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Sound: Pygmy Marmoset - '€œDuo promotes environmental conservation'€

Words and photos Luh De Suriyani“[…] Di bawah daunnya, manusia berlomba menulis sejarah dunia

The Jakarta Post
Thu, January 14, 2016 Published on Jan. 14, 2016 Published on 2016-01-14T15:15:03+07:00

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Sound: Pygmy Marmoset - '€œDuo promotes environmental conservation'€

Words and photos Luh De Suriyani

'€œ['€¦] Di bawah daunnya, manusia berlomba menulis sejarah dunia. Di bawah rantingnya, tertawa dan menyeka air mata. Dia menemani setiap musim berganti. Dia kekasih sang bumi.'€

(Under the leaves, human beings race to write world history. Under the twigs, they laugh and wipe their tears. He accompanies every changing season. He is the lover of the Earth.)

These lyrics are taken from a song entitled '€œCerita tentang Pohon'€ (A Tale of the Tree) composed and sung by Pygmy Marmoset (Pygmos), a duo from Bali that teams Sanjaya Adi Putra (guitarist and vocalist) with Zenith Syahrani (lead vocalist, glockenspiel and melodica player). The duo recently performed in a music store in Denpasar, where they launched their first video music clip '€œCerita tentang Pohon'€.

The duo took its name from the endangered pygmy marmoset, the smallest monkey and one of the smallest primates in the world, weighing just 100 grams. They live mostly in the rainforests of the Western Amazon basin in South America. The duo has a mission to raise people'€™s awareness of the danger of this animal becoming extinct.

Around 100 music lovers attended the mini concert in a 75-seat capacity room. Despite the hot and crowded room, most in the audience were excited to listen to the music and songs with strong lyrics and messages on environmental awareness.

The video clip, produced and directed by Ayu Pamungkas and Denny Chrisna, has also successfully increased awareness of environmental damage through sophisticated video-making skills showing the silhouettes of the two band members against a background of moving images of trees, fires and stunning landscape, clearly portraying the Earth'€™s dire situation.

Chrisna emphasized the double exposure technique. '€œThis technique strengthens the meaning and the message of the song lyrics,'€ he explained, saying he had been helped and supported by local photographers who took amazing shots of the Balinese landscape.

In an English language song entitled '€œThose Monsters'€ the duo tries to expose people who irresponsibly exploit the forests. '€œThey are like monsters destroying our forests,'€ said Zenith, the lead vocalist, who was a kindergarten teacher.

The simple stories enrich songs such as '€œGood Morning Zoo'€, '€œLittle Short Conversation'€ and '€œMerindu'€ (Missing You), all on the duo'€™s maiden album Kabar dari Hutan (A News from the Forest), released last year.

Pygmy Marmoset deliberately release limited albums to make their music more personal and enriched by their artistic talents. Their CDs are personally wrapped in brown envelopes and also contain a sheet of paper full of Sanjaya'€™s sketches and Zenith'€™s drawings.

During the recent concert, Sanjaya and Zenith introduced their most recent singles '€“ '€œKuko the Bird'€ and '€œCerita Senja'€ (Twilight Story), which are also about their environmental concerns. '€œCerita Senja'€ invites listeners to praise nature'€™s beauty as the sun sets while '€œKuko the Bird'€ is about the bird'€™s desire for revenge on the forest'€™s destroyers.

'€œMy name is Kuko the bird. I live on a tree. I live there with my happy family, brothers, sisters and granny. But I have to move from one tree to another, because the trees are gone, they'€™re [all] gone, one by one.

It'€™s the monsters who took our trees, they'€™ve cut them down, down, down, down. Now they have planted new concrete trees, they grow fast, but have no branches or leaves. I think I should move from one sea to another one to find new land that is safe and has no more monsters around.

My granny said to me, one day we will fight back, we won'€™t let them take the trees away from us anymore.'€

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