KMB 2025: Invincible Ghosts Render Refrains of a Bygone Time

KOCHI:
Melancholic and haunting, the music lingers with thoughts of longing—could be for one’s land, its music, its culture and beauty, rights, freedom and needs that were deprived of by colonial power and consequent uprooting and displacement. The music seems to mourn the loss of a bygone time, the sea around, its people, and its music. So does the voiceover on history of the land in an academic tone.

The Ghost Ballad, an installation of ghosts parading, playing guitar, beating drums, and singing, by musician and artist Jompet Kuswidananto from Indonesia, rekindles the trauma of the colonial past, through kinesthesis.

The installation has been mounted in Pepper House, Fort Kochi, as part of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025. It brings alive memories of erasure, a rare experience for the ears, eyes and soul.

A spooky feel arises as the silence of the hollow scarf-covered faceless forms with missing body parts is broken by a shuddering drumbeat, strumming of the guitar and soulful songs from the mikes held in broken wrists, from the speakers on the floor narrating stories of people and their musical history in Indonesian tongue.

Visitors are taken aback as they walk past the first figure with a wooden guitar slung across his chest and hear him whisper, getting audible as you go nearer.

“Yes, you can hear it only if you go near. It kind of connects the installation with the viewers, in an intimate way, in a personal, casual language, whispering the story of the rich music traditions. I have been working with ghost figures in different contexts,” Jompet said.

“In Kochi, it’s a history of music against the backdrop of colonial times when people were forcefully displaced and music became a means of survival, symbol of oppression and protest. Fado, that traces its root to Portugal, is sung there as an expression of mourning, of loss, of sea. Fado is believed to have come with the Portuguese when they made their colonial presence in Indonesia and Keroncong emerged as its counterpart in Java. It became a trend in Indonesia during colonial times and mass migration,” he explained.

The music parade seems like a universal language of soft yet strong resistance, resilience, a soulful revolt against injustice. “The Japanese used the power of music to weaken the people, but our music is overpowering,” Jompet said.

Each apparition-like figure, way of dressing, way of holding the music instruments, their sizes, Indonesian and Indian ways of dressing and pose, one kneeling, another seated, most floating as if sailing, disillusioned! Pairs of footwear lie near each figure. It’s a kind of movement, of seafaring, bodies floating to strange zones, footwear grounded in their soil and the story of their music floating along.

The singing by Giwing Topo from Indonesia and Nadia Rebelo from Goa links colonial history of Indonesia and India where Portuguese were the first European colonisers. As one listens intently, the music strikes a chord in the heart and the Fado strains change to Keroncong, which, in turn, becomes low-pitched and different.

“That’s my music, a kind of pop, an intersection of history of music and colonisation that I composed and sang and you can hear waves too, a reinvention of melancholic music,” he said.

The guitars of varying sizes strum notes. “It’s easier to carry small ones as people don’t want to leave their music behind, their only solace. Some are half-done, symbolising that it is an ongoing production of music. It’s the story of music sailing over the sea to new shores,” said Jompet.