Maestro of Javanese Keroncong,
Gesang Martohartono
Can you guess who the figure we will discuss this time? Gesang Martohartono, the legendary Javanese musician who is familiarly called Gesang. Born in the city of Solo, October 1, 1917, Gesang did not immediately start his career as a musician, but only as a singer of keroncong songs for small parties.
Before finding his gold work, Gesang also wrote several songs such as Keroncong Roda Dunia, Keroncong si Piatu, and Saputangan during World War II. But nothing has ever broken like the Bengawan Solo that he created in 1940.
Unexpectedly, his Bengawan Solo song was able to take him around Asia. The song was heard by a Japanese soldier and ‘brought home’ and became famous overseas. So far, it is known that Bengawan Solo has been translated into 13 foreign languages including English, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese.
In Japan, the song Bengawan Solo was covered by Japanese musician Toshi Matsuda. It was also made into a film by Japanese director Kon Ichikawa in 1951. In addition, Gesang also received an Honorary Star award from Emperor Akihito in 1992.
As a token of appreciation for his services to the development of keroncong music, Japan established Gesang Park near Bengawan Solo in 1983. The management of this park is funded by the Gesang Fund, an institution established for Gesang in Japan.
Gesang’s works can still be enjoyed both physically and digitally. Many of Gesang’s works have been uploaded on the internet either on YouTube or other online media portals.
On Spotify music streaming media, for example. When we checked Gesang’s artist profile, we can see that the monthly number of Gesang’s music listeners still exceeds 31 thousand listeners every month! And the song Bengawan Solo earned the highest number of streams of up to 468,000 listeners.
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