So I keep my promise ! Rather late .. but hey ...
Who would have guessed that my first music for the film would be for a film about football ? I was baffled when the Indonesian film director Andibachtiar Yusuf approached me earlier this year to ask me to score the music for his "Romeo*Juliet". Yes, you got it right. But instead of Montague and Capulet, it is the Jakarta against the Bandung football fanclubs. The confrontation between them goes back to many decades, and when it happens, they are notorious for being violent. People got killed during their fights. So, you can guess how the story goes ...
... which reminds me, inevitably, of WestSide Story. It IS difficult not to have that masterpiece as a reference ! But Yusuf's film is not a musical film, so my job is a bit easier. Oh, I forgot to tell you that he wanted me and only me for this job, because of his huge crush on my duet from the cantata Ars Amatoria "Dalam Doaku" (In my Prayer). Definitely that song became an important part of the film ; in fact, the film revolved around that song. Yusuf was (is, and always will be) a great fan of rock music, and he has never fancied any kind of classical (read : soft, boring) music. But I am dubiously flattered when he discovered through my music that classical music is not that bad! Something is definitely very wrong with my music, or ... ?
For the film, I used other songs ("Kasih" and "Ketika Kau Entah Dimana", which happens to be my favorite amongst my songs) of mine, recently released in the CD "Ananda Sukarlan Vocal Works" for that film as well, besides writing quite a lot of new materials purely instrumental. So you can hear the voices of Bernadeta Astari and Joseph Kristanto in that film once in a while blasting from the cinema loudspeakers. The motifs I use for the whole soundtrack are taken from the hymn of both football clubs, and I just make some variations out of them, according to the situation which it accompanies.
This version of Romeo*Juliet is very Indonesian. I mean, the unromantic oriental type of love. Passionate, but unromantic. There is even no balcony scene in the whole film! I was quite confused when I read the script, but when I received the rough cut of the film, I honestly was pretty impressed. And I was quite inspired after I watched the rough cut. I decided that I don't have to escape from my musical style ; the film is very, very Indonesian in many ways, so that my "western" musical style would just compliment it without "stealing the show" as they say. As Aaron Copland said about writing music for films : "The best film music is the one you don't notice". In other words, you can hear it, but you don't listen to it.
The film is due to be shown in cinemas 21 throughout Indonesia starting late March 2009.
