Kampoeng Jazz 2011 ~But mostly, Dira Sugandi~

Kampoeng Jazz 2011

Kampoeng Jazz, like the name implies. It must be something about jazz. Yeah, it's an event that presents music performance by some jazz musicians.

The performer of KJ'11 were Sabrina, Tahiti 80, Dira Sugandi, Syaharani & Queen Fireworks, Yovie Widianto Fusion and many others.

Sabrina and Tahiti 80 were their aces of this event, even though ~for me~ their musics are barely jazz. But who cares, in fact they were the (biggest) magnet of thousands people who came.

In these past years, I've been learning and following about jazz music. Well, not the pure and fully jazz maybe, but I'm just really into it. So for me personally, Sabrina and Dira Sugandi were the reason I came for, though there was an unmusical reason also.

Sabrina is a female musician from Philippines. Amongst youngster she's so famous because of her 'creativity' to recycles and covers the popular songs in acoustic.

She transforms R&B, Soul, Pop, Rock and many other songs into a wonderful and easy listening acoustic songs. It's a good way to appreciate the joy of the genres you're not really into.

Dira Sugandi, oh, I hope I'm not exaggerating this, but... Indonesia is blessed and grateful to have such a talent like her. Dira is gifted the voice like the great black woman powerful voice. Ironically, most of Indonesian listeners ~including me~ had just known her recently.  

Well, she's maybe a new player in Indonesian music industry, but she's definitely not in music industry itself.  She had started her career in USA. Well, from what I read, the reason she chose USA instead of Indonesia because of her music and some financial issues for recording stuffs.

Dira's music is created for specified listeners. As all we know in Indonesia, if you want to be a successful (read : rich) musician, sometimes you have to put aside your idealism in the trunk then steer your music wheel right where to the market wants.

In the mean time, she wasn't able to afford the cost of recording things and stuffs in Indonesia. Here we can see the irony, in her own country she couldn't do anything because of Rupiahs but in USA she was doing great just with her talent without concerning about Dollars.

So, 'Something About The Girl' is her first album, it contains 11 songs. And in my inexpert opinion, I could sense the modern jazz blended with a bold thick soulful voice of her in this album, and if I'm not wrong there's even a Balinese touch in one of her song in this album.

We can tell that even her music will barely be the unconscious humming of most Indonesian people, she still weaves the Balinese touch in her music. She loves her country, doesn't she? :)

'Inside Love', 'Time Out of Time', 'Essentially Yours', 'Hand on Your Heart' and 'Won't You Come with Me' are Dira's songs that I always put in my playlist for these past nights. They are relaxing. They really are.

Those songs are also sung by Dira in Kampoeng Jazz last night. Well, I haven't memorized the whole lyrics yet so I only sang in the chorus parts.

She performed right after Sabrina. Well, it must be hard on her to made a good performance right after the main guest star performance. But, from what I saw, she could bring back the intimate atmosphere of jazz music by the thick voice of hers that waving stealthily into the air amongst us.

Hmm, I almost forget to tell about the aces.

Tahiti 80, well I don't really know much about this Paris indie band. And I hardly watched their performances that night, I got dilstracted when they performed. They were up right after Dira's. All I can tell that their sound engineer was the greatest that night. He (or she maybe) could manage to produce the perfect proportion of sounds. The guitars and bass sounded just right.

Sabrina. Even though some of my friends told me that her performance was great. But, I kinda felt disappointed. Because, I, myself (or maybe you too), we know and feel the joy of her music because of one thing : "Acoustic".

Yeah, she did, she played her acoustic guitar. However, ahh, there was also the band. Let me describe in my humble perspective (I hope). The sound of the keyboard and violin almost covered the sound of her guitar. The drummers played like in a berserker mode.

Was it all because of her sound engineer? Maybe.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, why the songs had to be played in a full band way? 

Isn't she an acoustic musician? 

Didn't we knew her because of her acoustic playing?

Well anyhow, enough with my 'yotos' talking. :p

Overall, although, not as good as last year, Kampoeng Jazz this year was pretty good. Salute for the committee.

The only good thing of Kampoeng Jazz this year than the last year was..
I happened to spent it with one of the God's masterpieces. :)

So my closure line would be...

"Sabrina barely rocks the night but Dira Sugandi does!!"

Feel free to correct my bad english..

And kindly give me your comments..

:D