A Star is Banned

Why a tour of 100 cities by pop idol Iwan Fals abruptly cancelled? ANDREAS HARSONO believes that politics and commercial intrique bot played a role and Indonesian youth were the losers. 

                Nukes are like a god

                The general looks proud

                From the pulpit he says:

                For peace, for peace,

                For the sake of peace...

                Garbage! Garbage!

                                                    Puing (Ruins) 1988

Iwan Fals is a superstar among the many pop musicians in Indonesia. His albums sell like hotcakes, and he has fanatic fans who cherish everything he does, enjoy his concerts, and admire his views. It would be difficult to find a more popular Indonesian singer in the eighties than Iwan Fals. Since his first appearance on stage in the late seventies, he has become increasingly important because of his talent and commitment in creating songs that don’t just drool about teenage love: meeting your heart’s dream, Saturday night, the first kiss, broken hearts, unrequited love and so on. 

In the midst of the love lyrics that dominate the market place, Iwan has written lines about a poor village teacher called Oemar Bakri, about a mass circumcision ceremony, about a lame Parliament, about a child of thieves who finally becomes a thief himself, about the beauty of nature, and many other things. With a simple acoustic-guitar-and-harmonica country style, he has become the idol of millions of Indonesian youth. (Lately he has begun using the electric guitar and the synthesizer).

So the crowds were enthusiastic when Sofyan Ali Siregar invited him to do a tour of a hundred cities throughout Indonesia. Sofyan Ali is one of Indonesia’s foremost music promoters who has to his credit Indonesian tours by Al Jarreau, Miami Sound Machine, Tina Turner and others. The tour, organised through Sofyan’s Arena Indonesian Productions (AIRO), was planned to promote Iwan’s new album Mata Dewa (Eye of God), and represents recognition of his talent. By Indonesian standards, a tour of one hundred cities is really exceptional. Other singers have toured far fewer cities. God Bless for example, one of Indonesia’s top rock groups, never toured more than nine cities at once. Rhoma Irama, another superstar who plays dangdut music, had a record tour of fifty cities.

The tour was all the more interesting because Sofyan Ali planned to use it to distribute the Mata Dewa album directly. This was an unprecedented step, because cassettes are usually marketed by distributors centred in the Glodok Plaza, one of the biggest business centres in Jakarta. It is an open secret that these distributors have great power to determine if an album will sell or not. Some call these music-biz bosses the ‘Glodok Mafia’. They decide which lyrics will make it onto the market, and what kind of singer will be in.

The show is cancelled

When the long-awaited first concert of the Mata Dewa tour was held on 26 February 1989 at the eastern parking grounds of the Senayan sports complex in Jakarta, a location often used for state ceremonies, the fans turned out in their droves. This concert was made free of charge, and around 100,000 young people from every corner of Jakarta and beyond packed in. Shouts of ‘Iwan! Iwan! Iwan!’ resounded from everywhere. And the superstar, supported by well-known rock guitarist Ian Antono and other members of his band, played 15 songs, nonstop till nearly midnight.

However the concert did not end as hoped. As it broke up the masses, emotionally fired up by Iwan’s music, wrecked public property and eleven vehicles, burning one of them. This was not the first time such vandalism had occurred. Some months before, a Mick Jagger concert led to about ninety vehicles being damaged, there was fire and violence. At the end of 1988 the Humanitarian Rock Concert presented by the Indonesian Association of Artists and Musicians, a fund-raising gesture for the Indonesian Red Cross in which Iwan Fals appeared together with Ian Antono, Nicky Astria, Akhmad Albar, Ikang Fawzi, Gito Rollies and others, also ended in violence.

Although no doubt disappointed with this sort of behaviour, most people could understand how in an emotional atmosphere the young people just let their feeling of despair about their depressed situation hang out in violent ways. Incidents such as these made the Mata Dewa committee all the more primed up to avoid trouble at coming concerts. Noone suspected that because of the violence at the 26 February concert the entire tour would be cancelled. But that is exactly what happened. A day before the tour was about to resume in Palembang, South Sumatra on 10 March 1989, it was cancelled on order of Central Police Headquarters in Jakarta. The only reason given in the banning order passed down through Palembang Police was ‘to avoid disturbances’. 

