Song For You

I always adore the way Indonesia’s jazz artists put up free jazz as a musical expression. It’s genuinely representative. It has dense instrumental lines as well as varied tones. And not just being a copycat, I believe that to certain extent, they are able bring a totally new perspective in terms of free jazz exploration and undertaking. 

In 2007, Canzo, a group of five released their debut album under Indie Jazz label. And they have all the things I have mentioned above. Canzo hastily introduces their rich and dense style in the opening instrumental track, Sunday Morning. Thus, it does not take a long time for me to digest at least generally about how they interpret jazz custom. The song averagely endorses irregular chord pattern, cool toned, yet rhythmic 4/4 beat, the same as in other songs in this album. Saxophone is given the role as the main melody, layered with acoustic line timbre accompaniment. 

Taking one step further, I think the second track really delivers the full power of Canzo’s music playing. Karena Dia has a head nodding four beat pattern, extensive and dynamic drum arrangement, and also excellent melodic structure, led by mid-low voice register of Kemala Ayu. Although the composition in the chorus could be shortly degrading after several times of listening the music, the first verses are still catchy, besides being well harmonious. To my capacity, there are only two songs in this album which are definitely able to reach the summit, in a sense that they are made up of perfect composition and arrangement. The first is Karena Dia, and the other one is Sweet Love. Both of the songs’ tone lines are very appropriate, the melodic structures are favorable, the lyrics are well comprehensible, strong in meanings, well determined, and so the harmonies are widely acceptable, taking account as well the richly varied snare and bass drum as the way of embellishing the music beat. They are only differed in the applied rhythm, in which Karena Dia favors frantic beat, whereas Sweet Love stands in normal speed. Karena Dia is led by deep and fairly heavy vocal, while dry, nasal voice serves the vocal in Sweet Love. All I can say is the ideas do not undermine the music quality. Conversely, each adds up major points to audience’s split expectation. 

Another sight of upbeat music occurs in Keep Out. Moreover, the formidable acoustic and then continued by alto sax improvisation is absolutely of great consequence. A cool toned scene strongly complies with the album’s avant garde track, Song For You. I am half surprised to know that Canzo implies this track as the representation of the album. A flat and slow tune that creates a laid back scene, extremely relaxing, I ‘d say, is diatonic in most of its aspect, like rhythm, sax melody, chord progression. However, to compensate those unsurprising elements, it sounds very in detail and at depth. Furthermore, it is a bit peculiar to experience an abrupt shift after which Song For You takes place. As opposed to the previous song, the following songs step up fast tempo music till the end, of such performed in Weekend, Night in Samarinda, Over Night consecutively. Of the three, Night in Samarinda deserves a highlight, for it is more beautifully composed, thus becomes more favorable. Consisting of 9 tracks, Canzo has done a terrific job to make this album comes to be.