Members of world music ensemble Debu became quite a familiar sight for Indonesian television viewers during last fasting month.
Nearing the breaking fast time, they would appear for around seven minutes to carry out a form of soliloquy accompanied by music.
Kumayl Mustafa Daood, the US-born lead vocalist, would tell tales of wisdom in fluent Indonesian before picking on his glama-a Turkish lute- and singing a song – in Indonesian, as well-with the rest of the band.
Indeed, despite most of Debu members’ origins in the US, where they lived as part of a sufi community, they more or less consider Indonesia as their home, having lived in the country for over a decade.
Several of the US born members recently obtained Indonesian citizenship, Mustafa said.
Fatimah Husnia, who plays the cello in Debu, said that she found Indonesia to be a safer country for women and that the people were more accepting of the headscarf she wears.
“You can go out at night and not worry about other men,” she said
Mustafa recalled the year 1999, when some 60 members of the community, including several Debu members, moved to Indonesia with their spiritual teacher, Shaykh Fattaah, who had an inspiration about the country.
“[The Shaykh] said ‘I’m goin’…and of course, most everybody came. There were a few who didn’t and there were also a few who came and left again,” Mustafa said.
He added that the members of the sufi community, who are mostly related to each other, had been receiving unfavorable glances from neighbors in the US prior to their migration.
“For us it was a regular lifestyle, for them no. One of the reasons why we moved is the whole society was difficult. We had other things in mind that we wanted to do and they just couldn’t understand it. They were like ‘what planet are these guys from?’ And that’s kind of difficult,” Mustafa said.
They were also considered “crazy” for moving to a country that had suffered a recent upheaval that led to the downfall of president Soeharto’s New Order.
Yet despite what some people think, the members of that community progressed not only to become content residents of Indonesia but also to produce the ensemble that is Debu, which currently has 14 members, the youngest being 11-year-old Adullah Ibn-Daood, whose parents both play in the group as well.
Four of the members who recently joined are Indonesian by birth.
Last year, the band released their sixth album, Dianggap Gila (Mad?), which contains seven songs with lyrics written by the Shaykh, who also penned the lyrics of the band’s previous albums.
According to Debu’s manager, Ibrahim Conway, the name of the album, Dianggap Gila, comes from the title song inspired by a saying of the Prophet Muhammad that one should remember Allah so much, until the point where people would call you crazy or mad.
Dianggap Gila contains songs that are rich with love and compassion, as with the songs on Debu’s other albums.
However, it also contains a couple of numbers that might be considered less rosy or optimistic than their previous ones.
For example, the song “Doa Rakyat” or “The People’s Prayer” touches on the subject of mankind’s despotic nature, while “Amanat” or “The Sacred Trust” mentions the destruction of nature by human hands.
“[The songs] are still about love. Our songs are all about love of the creator. [Amanat] says that the world and everything in it is a sacred trust that has been entrusted to us — including whether it’s the leadership, the destruction of the forests, other things. These are the things for which people have betrayed that sacred trust,” Mustafa said.
He said that the members have been even more optimistic about the world since coming to Indonesia. “For us there is no evil. It’s all good, because everything comes from Allah,” he said.
Such a take on the world is most likely rooted in Shaykh Fattah’s teachings, which Mustafa dubbed as “very sweet”.
“[The teachings] are basically this: To live in the now — not too caught up in the future, because you have no idea how it is going to be. You might as well not worry about it. And no regrets,” he said.
Husnia, whose parents are students of the shaykh, said that the experience of living and growing up in a sufi community is “pretty much the same for men or women because [what matters] is your heart.”
Mustafa admitted that his profession as a musician helped him gain a more positive outlook of the world, including Indonesia.
“A lot of things that make things more difficult for Indonesians is just the fact that they caught up with the local politics. And politics are just not beautiful. But Everything plays its part… I am just glad that my part is music,” he laughed.
The recent religious clashes in the country, which he labels as “having one of the most beautiful forms” of religion, have also made its way into his life and he chose to answer it with music as well.
“I’ve been in situations where I sat with bothsides of the party. Both of them came to me with so much love. One is the more hard-liner side, and the other side, who may not even be considered Muslims,” Mustafa said.According to him, his reaction can be summed up in his father’s lyrics of “Doa Rakyat”, where one asks God to “put blessing in each despot’s heart … so that they can be good.”
Mustafa acknowledged that sufis could sometimes be seen as shutting themselves off from the world, hence their virtual constant state of contentment, but said that such a stereotype could be applied to Debu members.
“How is Debu closed off? … after every show I have to take photos with 250 people. We go out and sing for anybody as much as possible. We just do whatever is appropriate at the time and now in Indonesia ... It’s appropriate to go and be open,” he said.
Although his interests also extend to horse training-his passion back in the US — Mustafa said that music effectively consumed most of his time and he is more than happy to live with that.
“I was recently in Konya [Turkey], the city of the great sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi. There were many tourists and they paid lots of money to go there. I was invited there to perform and sing songs about Allah, which is one of my favorite things to do. The thing that’s really amazing to me is that people will pay lots of money for what I am paid to do. Life for me is like heaven on earth,” he said.
Husnia, who have been playing with Debu since she was 14, said that she had always been interested in musical instruments and world music, especially Turkish music.
Besides the cello, she also plays the violin and the baglama Turkish stringed instrument. “Now I am learning how to play the guitar as well,” the 23-year-old smiled.
Husnia is currently working on a side project, which she labels as “kind of a solo album” and said that she would continue to play music even if Debu was to be disban one day.
She recently went to Hong Kong to perform for a group of Indonesian migrant workers. “They loved it,” she said.
Tours could be one of the perks of being a musician, but Mustafa recalled one of Debu’s tour experiences, namely the one to Iran, as being memorable yet perhaps less than pleasant.
“We were invited for around 6 performances. Each [performance had] around 3,000 people [in the audience]. Tickets were completely sold out. Two hours before the show they canceled it because we had American passports,” he said of the incident, which occured two years ago.
Afterwards, he and several other members were invited to Iran’s Presidential Palace where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apologized to them.
“A week ago, I called the promotor [of the shows in Iran] and I told him hey we’ve got Indonesian passports now’,” Mustafa laughed.
-Photo courtesy of Debu
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