Exclusive Interview with CHASEIRO
Saturday, May 6, 1978. It was the day when a vocal harmony group consisted of talented young college students from different majors at Universitas Indonesia (UI) won the competition held by Amigos Radio. It was the beginning of a group that later emerged as one of the milestones in Indonesian music history, known as CHASEIRO.
A few months after that, they appeared at the very first Jazz Goes to Campus, one of the oldest annual festival in the world that is still running until now. Jazz Goes to Campus, or better known as JGTC is the event that was inspired by Candra Darusman, one of Chaseiro’s own personnel. Again, it was memorable, as how it was still remembered by many of their fans. From that moment, the path seemed to be opened smoothly for them. Jack Lesmana, the legendary jazz icon of Indonesia brought them to appear on national television, in the famous show “Nada dan Improvisasi”. And soon after that, Chaseiro made their way into the recording and released their debut album entitled “Pemuda” in 1979.
The name CHASEIRO was made by the combination of the personnel’s name. Candra Darusman (keyboard, vocal), Helmi Indrakesuma (vocal), Aswin Sastrowardojo (guitar,vocal), Edi Hudioro (flute), Irwan Indrakesuma (vocal), Rizali Indrakesuma (bass,vocal) and Omen (Norman Sonisontani) (vocal). They were fresh. Strong in vocal harmony and lyrics, combining the elements of many popular western music group at that time such as The Manhattan Transfer, Earth Wind and Fire for the vocal style, and took Brazilian bossa style from Sergio Mendes and the likes of him for their music pattern, along with some country folk or the vintage Indonesian pop style in the 70’s and of course heavily influenced by jazz. The social and political criticisms were brilliantly delivered through ear-friendly and catchy musics, also some very inspirational songs like their evergreen hit, “Pemuda” that urges all the youth to join hand and start doing something good for their country.
More than 30 years have passed, and now Chaseiro has become a legendary group that is still loved dearly by their fans. The songs are still played, sung, and adored. The lyrics are still relevant. Ageless and everlasting. And what amazing is, they are still around, full of energy. The spirit is still there, so is the passion, the quality stays just like how they were back then, 3 decades ago. A new album of Chaseiro is coming soon, showing how big their commitment to contribute something for our own music development. Chaseiro still has many things to say, there are still many messages need to be sent, and we are sure Chaseiro will still be around for many years to come.
It was late in the evening and it was drizzling, still, around Bumi Sangkuriang. Jazz Break Revival XVIII was just ended. Yet some personnels of Chaseiro did not look tired at all. In fact, they were looking fresh, even after the show, and still kindly welcomed a moment to get some questions from us. It’s amazing that the 7o’s idol still could amuse and quench the thirst of fans that night. Some fans even came all the way from many cities outside Bandung upon hearing that their favourite band ,who made everyone reminish the groovy and classy tunes they used to hear in the seventies or eighties, would perform again. At first we did the interview with Omen Norman Soni Sontani, but later Irwan B Indrakesuma joined the conversation together with Aswin Sastrowardoyo. Here are the excerps of our conversation with the legendary Chaseiro.
First of all, we would like to say thank you for the wonderful night. You guys were amazing, you brought back all the memories again tonight.. but most of all we are grateful that Chaseiro is finally back again.
Thank you..we’re happy to perform here in Bandung again, after… like 30 years ago! As far as I recall, the last time we appeared here was in 1978 something..
Let’s go back to the time when you established this band 3 decades ago. What is the idea of forming Chaseiro as a band in the early establishment in the late 70’s?
Well, we came from the repressive situation.. it was when the regime who ruled at that time didn’t let us, the students to express ourselves. We couldn’t give critics openly, but still we really had to say something about the condition. And we thought we could express our minds ellegantly through music.
And Chaseiro was born… it was through a radio competition, Amigos radio to be exact in 1978, followed by your memorable performance at the first Jazz Goes to Campus in 1978. Many people still remember it as clear as yesterday. What was the concept of Chaseiro when it was formed?
We started as a vocal group as a vehicle to deliver what we wanted to say. We actually wanted to be ourselves, to express music in our way though we were also, as other bands in 70’s, influenced by foreign bands like the Beatles, Chicago, Earth Wind and Fire, The Manhattan Transfer and many more. We express music the way it is. As we know, music in the 70’s in Indonesia was dominated by songs of whining lyrics and mellow tunes and Chaseiro would offer a kind of variation.
And of course the latin influenced music style, as many of the songs came out in bossa and samba.. while some of the songs were made in country folk style as well. You gave alternative for music lovers for sure at that time..
Yes, we always thought we came too early.. at that time, our music was considered “too difficult” for many listeners. But then 10 years after, they started to dig it.
Well then… we believe 
what you gave back then was a breakthrough in our music history. Chaseiro really made it to outstand amidst monoutonous music trend at that time. What makes you decide to come back?
Basically, we, the personnel.. are longing to get together again. we actually never have a break since me casually meet one another all the time as good friends…we were, maybe you can just call, hybernating. (laugh). It felt like we were sleeping for a while then we woke up and suddenly realized that Indonesian music has experienced a lot of progress. It (the music industry) is different now.
I remember Chaseiro was totally active only for a couple of years since it was started, from 1978 to 1983 something.. then you were, as you called it, hybernating. What exactly happened at that time?
