Sounds From The Corner : Session #19 Gerald Situmorang Trio

You could agree to disagree, but music is the most popular form of art on earth. It covers so many identities - practical, visual and conceptual. Its history is long and complicated, but music embodies broad and easy taxonomy: people dress, think and communicate with it. Well, you can technically communicate using sculptures or paintings - if you have the patience, but nowadays a #np Tweet is enough to caught bae’s attention.

But how to digest Jazz? I'm afraid people in Indonesia affiliate themselves with the “genre” as far as fedora hats and JJF. Do Indra Lesmana or Coltrane understand it perfectly? Thankfully Indonesia has Maliq & D’Essential in the mid-2000s, who literally helped us bridge Jazz with wider, more popular crowd.

Back then the band kickstarted a whole new landscape of Jazz Pop in Indonesia Three years ago we published Maliq’s session as one of the first three videos we released, simply because we understand that their role in fusing different POVs towards Indonesian music is key.

Remembering Maliq & listening to Gesit Trio made me realized that Jazz offers something that other established genre can’t achieve: dynamic interpretation. Historically born from slavery, now Jazz has been served at the crux, as Music’s most elegant, prestigious and cultural form around the world. Jarred by its vibrant definitions, out of its maze this music makes the world speaks the same language.

For an amateur like me, music showcased by Gerald Situmorang Trio is as exotic as Death Metal. It is not for public consumption if the word public means that people who don’t want to invest any amount of intellectual sophistication appreciating what we called, “art”. But I can totally see the synergy built by harmony and spontaneity.

Mostly driven by picturesque dominant guitar parts, what is mind-blowing for me after re-watching this session is apart from its intentional complication, the music still makes you smile, because of its beauty. The straight and simple communion between guitar, bass and drums result in the clear path of harmony.

What’s beautiful for me is also the organic interaction throughout the session. Gerald, Anka and Jessie can quickly decide what’s going to happen next in the song just by throwing a brief smile and the whole arrangement changed suddenly. Maybe I’m simply uninformed but this might be the secret sauce that pure Jazz musicians have, and for me it remains a delicate mystery. Sounds From the Corner presents: Gerald Situmorang Trio. Enjoy! - Teguh Wicaksono