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n elderly lady and three others were spotted embellishing a pine tree with yellow and red balls, golden stars and other Christmasy items at the historic Tugu Church in North Jakarta recently.

Christmas ornaments have turned the somber 263-year-old former Portuguese church into a cheerful and festive locale.

“More than 400 people are expected to come to Tugu Church on Christmas Eve,” the elderly lady, Warti, said, adding that on the 25th the church would also hold a service.

“We had a Christmas celebration on Dec. 18 with Krontjong Toegoe performing,” Warti said.

Krontjong Toegoe is a band that plays traditional music with Portuguese rhythms.

The players are the descendants of Portuguese-speaking slaves who settled in the Tugu area in the 17th century. The community now strives to preserve Tugu culture through music.

At the turn of the 19th century, the Keroncong Tugu style of music developed, which gave rise to many other keroncong styles.

“The band was established in 1925 and called Moresco,” head of the Tugu Family Community (IKBT) Andre J. Michiels told The Jakarta Post at his family’s home, an old Betawi-style compound built in the 1800s. Moresco refers to a kind of Portuguese dance music with Moorish origins.

“Back in the 1980s, people started to neglect the music,” he said.

Andre’s brother and spokesperson for the IKBT, Arthur J. Michiels, said youngsters at that time were facing a dilemma due to the growing popularity of modern music.

“Youngsters did not want to be associated with keroncong because people thought it was old-fashioned,” he said.

The resurgence of Keroncong Tugu music started when state-owned TV station TVRI aired a show called Gatra Kencana Kebudayaan that showcased traditional culture, which featured Krontjong Toegoe band leader Fernado Quiko lamenting the lack of passion among Tugu’s younger generation towards keroncong.

Seeing the culture dying, Arend J. Michiels, Arthur and Andre’s grandfather, took the initiative by recruiting 15 Tugu youths in 1988 and teaching them about the music.

“1988 was the year of Krontjong Toegoe’s regeneration. However, many left the group except for our family,” Arthur said.

With keroncong an important heritage to preserve, Andre said teaching the younger generation about kerconcong was crucial.

“There was dissent about nurturing keroncong between the old and young generations,” Arthur said, adding that the older generation wanted keroncong to stay pure, without any modern influence.

“That didn’t work for the youth, so we taught our children to sing modern songs with keroncong rhythms.” Arthur then invited his elementary school-aged niece Juliete Angela Ermestina Michiels to sing one of Jason Mraz’s song with a keroncong rhythm.

Juliete, who is in fourth grade, does not only sing modern songs; she also sings old keroncong songs in Portuguese, Dutch and Malay with her friends in Mardijkers, a children’s band that plays keroncong.

“I sing keroncong because I also want to help preserve our culture,” she said. “If I don’t continue singing keroncong, who else will? So many kids now only like pop songs.”

The first Tugu descendant can be traced to 1641 in Malacca in present-day Malaysia, before the Dutch took over and made the Portuguese their slaves and took them to Batavia, now Jakarta.

In 1653, the Dutch freed their Portuguese slaves and termed them mardijkers (free men), after their conversion from Roman Catholicism to the Dutch Reform Church.

“History tells us the Dutch gave us a plot of land here [in Tugu], but that did not happen,” Arthur said. “Out great-grandparents fled Batavia because they could not stand Dutch colonialism. So we moved here, the place we call Tugu.” (map)