Tag Archives: Cirebon

Go Harder

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With all that previous excitment over, it’s nice to realise that I’ve got a slow few hours ahead before the show this evening. And with that, I take it’s slow.

Wake with the call to prayer from the local masjid. If I listen harder, I can hear multiple different voices interlocking, random, not together, but definitely together, some clear and others wrapped in reverb. I’m not a person of any faith, but there is something that is very welcoming of the tradition of public singing being a regular feature of the daily environment. They are songs without a function for me, and so I can enjoy them at a simple and aesthetic level.

I go walking. I’m the only one walking. Someone wants to sell them time to me and offers their transportation. They laugh that I want to stay walking. I’m looking for breakfast and find a variation on gado-gado, rice, noodles, tempeh, and tofu. And Karpal Api, black and sweet coffee from a packet. It’s a roadside banquet.


Then I find something amazing, Gonjing, fried coconut goodness. I also need to find soap… was harder than it sounds. I go into Indomart, a franchise superette. I look for the obvious to no avail. I get the attention of staff, and my mime routine also fails.  I use Google and receive looks of confusion.  I see later than I typed Soap for Baking.

Back to the accommodation. I entered into a long exchange with Shaiful, the bike who checked me in. We talk via text about music, the similarity of numbers between the Indonesia language and Te Reo, the rates of young fathers abandoning pregnant girlfriends, and anything else that bubbles up.

A couple of hours later, when I go get a taxi to head to the venue,  Shaiful yells across the courtyard, “Go harder” in support.

The taxi massively overshoot the destination, and we end up in the absolute middle of the countryside. Backtracking the venue remains where it probably always was, cuddling side to side with a barbershop.

Kael Caviety. It’s a hip venue adorned with uplifting messages. The main things they do are drinks, ice tea of all stripes, and coffee with scientific precision. Every ingredient of every cup is weighed and double-checked.  It takes pretty amazing a well.. so strong!!

The venue must be the cavity part. It’s a building outside, away from the shop, a small concrete box with AC.
The other performers arrive, as well as the PA and the battalion of scooters.


It’s a nice atmosphere.  I met someone who saw us play in jogja in 2011. And it was nice to see his performance as the opening act.
And when the show started, it rolled smoothly from act to act.
Awkwayz: an electronic duo playing slow corrugations of tones, chord, and atmosphere.
Bootycall: firey and kinetic harsh noise from Copenhagen.
Resurrection the Man: Wawan, the organizers act, noise music born from the belly of an old Kiwi shoe polish tin that left me with a funny impression of dub… don’t know why
Wat Takleaw: started off super dense electronic noise but then opened up into very beautiful, brien and glitch space without losing the intensity
Gorz: do from Peru, Switzerland, guitar, vocals, preprogrammed backing tracks of wonky rock.. if Kate Bush sung in a math rock duo
Orqan: The do from Italy playing electronic smash on self-made instruments, I didn’t fully understand it, but their phones held essential functions in the performance.. maybe bending sound by moving through roll, pitch, and yaw.
Tapiwa Svosve: an impressive scape player of Swiss/Zimbabwean origin.. awesome control of the circular breathing technique.
Noijzu: Unrelenting harsh noise from Chile, I think.
Me: I did what I did. Things didn’t entirely work as planned, but the delivery was still fun. This was challenged by an electrical earthing problem, which presented as continuous small electrical shocks throughout the show. I integrated water into the performance… It’s probably not the smartest idea…
… then a bit of a wait due the last act to arrive, so a spontaneous three-way performance between Bootycall, Orqan, and myself.
Slammy Karugu’s Final Rupture of the Varicose Vein: arrived just after 9 after 30 flight from Kenya with a long stop over on India, then to Jakarta, to train, to venue, to play.  Impressive!! Get the man a drink! Slammed is one half of the duo Duma, whose album of a couple of years ago is ONE of the most intense listens I know. His set tonight was great, different cookies of noise with rising and falling syncopated rhythms like something heavy from the deep… nice!

