From Goa to Jakarta, via Malacca

Tugu, the distant sound of «fate»

Pedro Rosa Mendes

It happens sometimes that human communities last longer than their own inscriptions in stone. In present-day Tugu, North Jakarta, Indonesia, a small but lively «village» is held together by music and memory, in the same area where once stood the mark of the first Europeans on record to set foot in Java.

«We are here for more than three centuries», says Andre Michiels, welcoming the visitor as much as asserting a place in History that transcends his biological-, and in a way his social-, self. «We», for him and his family and community, refers today to some 350 families of Portuguese-Indian-Malay descent.

It's a fine «DNA» of stories, a patch of heritage woven together with myth and a renewed drive to search for something unique – partly real, partly imaginary for these small community diluted in 18 million people of modern Jakarta.

One gets to Tugu through the traffic chaos of the Indonesian capital: a two-hour drive from Central Jakarta, in a good day. The Tugu Community Center is almost invisible by the side of a road filled with spare parts shaks, motorbike mechanics, construction entrepots and cargo compounds, like the one run by Michiels family.

Andre still lives not far from the Eighteenth Century church, in the house bought in the turn of the Twentieth Century by his father. The house, literally under siege of lorries and trailers parked all around, is a small island itself of Old Java, small, trimmed in wood. Over the front door, guarding the porch, is a blue-faded old portrait of President Sukarno, the founder of independent Indonesia.

«We are here for more than three centuries», repeats Artur, Andre's brother, who helps him run the truck company. The Michiels underline their longevity in time, in that place, as much as their community stress an identity as a group that links directly with the 1600's.

Disparate streams of History, originating from the fabulous constellation of the Malay Archipelago, come together in Tugu. That sediment of time is obvious from the first approach, in particular faces and features like Andre's, in music and instruments, in language creolized and franchised, in religious forms and rituals, in traces and – of course – legends that make up a sense of an identity.

The community in Tugu, as Andre Michiels proudly explains in Indonesian, has its origins in the fall of Malacca - for more than a century, a strategic Portuguese commercial outpost in Southeast Asia - to the Dutch, in 1641.

Some Portuguese-Indian «mestiços», mostly Catholics from Goan descent, escaped from Malacca to an island in the Straights, but continued to be subject to religious persecution. With the help of the Portugeesche Binnenkerk in Batavia, the community was eventually allowed by the Dutch authorities to settle in Tugu, in exchange for their conversion to the Dutch Reformed Church.

Another upstream in History is symbolically relevant to the Tugu community in the present. It was in Sunda Kelapa – Jakarta – that the Portuguese first set foot in Java, in 1512, as described by the Portuguese apothecary Tomé Pires, that took part in the expedition.

It was not before 1522 that the Hindu king of Pajajaran managed to get military assistance from the Portuguese in Malacca and to sign a commercial agreement for the pepper trade. The Luso-Sundanese Treaty of Sunda Kelapa was signed and signalled by the Portuguese by a memory stone, called «padrão», an engraved pillar. Not far from the original place of the «padrão» was the site of the Prasasti Tugu, the oldest stone with inscriptions in Java, from the Fifth century, with two lines in Sanskrit written in Pallava script.

The wealth of History in the Northern shores of Jakarta becomes more obvious in Tugu through a particular style of music, the Keroncong (Krontjong) Tugu (or Toegoe, in the old Dutch spelling).

«The keroncong is our soul and our art», tells Andre Michiels, taking an old vinyl record out of a shelf in his office, on the back of the oily lorry park he overseas from his window. «This was my father», explains Andre, pointing to the cover photo, where a short man conducts his orchestra, all dressed in elegant white long shirts and sarongs.

The Michiels brothers learned to play and sing the keroncong as early as they remember. And they still play it, with the ensemble of the Tugu community.

The main instrument is the one that gives the genre it's name: the keroncong is a ukulele, like the Portuguese «cavaquinho», exported since the Fifteenth century to the Atlantic islands of Cabo Verde and Madeira, the Americas or the Pacific – as far as Hawai'i.

The Michiels sit to play. «We have three songs in the old language», Andre goes on, «it's the ones left from the language of Malacca». In fact, part of the repertoire of the Keroncong Tugu still has lyrics and words from the «christang» spoken in the Malay Peninsula long after the fall of Malacca.

As for the music, experts like Victor Ganap, that made his PhD in Gadjah Mada University about the Keroncong Tugu, speak of a blend of Malay and Portuguese traditions, that for many people sound like a lost breed of «fado» (fate, the Portuguese «national» music) and have colors of Latin-African creole musical forms – a distant echo of Cape Verdean «mornas» resurfaces in the more melancholic and romantic «tugus».

«In 1935, noted keroncong musician Kusbini composed the 'Krontjong Moresco', an adaptation of the 'Moresco' variant by Manusama, which led to the existing 'Keroncong Asli'. In 1940, another keroncong musician, Gesang, composed 'Bengawan Solo', a strophic song form which led to the 'Langgam Keroncong', both of which are now considered Indonesian musical mainstays», wrote Victor Ganap in the «Jakarta Post» in 2006.

Through keroncong and its mellow and layed-back moods, the Tugu community flows back to yet another genealogical branch: the Iberian Arabic musical tradition.

This wide and distant geography allowed the curious popularity of the keroncong tugu during the resistance to the Dutch colonial rule and the emergence of the Indonesian Nationalism: coming from such a small community as Tugu, the keroncong didn't belong to any of the big nations of the country – hence it could be everyone's «national» song.

Andre Michiels is proud that the identity of a small village can resound to the whole Indonesian nation.

«What holds us together in Tugu is the fact that we originate from Malacca», sums up Andre Michials after showing his talent in the ukulele. «We were all still here until 1950, the year when many of the community, Christians, fled the troubles to Holland, Papua and Suriname, until 1965».

«Many are still in Holland», says Andre.

The «padrão» of Sunda Kelapa is the property of the National Museum in Jakarta, and can be seen there as a monument to one of those crucial encounters of West and East that shaped the History of the Archipel. Somehow, though, it's just a memory put to rest. The past lives on, with warmer blood, in the small Tugu «village».