The Indonesian

This is an important album. Back then this album was far ahead of time. It recorded the awesomeness of our jazz fathers, the inspiring figures who helped to shape our jazz scene today. This recording also stands as a living historical evidence not only for Indonesian jazz journey, but also in global jazz scene. For more than 4 decades it was really difficult to find and very expensive, but now you can have it in remastered in 88.2 kHz.

Indonesia and jazz? Not so far-fetched! Improvisation is a part of traditional gamelan, and modal playing goes back 1000 years; jazz began seriously delving into modes with Miles Davis in the 1950’s. Clarinet icon Tony Scott proselytized jazz during his six-year sojourn in Asia, and in so doing brought Asian music masters, including players on this album, into the jazz world.

Highly detailed and colourful, this account illustrates the struggle of Indonesian forces in their War of Independence against the Netherlands, following the surrender of occupying Japanese forces in 1945.