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Jubing Kristianto: Hooked on eternal childhood melodies
Like other virtuosic instrumentalists, Jubing Kristianto, 42, is often tempted to compose avant-garde pieces to gratify his intellectual curiosity
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Like other virtuosic instrumentalists, Jubing Kristianto, 42, is often tempted to compose avant-garde pieces to gratify his intellectual curiosity.
It is not impossible for the fingerstyle guitarist to produce at least one piece of formidable music, but he never has.
"I believe that music should never cease to entertain and retain its social function as it was originally used by traditional societies. Avant-garde works are eventually used only by academics for musical analyses and not meant to be enjoyed by a wide audience," he told The Jakarta Post.
Jubing is definitely not a man of art for art's sake. In his teens, he talked his cash-strapped parents into letting him take a guitar course by promising them he would master the instrument, teach it within a year and reimburse the money they had spent.
"I don't remember how and from where my parents got the money to pay for my guitar course. They just somehow had it and I was able to take my first guitar lesson during my last year in high school," he said.
He recalled he broke his promise. His first student came about two years after taking his first course. But it doesn't matter; the competition awards and recognition he has received make up for everything his parents sacrificed for him.
He now holds the highest grade certificate of the Yamaha Classical Guitar Examination and some of his arrangements of Indonesian popular songs helped him win the Yamaha Guitar Indonesia Guitar Festival non-classical section in 1987, 1992, 1994 and 1995. Some of the songs are included in his first guitar solo album, Becak Fantasy -- perhaps the country's first solo acoustic guitar album -- , which was released last year.
His penchant for music and the color of his guitar arrangements mirror his biography and conviction in music.
The guitar, he said, was chosen because his parents could not afford to buy him a piano or pay for violin lessons. He played the instrument not only to satisfy himself but primarily to amuse other people.
During his years as a penniless student majoring in criminology at the University of Indonesia, he used to perform on stage by request or give guitar lessons to his colleagues to earn extra money to help finance his studies.
"Sometimes I performed and received only food as payment. Well, it's okay. At least, I could save my money," he said.
At the time, he also regularly wrote articles on criminology for national newspapers.
"The honorarium was quite large," said Jubing, who is a good friend of renowned criminologist Adrianus Melialala and whose undergraduate thesis was supervised by former general election commission (KPU) member Mulyana W. Kusumah.
In 1990, Jubing was offered a job as a reporter with Nova, a weekly tabloid for women, which he accepted without hesitation. A few years later, he was appointed as the tabloid's managing editor, which he later left for his love for the guitar.
"I pondered for two years before deciding to quit the job; is this really what I want? Do I have to go through all this for the rest of my life?" he said, referring to the pressure of the press industry. He left Nova in 2003.
Since then, he has fully dedicated his life to music and, of course, the guitar. He has written a guitar encyclopedia, Gitarpedia: Buku Pintar Gitaris (Gitarpedia: The Smart Guitar Guide, 2005), and a book on guitar lessons, Membongkar Rahasia Chord Gitar (The Secret to Guitar Chords, 2007).
He now teaches at a music school in Jakarta and has staged many performances, in locations ranging from concert halls to shopping malls.
"I once played at a mall with only a small audience at first, but then it grew to more than a thousand," he said.
Despite his attraction to classical music and his respect for guitar patriarchs such as Francesco Tarrega and Agustin Barrios Mangore, he said he was reluctant to call himself a classical guitarist.
"I love classical music, but actually I play more popular music with classical guitar in a classical style," he said.
A cheering crowd is important to Jubing's musical development. His acclaimed arrangements of Becak Fantasy, based on the memorable song, Becak, by Ibu Soed, and Ayam dan Lapeh, a traditional song from West Sumatra, won the praise of fellow musicians as well as his audience.
His musical education provided him with the skills to add attractive ornaments -- classical, jazz and blues -- to traditional Indonesian songs. Meanwhile, the rich timbres and the polyphony of the guitar enable him to produce a beautiful frenzied music, or, as Beethoven puts it, an orchestra in miniature, with a single instrument.
Born into a musical family, Jubing said he was bewitched by the everlasting melodies of Indonesian popular songs taught by his parents during his childhood. "They are so beautiful and memorable," he said.
For his second album, due to be released in April this year, Jubing will include his arrangements for the song Hujan, also by Ibu Soed, and Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Again, his aim to is to entertain his audience, not to flaunt his arduous guitar playing.
