In his early 20s, Goenawan Mohamad examined the weight of a love letter.

“Bukankah surat cinta ini ditulis/ditulis ke arah siapa saja/seperti hujan yang jatuh ritmis/menyentuh arah siapa saja” (Isn’t this love letter written/ written for everyone/like the rain falling rhythmically/touching everybody in its wake) he wrote in the poem Surat Cinta (Love Letter).

A few words later, he conceded its existence in the finite world; a love letter is “like a tired desert”.

These disjointed themes of love and despair, friendship and enmity, light and darkness, have permeated the 75-yearold poet’s work since half a century ago. You may know Goenawan Mohamad as the founder of Tempo magazine, a political and literary powerhouse. Today, his work exists in books and online blogs.

Read also: Goenawan Mohamad's great visual adventure

AriReda, the contemporary folk duo comprising guitarist/singer Ari Malibu and singer/writer Reda Gaudiamo, breathed new life into his work, shedding new light in the otherwise antiquated appreciation of his poetry — the way they did for Sapardi Djoko Damono, Sudarto Bachtiar and other Indonesian poets — two records, a six-city tour and many other shows ago. Those two records were Becoming Dew (2007) and AriReda Menyanyikan Puisi (2015). To give an overview of the music of AriReda, think of a quiet hall, the duo’s entwined voices reverberating — equal parts hums, equal parts murmurs. These two, bathed in a subdued light, sing devotional poetry to a captive, smiling audience. Think of the joy in solitude, think of a church and its congregation. Now its new album (out in March),

Suara dari Jauh, consists of Goenawan’s poems set to hushed guitar and soothing vocals and boy is it great to know that the band is still going.

AriReda’s operated in this mode since 1988 (after forming in 1982, back when Ari and Reda were still in their early 20s) — avoiding the strained rhymes and meters of a poem to fit into the mold of a song. They have always selected the poems with care and grace.

And it’s no different now. This brand new collection is, to be honest, not a progression or even anything different from the previous two albums. But instead of sliding into comfort, they slid into sui generis — forging the fight again, whether consciously or not (I can’t really tell), to bring relevance into the rich world of Indonesian poetry.

And that’s okay. With Suara dari Jauh (recorded in Yogyakarta last year), they succeed once again — nothing about their music sounds derivative or even grating as these albums can get with less consideration.

As Reda, with her elastic voice, sings the songs, Goenawan is here at once, revealing the obscene and the guarded through his poetry. Z, Goenawan’s poem from 1971, sounds meditative and calming. Suara dari Jauh works as a balm and it’s a little at odds with the heaviness of Goenawan’s poetry.

“Malam Yang Susut Kelabu” (The Night that Shrinks Gloomily), which deals with the lover and its receding voice, is one of AriReda’s darkest entries and so is “Kwatrin Musim Kelabu [IV]” (The 4-Parter Poem of Gloom (IV)), a song which lends the album its title.

Featherweight guitar and light vocals are AriReda’s most reliable strength. To have them give new life in the breathtaking poetry of Goenawan Mohamad is priceless at best. And now listening to it leaves me captive to its magic, reminding me of a tapestry full of light and darkness all at once, as church bells often do.

Popular

PDI-P will likely be part of opposition: Ganjar

Indonesia one step from Olympics after beating South Korea

Bahlil leads task force to boost sugar, bioethanol production in Papua