Project 365

I had a great day at Pasar Malam Asia last Sunday. We played a total of 9 Indonesian songs with angklung. The last song played was called "Poco-Poco" and for the fun of it, I took part in dancing poco-poco with other mostly middle-aged dancers and audience. Yes, you can see me with the red kebaya and red headscarf struggling to do the right steps there in the video LOL. It was fun though! 🙂

Poco-poco dance is a line dance which is very popular in Indonesia and other SE Asian countries. The dance is usually accompanied by the song of the same name, which was written by an Ambonese, Arie Sapulette, and was popularized by an Indonesian singer, Yopie Latul. There are much speculations of where the dance came from. Some say it was originated from Moluccas and some say it was from Northern Sulawesi.

The dance became even more popular when it was recently declared as haram (forbidden) by the mufti in Perak, Malaysia. What can I say? If you want to declare poco-poco dance as haram, then you should declare all sorts of dances as haram too. It’s so inconsistent. Anyway…

People here are crazy about poco-poco! I’ve seen them (read: Indo-Dutch people) dancing in every Pasar Malam (*) events in the country. They’d dance poco-poco no matter what sort of songs is currently played.

* Pasar Malam means night market (literally) and is directly associated with Asian or Indonesian event. The “night market” itself doesn’t necessarily open only at night. Most Pasar Malam(s) in the Netherlands have Asian food stalls and music performances. The event is organized in many cities in the Netherlands.

Source:

• Origins of Poco-poco: Jamaican, Christian or just Indonesian?
• Poco Poco dan Sejarahnya

Glad it’s over! Phew. Finally I can take a rest a little bit. Our performance at the Festival Muziek op de Dommel was the biggest one so far, targeting the Dutch public audience, instead of Indonesians or students. We didn’t get to perform at the main stage, but hopefully next year we would be able to perform there!!

On that day, we all gathered in the chapel nearby the festival to do our last rehearsal before our performance. Then we walked from the chapel to the venue.

It was so hot on that day! We were all grumpy waiting for the performance at the main stage to finish. We were behind the schedule.

The cutest loyal angklung supporters who never failed to attend the rehearsals right from the beginning 🙂

Conclusion: it was a great performance! I really enjoyed it. The audience seemed to enjoy it too coz we got 2 offers to perform again. Yay!

Photos courtesy of Angga and Xuchen.

Here’s the video of one of our performances, playing Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky.

Visit https://www.facebook.com/AngklungEindhoven for more videos!

These are some of the points that Sheikh Hamza Yusuf said about hijaab:

Nobody can say anybody is going to hell by not wearing a hijab. The hijab is shar’i — there’s no doubt about that. It’s not traditional. It’s part of our deen.

Women that don’t wear hijab, they’re in the state of ma’siyyat. All of us are in the state of ma’siyyat. We don’t do a lot of things that we should be doing (i.e. giving money, etc). The women taking off the hijab is only the symptom of a much bigger disease. If they choose to not wear them, that is their choice.

Muslims should get out of this obsession with women! It’s a sickness in our own hearts.

If the sisters are not wearing the hijab, her husband should be responsible for that. He own family should give her nasihat. Just lower your gaze.

We are living in the society where people walking around naked. And we are worried about somebody not wearing scarf on her head?!

A lot of Muslim men make it a hijab between women and their imaan. Not all of you are acting like sahabah and yet, you want the women to act like sahabiyat.

I challenge any of you to wear a robe and a turban one day out here. Just go and experience what it’s like to be identified as a Muslim. When you wear something that identify you as a Muslim, that itself is putting yourself in their face.

And for women it’s a lot harder. Because they have stereotypes that they are stupid, backward, ignorant — that’s the message that they’ve been given. They get stares and get laugh at.

We should have more compassion for our sisters! The reason why a lot of women are leaving Islam is because we’re chasing them out of Islam! We should have mercy on our sisters, defend them and protect them. Because they’re out there on the front line.

— Sheikh Hamza Yusuf

One of my most favorite piano songs. It gives me shiver every time I listen to it. If a guy played this song for me with a piano, oh I would probably be kissing his feet!!! HAHAHAHA. Of course, I’m exaggerating. But this song is my weakness. Thankfully it’s a hard song to play :P. Unless you have a kind of bond or connection with the song, it’d be hard to play it with the right tempo. This is definitely going to be in my wedding. LOL.

Our recent performance at a charity event in a small city of Best, which is only few minutes by train from Eindhoven.

I think we did a great job playing this song! 🙂 Many of the notes need to be played longer though. But I hope we can play it perfectly next month! 2 more songs to practice, then we’re ready for the Festival Muziek op de Dommel! Can’t wait!

I’ve always been a fan of Hans Zimmer, a composer of many great movie soundtracks, ranging from The Lion King, Pearl Harbor, Pirates of The Caribbean series, Da Vinci Code, Inception, and The Dark Night.

He’s one of the greatest composers of all time! Every time I listen to the Lion King’s song "To Die For", I can clearly picture the time when Simba’s dad is killed. Both the scenes and the song are so emotional! 🙁

I’ve been listening to the soundtracks of The Pirates of The Caribbean these days. I LOVE THEM! The violin sound mixed with some rock elements… Just GREAT! He seriously needs to have a concert of his own!

I’m so proud of our angklung team! We have recently got "accepted" to perform at Muziek Op Dommel!!! This is a free orchestra concert which has the stage located by the Dommel River. I watched last year’s concert and it was AWESOME! This will be our first performance at a festival where a number of nationally-acclaimed musical ensemble will take part!!! Woooow, such an achievement! I hope we’ll be able to perform at the main stage!!! 🙂

Meanwhile, here are our most recent performances, playing The Blue Danube (Johann Strauss) and Indonesian traditional songs (medley).

I stumbled upon this song by Rossa. This is just a really sad song. I watched her performance singing this song and it was sooo emotional. I cried my eyes out. Damn, it’s been a long time ago, yet the memory is still fresh on my mind.

How I wish you never did it.

This was our performance in Delft, a small city near Den Haag. With only FOUR days of practice (two hour each), we played it really well, I must say. In this video, we performed a Sundanese traditional song called Pileuleuyan.

We’ve got a number of performances lining up for March and April! Excited 🙂

I can’t believe I was complaining about the rain today, while thousands of people in Queensland have to go through one of the worst flood disasters in decades! I feel so selfish! 🙁

I want to share with you a great reporting video, showing how Brisbane was transformed into a sea. This is filmed mostly in Coronation Drive, a long road along the Brisbane River. You can see how high the water was. My alma mater, the University of Queensland, is seen badly flooded. It’s sad to see this video :(.

One of the comments on the video cracked me up!!!

johan: Great video! But where are the kangaroos?

xblghasm: they’ve become obselete because you can’t ride a kangaroo to work now because of the floods. We’re all riding sharks.

Steer clear of the stereotypes.

LOL!!!! 😀