As the longest-running a cappella group in Indonesia, Jamaica Cafe has seen little change in the music scene at home.

The a capella group apparently receives greater appreciation abroad.

“Public appreciation of a cappella music is poor compared to what we have witnessed in other countries,” said lead vocalist Prihartono “Anton” Mirzaputra.

Performers have taken pity on them at the many international events they have attended, according to tenor vocalist Enrico “Iko” Simangunsong.

“They had even gone as far as to say that we were born in the wrong country,” he added.

Some of the comments are not altogether unsubstantiated considering how few purely vocal groups there are today, despite the hype over musical TV series Glee followed by the Pitch Perfect movie sequels.

Jamaica Cafe was established in 1991 by a group of friends at Gonzaga high school in South Jakarta. Prior to forming the group, the friends had already been singing together for years.

The name was selected as a salute to the origins of reggae — the genre of music they preferred to sing at the time — and café, the school canteen where they once gathered after school to jam.

The headmaster of the all-boys school later asked them to perform “the songs you all sing in the canteen” at a school event, the performance that ignited the group.

While they had started with 15 to 20 members, by 1996 the group had retained only six; Anton, in charge of baritone and falsetto vocals as well percussion sound; Iko on tenor vocal; Michael “Biyik” da Lopez in charge of second baritone vocals; Pambudi “Bayu” Bayuseno on bass and Jimmy “Bronx” Ayal on third baritone and falsetto vocals, trumpet and percussion sounds. The sixth member, Hekko Wicaksono (tenor, beat box, trumpet and percussion), while retaining his position in the group, had taken extended leave due to a job relocation to Singapore.

“After all those years it had become easy for us to practice new songs because each of us already knew what to do,” said Anton in an interview with The Jakarta Post.

Moving beyond reggae, the group belted out rock, disco, ethnic and dangdut tunes, exploring the breadth of their sound and vocals at cafes, TV stations and at a variety of outdoor stages in cities across the country.

Their popularity rocketed in early 2000 and in 2004 the group launched their first album, Musik Mulut (Music of the Mouth), an album that found a place at the Indonesian Museum of Records (MURI) for being the first studio album recorded without any musical instruments.

The album consisted of their own songs alongside several popular song renditions, including dangdut king Rhoma Irama’s “Terajana”.

To mark their 21st anniversary, the group released their second album Twenty One in December 2012.

Although Jamaica Cafe had been known to hold mini concerts at the Bentara Budaya art and cultural hall in Central Jakarta, their big-scale concerts were performed at the Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore in February and December 2005.

They returned to Singapore for the A Cappella Festival in 2007 and proceeded to tutor the a cappella technique clinic at several Singaporean schools.

Currently, in between their day jobs as commercial jingle composers and/or vocal talent, the group members have been tutoring modern Islamic vocal groups, or qasidah, in different cities in Indonesia.

The supporters of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) also worked on several collaboration projects with Indonesian and world musicians, including soul singers Glenn Fredly and Andre Hehanussa, composers Erwin Gutawa and Addie MS, Malaysian rocker Nash, Korean concert pianist Lee Hee-ah and Italian a cappella group Neri Per Caso as well as their Japanese counterpart INSPi.

Jamaica Cafe’s performance with the latter group caught the attention of Min On, a non-government organization focusing on Japan-Indonesian cultural exchange and development.

The organization then held six mid-March concerts in five cities in Japan featuring the two groups, each performing the other country’s folk songs.

Jamaica Cafe performed “Hana wa Saku” (Flowers will Bloom), a commemoration song for the earthquake disaster in 2004, and “Ue o Muite Aruko” (I Look Up as I Walk), internationally known as the Sukiyaki song.

Jamaica Cafe’s sixth member Hekko joined them for the concerts staged in Tokyo, Chiba, Nagano, Aichi and Mie.

“The concerts were professionally managed and we were well taken care of,” said Bayu, explaining how Anton, who has physical disabilities, had enjoyed the public facilities in those cities.

The five members shared excitement at the full-house concerts while joking in the manner of old friends.

“The stage director said it would be impossible to get the audience to stand up from their seats but we managed to make them dance,” said Iko, a technical contractor for state power company PLN.

“We even surprised the organizer by adding a local folk song to the playlist unannounced. We had begun to practice it upon our arrival in the city”.

To celebrate 25 years in the music industry, Jamaica Cafe plan to hold an anniversary concert later this year.

“As musicians, we bear the responsibility of introducing various music genres to the public by providing an increasing number of well-organized and accessible events. The more concerts they attend, the better their appreciation of music”.

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