Jakarta Java Jazz Fest

So happy :)

This weekend I was lucky to finally get to experience some excellent live music in Jakarta. My research about the live music scene led me straight to a page about the Annual Java Jazz Festival. I figured that if they had a huge festival that brought in bands from around the world the live Jazz scene would be excellent. I also added the music festival to my bucket list.

Check it off the list!

I tried (very minimally) to find good Jazz music when I got here, but most of the places I was told to try out were far away, and I hate traffic. More importantly while I enjoy Jazz, it is not my favorite genre.

A few week ago we realized that Java Jazz fest was coming up and I grew super excited about the possibility of going. Luckily I have a boyfriend who says yes to everything, and his friends are also very interested in good live music. We ended up buying passes for Saturday and decided to make a day of it.

We love Jazz music. and mustaches apparently....

We began the afternoon with a lunch of burgers and coffee and took the very short cab ride to the festival. The first few hours were spent exploring the expo, looking at interesting musical instruments, getting our nails done for free and tasting wine. We ended up buying a few bottles of wine to share and went to listen to music. I was pleasantly surprised to hear some excellent jazz with even the earlier bands.

The first band we saw (Indro Hardjodikoro-The Fingers) had a wonderful trumpet player, and the bass player was among the best of all the bassists I've seen in my life. We enjoyed the show sitting down sipping on our first two bottles of wine. Then we headed to get a quick coffee before enjoying some dancing and randomly running into some new friends of ours at the Bella Kalolo show. This band had some kick as chords. The lead singers voice was similar to Adele's but by far my favorite part was watching the keyboardist play. He couldn't stand still while he played, which made me very happy.

By this point we were out of wine, so we ran and got a bottle and then headed back. Along the way we happened to hear some fiddles playing some music quite similar to bluegrass. We finished off bottle of wine number 3 while watching a band called Drew play. At this point in the evening I would say the music was getting generally less Jazzy. I still quite enjoyed this band and watching the crowd start to get very into the music.

We headed across the expo to see a different stage, and randomly came across the fiddlers again. This time I couldn't help myself and I grabbed Matt and started dancing. Some Indonesians absolutely have pictures of us dancing on their phone.

Bluegrass? Well the closest I can get.....

After this event the music seemed to go downhill. First we went to heard a band called Art of Tree, which was so bad I wanted to shoot myself in the head. When did rap become jazz? We opted to head to an indoor venue and got to hear the very end (last minute) of a very decent sounding band. They had a full on orchestra! Once back outside it began to rain so we went to another indoor concert. The band was decent and the lead dude has some excellent trumpet skills but kept deciding to put his trumpet down to rap. We did not understand why all the sudden the Jazz festival had become a rap festival, so we opted to leave.

Lessons learned:
1. There is good music in Jakarta if you scope it out.
2. Wine from Bali is excellent and reasonably priced.
3. Next year I buy a weekend pass, and do it in January so it is half price.