Here's an album from Sandra Reemer, the Dutch-Indonesian singer who passed away a while ago, singing songs in Bahasa Indonesia, the album title translates as The Queen Of The Pop World From The Netherlands and she's working with some of the bigger pop musicians from the 70's like A. Ryanto, Is Haryanto, Harry Toos, Joko S. and Rinto Harahap....
Here are three songs from an Indonesian hip hop crew from Yogyakarta, Calludra, they were active in the early 2000's.... I'm also including an unreleased track from an Indonesian rapper named Kenji, I did some tracks with him way back when he was living in the USA....
Here's a jazz album from the Irama Special Trio which is Nick Mamahit on piano, Espehana on drums and Risakotta on bass... Got this one without a cover so I got a pic from the net....
Gambang Kromong is a kind of traditional music made by the people from Betawi (Jakarta) but in Semarang in Middle Java they play it in their own style which is totally gamelan based and they call it Gambang Semaarang. Here's a fine example....
Lovely kecapi cassette, it doesn't say anywhere who the artists are..... Had a very busy week, going to a festival the last few days here in Bandung, among other acts my friends from Samba Sunda and I've been to their practice sessions too, not much time for blogging and the next few weeks.... well... let's not get into that, but they will be quiet busy too I'm afraid.... I'll do my best to keep posting stuff in the mean time, plenty of stuff to share....
Here's an ep from Huang Miao Ling and The Silverstones.... And thanks to Zopa Zay and the person who does Scaresounds for letting me know who the singer is....
Zhou Xuan (August 1, 1918 – September 22, 1957), also romanized as Chow Hsuan, was an iconic Chinese singer and film actress. By the 1940s, she had become one of China's seven great singing stars.
She was the best known of the seven, nicknamed the "Golden Voice", and had a concurrent movie career until 1953. She recorded more than 200 songs and appeared in over 40 films in her career...
Zhou was born Su Pu (蘇璞), but was separated from her natural parents at a young age and raised by adoptive parents. She spent her entire life searching for her biological parents but her parentage was never established until after her death.
According to later family research, a relative who was an opium addict took her at the age of 3 to another city and sold her to a family named Wang, who named her Wang Xiaohong. She was later adopted by a family named Zhou, changing her name to Zhou Xiaohong.
At the age of 13, she took Zhou Xuan as her stage name, 'Xuan' (璇) meaning beautiful jade in Chinese.
n 1932, Zhou began acting as a member of Li Jinhui's Bright Moon Song and Dance Troupe. When she was fourteen, she won second prize in a singing contest in Shanghai and was given the nickname "Golden Voice" (金嗓子) for her effortless high-pitched melodies.[2]
Zhou began her film career in 1935, and she achieved stardom in 1937 when director Yuan Muzhi cast her as one of the leads as a singing girl in Street Angel. Zhou rapidly became the most famous and marketable popular singer in the gramophone era up to her death, singing many famous tunes from her own movies.
Between 1946 and 1950, she often went to Hong Kong to make films such as "All-Consuming Love" (長相思), "Hua wai liu ying" (花外流鶯), "Qinggong mishi" (清宮秘史), and "Rainbow Song" (彩虹曲). After introducing "Shanghai Nights" (夜上海) in 1949, Zhou returned to Shanghai. She spent the next few years in and out of a mental institutions owing to frequent breakdowns. Through the years, Zhou led a complicated and unhappy life marked by her failed marriages, illegitimate children, and suicide attempts. Zhou's first husband was the composer Yan Hua (严华, 1912-1992), who wrote and sometimes also performed songs with her.
Having made a total of 43 movies, her favourite film was always Street Angel. This contained two theme songs: "Four Seasons Song" (四季歌) and "The Wandering Songstress", which enjoyed long-lasting popularity. Other well-known songs by Zhou Xuan include "When Will You Return?", "Shanghai Nights" (title song from the film of the same name), "Yellow Leaves Dancing in Autumn Wind" (黃葉舞秋風), "Forever Smile" (永遠的微笑), "Hundred Flower Song" (百花歌), "Advice" (叮嚀), "Where Can the Soul Mate be Found" (知音何處尋), and "Picking Betel Nuts" (採檳榔).
In 1957 she died in Shanghai in a mental asylum at the age of 39 during the Anti-Rightist Movement. A possible cause of death may be encephalitis following a nervous breakdown.....
Unfortuanely the first song is missing because of damage to the lp....
Nice dangdut cassette from Nisya Laila and another Rhoma Irama impersonator, Zeny Rusman, just listen to him singing, it's Rhoma Irama all the way... Nonetheless, this is some pretty good dangdut music....
Well... I did an interview, quiet a while ago, about blogging, collecting Indonesian music etc., came out this week and Dwi Sugiyanto made a nice drawing of me :) Thought it would be nice to post it here:
Here are three records from Poon Sow Keng and thanks to Zopa Zay for letting m,e know that this is her :) These are cool records, you've got the lighter pop songs that are very close to Chinese traditional music, you've got a nice cover from the 60's hit song Oh Carol sung in Chinese and you've got the sultry songs that were sung in dark and smokey Hong Kong nightclubs in the 50's and 60's.... Like I said, I can't find any info about Phan Siu Cin but I imagine that she, like so many of her peers, came from main-land China where Mao's insane and very bloody Cultural Revolution was in full "swing"... The times when having a book, a record or even a simple painting on the wall could get you beaten to death while Mao himself surrounded himself with as many books, records and paintings as he could get his hands on, hidden away in one of those horrid bunkers he would have build, often destroying beautiful historical building to make place for these monstrosities....
