Freedomsjazz S.17
MAHITALLA
On the fourth day of Freedoms Jazz Festival, Mahitalla, a jazz rock fusion group from Jakarta was stirring the stage with their own mixture of pop, rock fusion served with a sense of a neosoul tinge. Keyboardist Ivan Alidiyan, bass player Jundy Salut Anis, guitarist Dimas Raditya, and drummer Afirniar are the four propagators; young and exuberant musicians who eager in promoting jazz instrumental in a lighter presentations.
Distorted guitar sound with a tingle of a tone-down Zawinul Syndicate’s ambience was fully introduced since the first tune; jungle beats to half time bass solos, sweet Yellow Jacket-ish transitions, to a full blown jamming feel; all was played in an intensely high energy by the young pack. Mahitalla’s own Ivan Alidiyan, extrovertly (within and musically) using endless variations of the sound frame in this tradition of smooth, funk, and jazz rock; as the main tone colors of Mahitalla: an all out electric jazz band in the legacy of Corea’s Elektrik Band to Tohpati Bertiga.
Those elements, combined with Robert Glasper legato fill ins with a typical neosoul tempo change; switching to a jungle beat based solo guitar might be just a hint of how eclectic and exuberant Mahitalla is. Young bloods energy are understandably hard to contain, yet I felt sometimes they often went slightly overboard by restating those same amount of intensity and story line, in one crammed episode of a tune.
Inspirations from love flings, friendship to (unsurprisingly) tinder app were the sources of the playful song themes. Sweet melody that twist and contorted, transformed to funky sound and finally to trading solos was at times overwhelmingly restated. All those pieces of song elements were good if they were to developed and treated more consistently, but knitting the materials together without the ability of not repeating the whole process and presenting different nuances is another story.
Mahitalla materials has all the winning quality: a perfectly crafted keys sound and a well structured melody; but with rather imbalance intensity output, it’s hard to keep challenged as a listener, when you finally understand that almost everything will eventually headed to the same direction.
Bunk was a playful funk tune, with a couple of small arrangement details that binded perfectly in a Headhunters-Hancock’s style jam tune; they used some wonderful transitions on this song, which some were in an old school funk jams. Trading solos by Dimas and Afirniar were very effective in laying some contrast, following a high octane guitar solo backed by a meticoulos funk syncopes by their associates. Open ambiances at the base of Ivan’s improvisation was, and could be used more efficiently as a perfect vehicle to laid out new foundation for the tune.
In Mahitalla’s humourish and delightful presentation of their music, they did very well in connecting with their audiences. Mahitalla approached their audience in a very casual manners, telling jokes about the story behind the songs; and more than able to entertain the crowd (their own crowd mostly). It is another story behind Indonesian’s complex jazz scene, of how musical ideas and hegemonic music genres are constantly transformed and processed. In a scene where popular culture holds the key to musical embodiment in forms of exhibition, young musicians are more than willing to experiment and recontextualize those experience in their own frames.
Freedoms Jazz Festival and iCanstudiolive is now at the center of those processes, by documenting and cataloguing the momentums, growth, and experiments of young jazz musicians, how they absorb, replicate, and reproduce new meanings in a vibrant music cultural playground of Indonesian jazz scene.
(DJ)Dion Janapria
Mahitalla
Dimas Raditya: Guitar
Ivan Alidiyan: Keyboards
Jundy Salut Anis: Bass
Afirniar: Drums
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