''Guruh Gipsy'' is a

1976 Events January * January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force. * January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea. * January 11 – The 1976 Phila ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

released by

Guruh Sukarnoputra Muhammad Guruh Irianto Sukarnoputra (born 13 January 1953) is a member of Indonesia's People's Representative Council and an artist. He is the youngest son of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno with his third wife, Fatmawati, and the brother ...

in collaboration with the band

Gipsy The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide, with sign ...

, consisting of Keenan Nasution,

Chrisye Hajji Chrismansyah Rahadi (; 16 September 1949 – 30 March 2007), born Christian Rahadi (), better known by his stage name Chrisye (), was an Indonesian progressive pop singer and songwriter. In 2011 ''Rolling Stone Indonesia'' declared hi ...

Roni Harahap Roni may refer to: * Roni, Jigawa, a local government area in Nigeria * Roni (given name), including a list of people with the name * "Roni" (song), a 1989 single by Bobby Brown * Roni, the cursed persona of Regina Mills, the Evil Queen on season ...

, and Oding Nasution. Mixing modern instruments with traditional Javanese and Balinese music styles, it is now considered a landmark album. In 2007,

Rolling Stone Indonesia ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

voted it the second best Indonesian album of all time.

Production

''Guruh Gipsy'' was produced independently; Guruh Sukarnoputra contacted Gipsy and asked them to help. Guruh wrote the songs and also played the piano and '' gendér''. Both Chrisye and Keenan provided

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

, with Chrisye also playing the bass and Keenan on

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

. Roni Harahap played the piano, Oding Nasution was on

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

, and Abadi Soesman on synthesizers. The Hutauruk Sisters provided female

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are use ...

. The

cover art Cover art is a type of artwork presented as an illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book (often on a dust jacket), magazine, newspaper ( tabloid), comic book, video game (box art), music album (album art), ...

was designed to convey a meaning. On the cover, there is the term "Dasabayu", consisting of 10 figures of

Balinese script The Balinese script, natively known as and , is an abugida used in the island of Bali, Indonesia, commonly for writing the Austronesian Balinese language, Old Javanese, and the liturgical language Sanskrit. With some modifications, the script ...

which convey meaning; I-A meaning "event", A-Ka-Sa meaning "emptiness", Ma-Ra meaning "new", La-Wa meaning "truth", and Ya-Ung meaning "eternal". Underneath is written ''Kesepakatan dalam Kepekatan'' ( en, Agreement in Darkness).

Track listing

Musical style

''Guruh Gipsy'' combines modern, Western instruments like the

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

s, and various rock instruments with traditional music forms, including Balinese ''gendér'',

Central Java Central Java ( id, Jawa Tengah) is a province of Indonesia, located in the middle of the island of Java. Its administrative capital is Semarang. It is bordered by West Java in the west, the Indian Ocean and the Special Region of Yogyakarta in t ...

nese vocal styles, and

West Java West Java ( id, Jawa Barat, su, ᮏᮝ ᮊᮥᮜᮧᮔ᮪, romanized ''Jawa Kulon'') is a province of Indonesia on the western part of the island of Java, with its provincial capital in Bandung. West Java is bordered by the province of Banten ...

nese melodies and

scales Scale or scales may refer to: Mathematics * Scale (descriptive set theory), an object defined on a set of points * Scale (ratio), the ratio of a linear dimension of a model to the corresponding dimension of the original * Scale factor, a number w ...

. It has been described as

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Init ...

and heavy pop.

Release and reception

''Guruh Gipsy'' was released on the

indie label An independent record label (or indie label) is a record label that operates without the funding or distribution of major record labels; they are a type of small- to medium-sized enterprise, or SME. The labels and artists are often represented ...

Dela Rohita. It was well received. ''Guruh Gipsy'' has been described as a "landmark album" and "a pillar of the Indonesian pop music industry". In December 2007, ''Rolling Stone Indonesia'' selected ''Guruh Gipsy'' as the second-best Indonesian album of all time, behind '' Badai Pasti Berlalu''. In 2009, they selected one of the songs from the album, " Indonesia Maharddhika", as the 59th best Indonesian song of all time. The song "Chopin Larung" was also well received. ''Guruh Gipsy'' is considered an influence for the 1990s Indonesian trend of mixing traditional instruments with pop music. In 2006, the album was reissued by Shadoks Music on LP. According to Nasution, the release was done without the band's permission, and was pulled out of print after Nasution sent an email to Shadoks management.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * {{Authority control 1977 albums Indonesian-language albums Progressive rock albums by Indonesian artists