Previously unreleased music by Otto Sidharta, pioneer of Indonesian electronic music, inspired by Indonesia's multifarious styles of traditional music.
Otto Sidharta loves to travel, everywhere within Indonesia, in order to collect almost any environmental tones and harmonies he can gather, as an endless source of composition. He is also deeply inspired by Indonesia's multifarious styles of traditional music, that he tries to preserve, as in some remote places, they keep their own tradition very strongly.
What really interests Sidharta is musicians not interacting with other kinds of music, as in those deep villages, where one might find sounds that feel like very "natural". It results in works expressing Sidharta's personal impression from their music: 'I just use my own feeling, with no calculation', not using the tribals motif or style.
Kajang is the name of a tribal people living in the south of Sulawesi, a giant island in eastern Indonesia, a closed community, that Sidharta visited twice: "They cut off their communication with the outside world. They live in a very traditional way and try to avoid any new development in culture that might impact their way of life."
Sidharta's previous album collected early pieces under the title
Indonesian Electronic Music 1979-92, released on Sub Rosa in 2018. Kajang gathers a quartet of compositions from 2015 to 2020.
Electronic musician Otto Sidharta is born in Bandung, Indonesia November 6, 1955. In 1978 he studied music composition in Jakarta Institute of Arts under guidance of Slamet Abdul Sjukur. In 1984 he continues his post graduate study for composition and electronic music with Prof. Ton de Leeuw in Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam. In 2015, he acomplished his doctoral study at Institute Seni Indonesia Surakarta and finished in 2016.
Sidharta's interest using environmental sounds and synthetics sounds as well to express his musical ideas developed when he was a student at the Jakarta Institute of Arts. He performed his first electronic music piece, Kemelut, based on water sounds in the First Indonesian Young Composer Festival (Pekan Komponis Muda) in 1979. In 1979 he begin to collect some nature and animal sounds on Nias Island, Borneo (Kalimantan) jungle, Riau islands, and some other remote places. These sounds were used as material for some of his works such as Ngendau, Hutan Plastik and East wind. And some others. Otto Sidharta is still alive and performing around the world.