Iwan Fals cried when he heard the bad news. "I have been preparing this album for six months, have sacrificed my lectures, I never experienced an atmosphere at Musica (his previous recording company), or anywhere else in my whole life, such as I felt here at AIRO. And now this abrupt cancellation just as we are about to go on stage," Iwan told journalists.

Sofyan Ali, who as a businessman is well aware that the entertainment industry in Indonesia is full of uncertainty, did not allow himself too much misery. He firmly announced that the Mata Dewa tour would pick up again in Java, as if not knowing that the ban was a national one. However the authorities were not about to engage in a cat-and-mouse game. A week after the cancellation in Palembang, the Police Commissioner in Jakarta announced that all rock music shows in Indonesia were banned until further notice. 

The reason given by police information officer Lieut. Col. Pol. Ivan Sihombing: "Based on experience with the Mick Jagger and the Iwan Fals shows, which gave rise to considerable damage and injuries, all rock performances are banned for an unlimited period." Thus the ban affected not only Iwan Fals but all rock music —a bombshell for the industry.

Some musicians blamed Iwan Fals. That his style was not in fact rock made them angry with him for calling it rock. But not a few others believed that the real reason for the ban lay elsewhere. It appeared that the main target for the ban was in fact only the Mata Dewa tour. Many other performers, such as Harry Mukti and Mel Shandy, carried on as before. There was a small incident when Atik C.B, a female vocalist who sings fast-paced pop, was forbidden to sing rock during her show in Yogyakarta. She was ordered by Yogyakarta police to sign an undertaking to that effect. But her show went on.

Why was Iwan’s tour cancelled?

If Iwan was the real target of the ban on rock performances, what lay behind it? Various versions are circulating among musos in Indonesia. One of them says that the "Glodok Mafia" schemed "to borrow" the police in order to smash the new marketing method being introduced by Sofyan Ali Siregar. Another pointed the finger at a cigarette company which may have been jealous at the advertising success reaped by Djarum cigarettes, the main sponsor of Mata Dewa. This latter is quite possible, since tobacco is indeed big business in Indonesia, one that is stimulated by the New Order government. The tobacco industry values the opportunity of constantly attracting new smokers by offering free packets of cigarettes to young music fans.

Yet a third explanation has it that the authorities in Jakarta are afraid that a national Mata Dewa tour could raise political awareness among the people about things like human rights, poor living conditions, corruption, and militarism. This also is quite possible in view of the critical lyrics that Iwan always presents. Were these lyrics to be taken to heart by millions of his young listeners in a hundred Indonesian cities throughout the country, Iwan could become a very effective firebrand. Such a ‘latent danger’ could be quite threatening to a tiny elite in Jakarta who play dirty with power.

That the government always keeps a close eye on rock music, and from time to time interferes if it feels its position is in danger, is not a new thing in Indonesia. The scenario becomes all the more likely since shortly after cancelling the Iwan tour, the New Order government also cancelled a number of other artistic events. Some examples: cancellation of two Chinese performances, ie. the Taiwanese opera in the Arts Building in Jakarta, and the drama Sampek Engtay in Medan, pressure on Atik CB in Yogyakarta, and the ban on ‘sentimental’ songs on Indonesian television.

I personally tend to accept all three possibilities, as long as we are not allowed to know the real reason. But one thing is certain: once again the authorities have acted cruelly to stifle the healthy growth of critical and creative pop music in Indonesia. As long as efforts like those of Iwan Fals, Sofyan Ali Siregar and others continue to be hampered, Indonesian musicians cannot show any social concerns in their lyrics. They might even forget for how long now their rights have been bridled by a small group of people.

Andreas Harsono is a student at Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga, Central Java.