An Exhibition of Indonesian Music Archives throughout the 1960s
Last Saturday(16/9) at the Museum of National Awakening, Jakarta, the exhibition Dari Ngak Ngik Ngok ke Dheg Dheg Plas was officially opened to the public. This exhibition was held as one of an array of programs by Rangkaian Irama, a celebration of the ten years of Irama Nusantara. This collaborative exhibition between Irama Nusantara, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology displayed a number of Indonesian music archives dating from 1960 to 1969 and is based on the print publication from a collaboration between Irama Nusantara with Binatang Press! published back in 2021.
In the exhibition area, the flow was designed to take the visitor on the journey of Indonesia’s music history, from the era of the Soekarno administration to the early days of the New Order. The exhibition showcased all sorts of achievements and challenges faced by the Indonesian music industry at the time. In line with the book Dari Ngak Ngik Ngok ke Dheg Dheg Plas, this exhibition was designed using a similar artistic, color, and typographic approach to said publication. Besides the visual aspect, the exhibition also presents an auditory experience by providing headphones that visitors are welcomed to use to listen to a variety of Indonesian music from the sixties.
When considering the background of the event, the pandemic had a massive impact on the running of Irama Nusantara’s operations resulting in many activities being delayed, including the initial idea of this very exhibition. Gerry Apriyan, Irama Nusantara’s program manager, regaled, “We actually wanted to hold this exhibition at the same time as the [book] launch. So the initial plan was to release the book in 2020, but then COVID happened.” Gradually, Irama Nusantara was able to recover enough to release the print publication and now celebrate their first decade through an array of events. “Alhamdulillah, we were able to get support from the ministry to celebrate ten years of Irama Nusantara. We weren’t trying to create something new in a big way, but what we’ve done in the past ten years, we just wanted to present that in this Rangkaian Irama event,” he added.
Gerry explained that the curatorial process began from the abundance of music history archival data which was channeled into a variety of media. “First, from gathering data, we felt like it could become a good story to be turned into a cohesive piece of knowledge. Eventually, we made a book. [When going] from a book to an exhibition, we gathered so much data during our research but books are limited as a printed format. We couldn’t put everything in there. So, we wanted to provide an expanded experience through the exhibition with people visiting and listening [to the music] one at a time,” he explained.
Through this exhibition Irama Nusantara hopes that visitors will not only feel the euphoria of the first decade celebration but to also broaden their horizons in regard to the history and archiving of Indonesian music. The Dari Ngak Ngik Ngok ke Dheg Dheg Plas exhibition is open for visit until the 15th of October at the Museum of National Awakening with an entry ticket price of Rp2,000.