We were still young at that time, and we all had different plans, idealistically, pursuing our careers in different fields. Even until now, we were busy with our own activities..like Chandra Darusman and Rizali were working overseas and some of us work at diferent places too… that’s why it’s always difficult for us to gather as a complete unit. Though we frequently meet so that we become like true relatives and a true big family. We also frequently have impromptu practice. And basically for us, singing or without singing, we keep on mingling with one another.
From what we see, you haven’t lost anything. The vocal harmony and arrangement is still as prime as you used to be, 3 decades ago. How do you maintain your vocal quality?
Well, we keep on practising.. I think that’s all. As said before, we often meet and when we meet we often practice too..we keep practicing quite hard too.
We heard about Chaseiro preparing a new album. Is it true? Are you planning to enter the recording industry again?
Yes indeed. but we realized that we may have to make some adaptation by mixing our music to suit the recent trend. We think our original music style is somehow too old for the younger generations. Therefore we need to collaborate with some musicians from younger generation who can help us update the modern sense of music into ours. We remake and rearrange some of our songs like “Ceria”, “Pemuda”, “Shy”, “Siapa Dia” and others while we also have new song like “Salah Cinta”. We are assisted by Pongki, Ade Hamzah, and some young talents that you will know soon after the album’s ready.
Let’s talk about the new song you mentioned, “Salah Cinta”. What is the song about?
It’s not an ordinary love song. It is about the definition of love, the kind of love which makes the world peaceful but in reality many people get it wrong.. so many people now tend to just think about mundane pleasures and forget the nature of many things in life.
Interesting. We see you often bring social and political critisms through your lyrics. You made it poetically and ellegantly though, besides some songs of course talked about daily life things like love..
Well, yes it’s true some of our songs convey social message and may be considered either social or political criticisms. We started from campus and we expressed our opinon about social situation through music. And now we have quite similar situation…the youth especially college students react to our nation situation crittically as we did in 1978 when we were activists.
What do you expect from your come back?
We do not intend to influence Indonesian music. We position ourselves simply as part of Indonesian music . As we said before, if you recall, in 70’s many singers and bands brought similar theme of whining songs and Chaseiro came to fill in and offered variation and we were happy to see that entering the 80’s some bands started to fill in our steps, like Kahitna for example and many other talented bands Well, we do not take our come back as burden that we have to be accepted. We just do the same like what we did before, trying to offer variation to indonesia music fans.
The fact that the music industry is different now, how do you feel to enter the music world again now? Do you have any fear or maybe intimidated by it?
No..No at all. We appreciate young musicians, they have knowledge about music technology better than our generation. That is why are happy to collaborate with some of them.
Now let’s talk about your surprising appearance at last year’s Java Jazz Festival. (See the article here) Can you share us the story about it?
Initially, we had an Invitation of FE-UI (Faculty of Economics, University of Indonesia) reunion and the committee asked Chaseiro to perform . We did it and they liked it. Then later there was another bigger reunion and again we got invitation but this one was officially coming from the UI Rector . But we really enjoyed it. We were like, “wow, this is cool.” We really felt it. After that the idea to perform came up and we were arranged to send the demo tape. Actually it was not fully done but they were satisfied. Later they brought the demo tape to Java Jazz Committee. They called us back and asked, “which Chaseiro is this?” (laugh). We answered “yes, we are “that” Chaseiro.” And we did a performance in the festival.
And it was such a memorable moment. I still remember there were so many fans cheered and felt really happy to see you back again on stage at Java Jazz Festival 2009.
Yeah, we were surprise as well to see the audiences’ response. Not only they cheered, but to our surprise, they also still remember many of our songs. Not only “Pemuda” (one of Chaseiro’s signature hit), but also some other songs. They still remembered the lyrics and sang together. It was unbelievable.
What about Java Jazz Festival 2010? Are you planning to perform in this year’s festival?
We do not decide yet but we are ready if we have to perform once again in there. It’s going to be great.
Let’s talk outside Chaseiro for a while. We know that some of Chaseiro personnels joined another music group named PSP (Pancaran sinar Petromax), a group that goes with totally different genre and styles. Wasn’t it difficult for you to stand on two very different styles like that? what was the intention to do two totally different genre music band?
Well actually both of the bands have a red line. Both of them have similar agenda that was to express the idealism of the youth, we care for the situation (it was a critical period of people’s protest against the regime). We were in and we showed our concern and criticized through music and both of the group concerned to also make differences though each group has different music characters.
One last question, what is your future plan?
We cannot deny our nature that we are growing older and we maybe cannot physically cope with making a lot of performances but we are convinced that we can still go on with recording new albums in the future and we still expect that our music can still be accepted and can entertain society. We as well are launching our songs as Ring Back Tones.. We look forward to continue our journey for a long time to come.
It’s been a pleasure to have this interview with you. We’re grateful to have a talk with such a great band who has brought Indonesian music into certain classy stage and their come back surely is expected by many of their fans. Thanks for the memory, thanks for the comeback, we look forward to see your new album and more stories to come. All the best to you!
Thank you. Hope to see you again.
Interviewed by: Riandy Kurniawan and Muliani Herman
Photographer: Eri Herman (interview session) and Omar Arif Maulana (stage performance)
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