TheJakartaPost

Please Update your browser

Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.

Jakarta Post

Harry Roesli returns

After 44 years, the first album of one of Indonesia’s most notorious rebel musicians, the late Harry Roesli and his band called the Gang of Harry Roesli, finally found its way to the Indonesian market.

Hans David Tampubolon (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, March 24, 2017

Share This Article

Change Size

Harry Roesli returns Tribute: A group of street musicians, who were adopted by Harry Roesli, perform a tribute to the rebel musician during the album re-launch. (JP/PJ Leo)

The album is called Philosophy Gang and features some of Harry’s most famous compositions, including “Malaria”.

In 2007, Rolling Stone Indonesia included the album as one of the 150 greatest Indonesian albums of all time.

“Malaria” was named one of the greatest 150 Indonesian songs of all time by the magazine in 2009. The magazine also included Harry on the list of the 25 greatest Indonesian artists of all time, for which he earned recognition from the magazine as one of the immortals.

The album was released for the first time in 1973 by Lion Records, a Singapore-based recording company, but it was not publicly sold due to taxation issues and probably because the album’s contents were considered too socially progressive in an era when Indonesia was still under the control of a military junta led by Soeharto and his New Order regime.

“We just shared album copies with our friends back then,” Indra Rivai, one of the remaining members of the Gang of Harry Roesli, said during the album relaunch in Pejaten, South Jakarta, recently.

The album became a cult classic and one of the most sought-after vinyl records.

Precious: A collector has his hands on the new re-launched Philosophy Gang album.(JP/PJ Leo)

Harry Pochang, another member, said when the album was created in Bandung, West Java, he and the rest of the band were just young musicians having fun recording.

“We just jammed around in the studio and everything was done on the spot, and we ended up with about seven songs after five days of jamming,” Pochang said.

The results of those jam sessions were a number of psychedelic songs with lyrics that were filled with metaphors that the band members mostly did not understand.

Read also: Pink Floyd to launch unreleased version of ‘Interstellar Overdrive’

“I never understood the meaning of the lyrics. Harry knew what they meant but never told us,” Pochang said.

As time went by, the album gained popularity as a cult icon and a treasure of Indonesia’s progressive music history.

At one point, “Malaria” made it to Rendi Pratama, the founder of Lamunai Records, which is responsible for the album re-launch.

“When I studied in Bandung years ago, I got familiar with the song,” Rendi said.

“However, I was not keen on buying the vinyl because the song was too much of a ballad for my taste,” he added.

Years later, Rendi listened to another song from the album,“Don’t Talk about Freedom”. Rendi heard it through an album compilation called Those Shocking Days: Indonesian Hard, Psychedelic, Progressive Rock and Funk: 1970-1978, which was produced by US-based record label Now-Again Records in 2011.

After hearing how progressive “Don’t Talk about Freedom” was for its era, Rendi began an intensive search across the internet to purchase the Philosophy Gang album. To Rendi’s surprise, he found the price for the album had multiplied dozens of times.

When Rendi was a student, a copy of the album was sold for Rp 150,000 (US$11.2) and when he finally wanted to purchase it years later, the price had reached millions of rupiah per copy.

“Collectors are willing to pay Rp 4 million to get an original copy of the album,” he said.

After establishing Lamunai Records, Rendi made the album re-launch in Indonesia a mission, but he first needed to obtain blessings from the family of Harry, who passed away in 2005.

Harry Roesli lives: Indra Rivai (left) and Harry Pochang (second left), the two remaining members of the Gang of Harry Roesli band, celebrate the Philosophy Gang album re-launch with Harry's twin sons Layala Khrisna Patria (second right) and Lahami Khrisna Parana.(JP/PJ Leo)

Harry’s wife, Kania Perdani Handiman, and his two twin sons — Layala Khrisna Patria and Lahami Khrisna Parana — had no problem with Rendi’s plans in resurrecting Harry’s legacy for millennials.

Read also: 2017 BaliSpirit Festival returns with more than 200 activities

However, they stressed that Rendi needed to complete all the required administrative work, including getting permission to re-launch the album from the Singaporean-based Lion Records and its owner, Robert Wong Junior, to prevent potential legal trouble.

Rendi then made a trip to Singapore to search for Robert Wong Junior. However, he never found the recording company or Wong.

Other members of the Gang of Harry Roesli told Rendi they had no idea who Wong was or whether Lion Records was a real recording company.

All they knew was that Harry told them that Wong was one of his father’s friends who agreed to produce the album when they recorded it.

Back for fans: Philosophy Gang vinyl album from the Gang of Harry Roesli returns to the Indonesian market after 44 years.(JP/PJ Leo)

“We believed him at the time because he came from a wealthy and established family. So, we thought his father must have some connections with a producer in Singapore to support Harry’s music career,” Indra said.

“But now, for all I know, Lion Records and Wong might have been something that Harry made up,” he added.

After a thorough search for Lion Records and Wong remained fruitless, Rendi returned to Harry’s family and explained to them what was going on and asked them one more time for the blessing.

“After we saw how determined he [Rendi] was in following up on our request, we decided to give him our permission,” Lahami said.

Lahami said he expected the album would introduce his father’s music legacy as a rebellious musician to the current generation.

“Tonight, Harry Roesli lives among us,” he said.

{

Your Opinion Matters

Share your experiences, suggestions, and any issues you've encountered on The Jakarta Post. We're here to listen.

Enter at least 30 characters
0 / 30

Thank You

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We appreciate your feedback.