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In an alternate universe Jokowi and Blinken could have talked about Slank, Chrisye
But for all music fans, the symbolism is too powerful to ignore.
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President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo (right) meets United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken (center) and US ambassador for Indonesia Sung Kim at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta, in a photo taken on Dec. 13. (AFP/Agus Suparto/Presidential Office)
I
t could have been staged, or perhaps the portrait had been there for some time and the shot was one of those moments of serendipity in politics.
But for all music fans, the symbolism is too powerful to ignore.
In a picture distributed by the Presidential Palace to the media, visiting United States Secretary of States Antony Blinken can be seen paying his respects to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. Both are wearing masks and behind the President is a painting of a bespectacled man holding a violin.
The man in the painting is none other than Wage Rudolf Supratman, arguably one of the country’s greatest music composers and the genius behind the country’s national anthem "Indonesia Raya".
There is no better background to frame a very important meeting, geopolitically, between two music fans.
For music obsessives like us, there is nothing that gives us more joy than seeing our kind occupying some of the highest positions in politics.
There is something intriguing about having people with certain musical sensibilities being handed the job of mediating peace, starting a war or ending poverty or the pandemic.
