Ambition Slowly Kills

Alright, I admit I am ambitious in a sort of unambitious way. I always have big ideas, but never have the right attitude to make it happen. Short fused. Impatient. Prone to ADD (yes, Attention Deficit Disorder!). Too idealistic. Crazy. Mad woman. Bipolar. Walking time bomb. I have been accused of them all and more. No problem. They may say whatever they want, I will go on. As in the case of keroncong project.

One typical hot humid day of Jakarta nearly one year ago, I suddenly had this wonderful idea (still is) of ‘documenting’ keroncong. Keroncong is probably the weirdest sounding music in my not-too-broad mental music library. Some said it was too syrup-y. Some said it smelled like old people. Some just showed an instant allergic reaction when heard the word uttered. Basically, it is just the most unlikely choice of music for Indonesia’s young generation. It is exclusively considered as the music for old people. What non sense! As Louis Armstrong said ‘what we play is life’. There is bound to be very interesting ‘life’ behind this weird sounding music and that was my first assumption.

I could not be more correct! The music came to Indonesia during the glory of Portuguese ‘seaborne empire’ in the 16th century. It evolved with times and seamlessly assimilated into local indigenous sound and the result, I believe is the true soul music of Indonesia. Imagine, this foreign influence mixed with different local sounds in different parts of Indonesia? The result is pure UFO (as in UFO object: weird, but mighty attractive).

So, I started thinking how to package this documentation. I arrived, ambitiously, at the format of hybrid book (beautiful paperback, with redrawn old maps, BW photos and illustration) to wrap the historical part, double CDs (original recording of keroncong music era 1950′s up to 1970′s) included in the book for the reader already enriched in history to start listening to the music and last but not least a separate project of documentary film telling the story of a young classically trained pianist in learning how to play this music.

Ambitious? You bet, I am.

After the creation of concept, the next problem would be funding. Begging time. The lowest of lowest. I approached different organizations, different people, different companies, they all thought it was a brilliant idea with no further explanation how they were going to specifically support this project. This is the typical time when I blew my fuse. Don’t tell me that I did not do my homework on how to market this project and the revenue projection, I did them all.

Once I decided I did what I could, then I shifted to unambitious mode. I put it rather on the back burner while I am doing something else. I let it brew on small fire. One day it will be beautiful. I know it will.

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