Wrap up, pack up.  I can’t go with the others for food because me and my 20kg case would be impossible on the back of a scooter. But it’s a bugger though.

Other notes:
The music of the Cafe ranges from Queen to The Smiths, palette cleansing niceness between the sets.
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To my right of my breakfast stool  is the roadside ice market, a makeshift platform of palettes over a large gutter.  Under a couple of layers of tarpaulin are large blocks of ice, attacked with saws and hooks to be then loaded motorbikes, to be delivered to the street side cafes and tea shops I’m guessing.

Saya tidak barbicara bahasa indonisia

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The rising and falling from the two tones of the street vendors bell wakes me. A little ropey seems like a first description of how I feel after yesterday’s travel, but it’s OK, cos I’m in Jakarta! My one and only mission today is to get to the city of Cirebon by train.

Local coffee and fruit are offered for breakfast, and it’s perfect and unhurried. I had different accommodation booked to where I ended up. While in Sydney, an old friend, Chris, from Jakarta, made contact and offered me a bed at his place. A very welcome welcoming.

The train departs Jakarta at 11, Chris advises I get a taxi at 9. We are some distance from the train station, Pasar Senen. It’s good advice. As it transpires, nearly the entire two hours are required … I get on the train with only minutes to spare.

Economy class is perfectly comfortable. The biggest relief, other than being onboard, is that each seat has a power point. This means the phone remains charged. It is the most essential piece of equipment. I am reminded again how much I like Google Translate.

I am also reminded of my näievity, and honest ignorance in being somewhere where daily interactions and engagements are beyond me. I am without local spoken language. I do not speak bahasa, Saya tidak barbicara bahasa Indonisia. I hope that people can make sense of my pidgin bahasa, my arm waving, and that I also encounter people who are gracious enough to help.  I have met nothing by kindness so far.  A serving of humility can go a long way.

The journey across land is flat.  Leaving the frenetic city and the business of its active inhabitants. The unfolding country shows no less sign of activity.  Every spare morsel of land I see seems to be in agriculture, mostly rice, I assume. Rectangular and flooded sections of earth to the end of what I can see. Fruit trees, banana palm, and dwellings in states of construction, habitation, and destruction. An earth in permanent transformation.


I ride the train longer than my ticket brought. I booked the wrong stop, and it is a long way from my accommodation. No one seemed to notice my freeloading, I disembark at Cirebon station. 

I must look like a windfall to the gaggle who facilitate taxis. The fourth person I met in this exchange was the driver. And ‘exchange’ is an exaggeration. They talk, I can not.  I let myself be sheparded into the nearest cab. It’s all plesant enough, fully at my expense, which is still actually not much. Tip for next time… Google Translate’s talk-to- text is very useful… must be online though.

Signing into the motel is more mutual. The back-and-forth of conversation via the app. While the paperwork is being completed. I show the young guy at reception a clip of me making a mushroom’ sing’. He asked if I was a scientist? A ‘strange musician’ said I.


Later, I met Wawan and friends Rinto and Alif. Wawan had been my contact for the show. We have met to eat, but first we must get two more performers the group Orqan from Italy, just arriving in the city from the train station. This maneuver is achieved from the spare room on scooters.

Later, still, somewhere near the middle of the city, perhaps, we are sitting streetside eating hot corn on the cob, and Docang, a spicy dish of vegetables and a fermented tempeh product made with coconut. It’s good.

The night ends with the others off to their accommodation and me back to mine. Alif takes me on his bike, and the streets seem quiet.  And I am sated. And sleep beckons.
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Other notes:
There is a young girl on the train who has a birth mark high on her left check, just under her eye, that has the striking resemblance to a butterfly.
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We pass a train graveyard nestled in between fields of rice. I was lucky enough to be standing between carriages looking out the window at the right place and at the right time. I caught a photo of the smallest portion.


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I don’t understand the cycle of rice growing. Perhaps it is a harvesting time? Many fields have mounds collected of plant matter, which then seems to them be burned off. Other fields contain the large blacken and burnt carcasses of previous mounds. I wonder if all that carbon aids growth.
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Bats ARE in the loft.