[poem]: Into the Ears of Dangdut
Finally decided to put my thought on the last week of 2007 for all to see. Comments would be appreciated and treasured.
Into the Ears of Dangdut
How would you understand Indonesia when you don’t understand her soul, glaring and resilient and fierce, in the soul of dangdut?
It is in the hips-shaking, shoulders-rolling, limb-twisting dance of migrant workers and garment factory labors, janitors of mighty universities and security guards of international corporations, and street-sellers and house caretakers.
It is in the dance of parents who couldn’t afford their children’s school allowances, men who lost their dignity along with their houses in a giant mud lake of greed and ignorance, wives who dried their tears with dirt-caked hands and mere will.
It is in the dance of children who couldn’t afford Playstations, internet connections and i-Pods, children who were raped, sodomized, and brutalized in the streets, children who were abandoned.
Dangdut is ours and even Malaysia, Japan or even the US can’t rob it from us as they did our folk songs, tempe and sovereignty.
Dangdut is ours, even when Goenawan talked about God and His unfinished things, Roy about cybernetic totems of technology, and Ba’asyir about his shitty dream of Indonesian khilafah.
Dangdut is ours, even when I don’t know you anymore, Java, with your families who won’t understand if I were slashed, unmarried and childless, if I were not a blue-collar worker with boring routine and were worked to death, if I were not myself.
I am techno, bubblegum pop, classics, keroncong, la cumbia, and above all dangdut. I am Monday to Sunday, Sabang to Merauke, Hatta to Tan Malaka, and above all dangdut. I am Munir to Wawan, Sapardi to Widji Tukul, and above all dangdut. I am the one whom words are emboldened, brazened and shouted as you dance, for I am everyone and everywhere and I am no one and no where.
Therefore I don’t condemn dangdut, no I didn’t, even when Mr. President is busy with his romanticized music, the uleemas conduct a gory affair, and Rhoma denied the existence of his bazillion ethereal harems. And still I dance with the people to understand them. And lie in the bed I’ve made we do, we do, because it says, “Come into my ears. Into my ears. My ears.” So we do.
Therefore, this is how I sing and thus ridicule myself, because I’m not the sun and the state isn’t me, not Ginsberg or Whitman or Emerson, just a little heap of total joke trying to breathe.
O the soul of Indonesia, misunderstood and looked down, with all the brain drain, train of self-mocking, and politics mutilation, o the mockery of the buffoons!
This is not the destruction of our time; this is not the deregulation of mass genocide; this is the structural intellectual deficiency; this is not our last dance; this is just the cheesiest bunch of lines I’ve ever written in self-humiliation and cosmic joke.
This is just ours!
Into the Ears of Dangdut
How would you understand Indonesia when you don’t understand her soul, glaring and resilient and fierce, in the soul of dangdut?
It is in the hips-shaking, shoulders-rolling, limb-twisting dance of migrant workers and garment factory labors, janitors of mighty universities and security guards of international corporations, and street-sellers and house caretakers.
It is in the dance of parents who couldn’t afford their children’s school allowances, men who lost their dignity along with their houses in a giant mud lake of greed and ignorance, wives who dried their tears with dirt-caked hands and mere will.
It is in the dance of children who couldn’t afford Playstations, internet connections and i-Pods, children who were raped, sodomized, and brutalized in the streets, children who were abandoned.
Dangdut is ours and even Malaysia, Japan or even the US can’t rob it from us as they did our folk songs, tempe and sovereignty.
Dangdut is ours, even when Goenawan talked about God and His unfinished things, Roy about cybernetic totems of technology, and Ba’asyir about his shitty dream of Indonesian khilafah.
Dangdut is ours, even when I don’t know you anymore, Java, with your families who won’t understand if I were slashed, unmarried and childless, if I were not a blue-collar worker with boring routine and were worked to death, if I were not myself.
I am techno, bubblegum pop, classics, keroncong, la cumbia, and above all dangdut. I am Monday to Sunday, Sabang to Merauke, Hatta to Tan Malaka, and above all dangdut. I am Munir to Wawan, Sapardi to Widji Tukul, and above all dangdut. I am the one whom words are emboldened, brazened and shouted as you dance, for I am everyone and everywhere and I am no one and no where.
Therefore I don’t condemn dangdut, no I didn’t, even when Mr. President is busy with his romanticized music, the uleemas conduct a gory affair, and Rhoma denied the existence of his bazillion ethereal harems. And still I dance with the people to understand them. And lie in the bed I’ve made we do, we do, because it says, “Come into my ears. Into my ears. My ears.” So we do.
Therefore, this is how I sing and thus ridicule myself, because I’m not the sun and the state isn’t me, not Ginsberg or Whitman or Emerson, just a little heap of total joke trying to breathe.
O the soul of Indonesia, misunderstood and looked down, with all the brain drain, train of self-mocking, and politics mutilation, o the mockery of the buffoons!
This is not the destruction of our time; this is not the deregulation of mass genocide; this is the structural intellectual deficiency; this is not our last dance; this is just the cheesiest bunch of lines I’ve ever written in self-humiliation and cosmic joke.
This is just ours!