had a symphony orchestra which had gone through many name changes. Originally, it was the Jakarta Symphony Orchestra. When I saw it, it was called the Twilite Orchestra.
The orchestra was made up entirely of Indonesians between the ages of 23 and 29 years old. (Age discrimination was, and probably still is, widely practiced.) They were all graduates of the National Fine Arts Institute in Yogyakarta (south of the province of Central Java on the south central coast of the Indian Ocean--they call it the Indonesian Ocean). Most of the musicians, particularly the wind players, never touched a Western (non-Asian) musicial instrument before attending the Institute. The program is a standard four-year bachelor's degree program in music, with little study in anything else. The thought is that if a person can be a teacher in four years or an accountant or even a research chemist, the same could hold true for a symphony musician. So, the institute pumps out musicians in four years to take the place of musicians who get too old for their positions (when they turn 30).
Musically, they rank a little lower than an average junior high school orchestra. The first concert I saw them play, they played Dvorak's New World Symphony. I knew they were playing a simplified arrangement because the tuba player played in every movement. (In the real version, the tuba player only plays for the chords in the Largo movement.)
Oh, yes, something else, too. In Indonesian culture, music is for background only, so when the orchestra started to play, most of the audience took this as a cue to begin friendly conversations with everyone in the auditorium. Julio Iglesias once gave a concert in Jakarta (in 1995) and said he would never come back--the Indonesians, he thought, were the rudest audiences in the world!
There is another orchestra at Erasmus Huis, in Southern Jakarta, the Dutch center of the arts. None of the musicians who play there are paid, yet most have the finest musical educations in the world. The orchestra plays real music there. Audience members are escorted out of the auditorium if they talk too much. I saw some real world class players there, many of whom were civil lawyers, tobacco ad executives, or English teachers!
I hope things have improved since I left nine years ago.
Like many countries, Indonesia has a policy that if a local citizen can do a job, there is no reason to hire a foreigner. Hence, expatriates usually come to work as English teachers (as native speakers), advertising people (usually for tobacco companies--usually non-smokers who take these jobs!), and corporate attorneys.
When I lived in Bogor, which is about 30 miles south of Jakarta, it had a symphony orchestra which had gone through many name changes. Originally, it was the Jakarta Symphony Orchestra. When I saw it, it was called the Twilite Orchestra.
The orchestra was made up entirely of Indonesians between the ages of 23 and 29 years old. (Age discrimination was, and probably still is, widely practiced.) They were all graduates of the National Fine Arts Institute in Yogyakarta (south of the province of Central Java on the south central coast of the Indian Ocean--they call it the Indonesian Ocean). Most of the musicians, particularly the wind players, never touched a Western (non-Asian) musicial instrument before attending the Institute. The program is a standard four-year bachelor's degree program in music, with little study in anything else. The thought is that if a person can be a teacher in four years or an accountant or even a research chemist, the same could hold true for a symphony musician. So, the institute pumps out musicians in four years to take the place of musicians who get too old for their positions (when they turn 30).
Musically, they rank a little lower than an average junior high school orchestra. The first concert I saw them play, they played Dvorak's New World Symphony. I knew they were playing a simplified arrangement because the tuba player played in every movement. (In the real version, the tuba player only plays for the chords in the Largo movement.)
Oh, yes, something else, too. In Indonesian culture, music is for background only, so when the orchestra started to play, most of the audience took this as a cue to begin friendly conversations with everyone in the auditorium. Julio Iglesias once gave a concert in Jakarta (in 1995) and said he would never come back--the Indonesians, he thought, were the rudest audiences in the world!
There is another orchestra at Erasmus Huis, in Southern Jakarta, the Dutch center of the arts. None of the musicians who play there are paid, yet most have the finest musical educations in the world. The orchestra plays real music there. Audience members are escorted out of the auditorium if they talk too much. I saw some real world class players there, many of whom were civil lawyers, tobacco ad executives, or English teachers!
I hope things have improved since I left nine years ago.