Tales From The Phonographic

OceansA Study on

“Analog Music Piracy” in Indonesia

THE CASE OF YESS RECORDS, 1977 1988

Yuka D. Narendra, SSn., MHum

THE STORY OFYESS RECORDS

ANALOG DIVIDEA GLIMPSE OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY, POP CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE

OF 70’S AND 80’S INDONESIA

A Glimpse of 70’s and 80’s Indonesian Rock Music Industry

Cassette as Medium of Consumption in the 70’s and 80’s Indonesia• Economic Disparity

– Price: Cassettes were Cheaper Compared to Vinyl

– Imported Vinyl

• Technological Divide– Low-Cost Reproduction– Lower Sound Quality

• Media Events– Centralized Media: TVRI– Marginalization of Rock Music in State Television and Mainstream Radio

PRODUCTION MODE OF MODE OF

STANDARD PRODUCTION HIGH END LOW END REPRODUCTION

-1950 ANALOG VYNYL RECORDING VYNYL - RECORDING

1950 - 1963 ANALOG ANALOG TAPE RECORDING VYNYL - RECORDING

1963 - 1965 ANALOG ANALOG TAPE RECORDING VYNYL CARTRIDGE RECORDING

1965 - 1970 ANALOG ANALOG TAPE RECORDING VYNYL CASSETTE RECORDING

1970 - 1980 ANALOG ANALOG TAPE RECORDING VYNYL CASSETTE RECORDING

1980 - 1987 ANALOG ANALOG TAPE RECORDING VYNYL CASSETTE RECORDING

ANALOG VYNYL

DIGITAL CD

ANALOG ANALOG TAPE

DIGITAL DIGITAL TAPE

RECORDING

COPYING

CASSETTE RECORDING

DIGITAL

FILE FORMAT

CD

DIGITAL

FILE FORMAT

RECORDING

1993 - 1995 CD CASSETTE RECORDING

YEAR DOMAIN

MEDIUM

CONSUMER STANDARD

1988 - 1993 ANALOG TAPE

HARD DISK RECORDING

RECORDING

DIGITAL

RECORDING

CASSETTE

CDCOPYING

2005 - RECENT DIGITAL HARD DISK RECORDING CD COPYING

2000 - 2005

CD CASSETTE1995 - 2000 DIGITAL HARD DISK RECORDING

Forms of Rock Consumption• record collecting• radio airplay• concerts• clubs and scenes• television program• fashion

Shuker (2001, 200-209)

Forms of Rock Consumption in the 70’s and 80’s Indonesia

• cassette collecting (fake albums)

• tribute bands (fake bands)• tribute concerts (fake concerts)

• no clubs and scenes• no “mainstream radio” airplay

• no television program• a little bit of fashion

Balancing the Technological Divide: How were the fake cassettes being produced?

Yess Records

• Originated from Bandung, West Java• Formed in 1977, disbanded in 1988• Founded by 3 mysterious persons• Headquarter: Veteran Street, Bandung• Choice of Genre: Progressive Rock,

Avant Garde Jazz, New Age, Experimental Music, Electronic Music, and other rarities

• Distribution area: Bandung, Malang, Jogjakarta, Solo, Denpasar, Makassar, and other cities but Jakarta

*The name simply

taken from England’s

70’s progressive rock group:

Yes

The Many Faces of Yess

Late 70’s

Mid 70’s

Mid 70’s and Early 80’s

Mid 80’s & Late 80’s

“The Sound Chaser”

• Analog audio technology: industry’s standard equipments used to produce music in the 70’s and 80’s

• Analog technology is a high-cost form of artistic production

• Analog technology is expensive technology• Analog technology produces a significant quality of

sound, a a state-of-the-art, high quality sound, contained in analog media (vinyl records)

• Analog media is not easily reproduced and “copied”• If not using the industry standard reproduction

system, there will be a great deal of audio loss• Reproducing vinyl records to cassettes also needs to

have sophisticated devices to carry out some technical appropriation, in order to overcome the audio loss

• High-cost production and its reproduction-inflexibility are pronounced “quality” and “originality”

• Quality and Originality are the key issues that give “license” to music industry to superimpose their coercive power

• This power is pronounced: “copyright”

The utopia of “Perfect Audio”

Yess Records: “The Sound Chaser”

• Low grade analog audio technology (Music Cassette): industry’s standard medium used to reproduce music in the 70’s and 80’s Indonesia

• Analog Cassette is a cheap, low-cost form of artistic reproduction albeit its significant quality of sound, a low quality sound

• It is difficult to terminate the audio loss and to regain an equivalent quality of sound in reproducing and “copying” vinyl records to analog cassette. To do so, one needs to have sophisticated devices or methods to carry out some technical appropriation

• Low-cost production and its reproduction-flexibility give Yess Records the chance to enhance its choice of genre and catalog, to approximately 9000 albums

• Yess’ catalog is a collection of unpopular, non-commercial music genres: Progressive Rock, Avant-Garde Jazz, New Age and Experimental Music, and, Electronic Music

• Album Rarity and Completion are the key issues that give “license” to Yess to superimpose their strength

• This strength is pronounced: “knowledge”

The heterotopia of “Perfected Audio”

Yess Recordsand the issue of piracy• Yess’ cassettes (and so as others)

were never considered as pirated products

• Yess paid tax to Indonesian government

• There was a legal tax label attached to each cassette covers, the label was issued by ASIRI (the Indonesian Association of Recording Industry)

• State did not adjudge this act of copying foreign vinyl records as piracy

• In this sense, both Yess and its consumers did not commit any act of piracy

Liner notes on Yess• The analog technology left a gap in the consumption

level• This gap would later differ the consumption of

international popular culture in Indonesia as a Third World country, than in the First World

• In the context of originality, the aim of this paper is to forefront the significance of consuming rock music in the 70’s and 80’s Indonesia, and to view it as an act of resisting the First World dominance

• Such act can be found in the practice of reproducing non-mainstream vinyl records produced by the First World countries

• In contrast to what has been issued by the international music industry as piracy, I would argue it as a form of cultural articulation

• In this sense, the mass reproduction of vinyl records can also be viewed as knowledge sharing.

Yess Recordsand the issue of anti-piracy

• The Geldof/Live Aid Case on Indonesia, 1985

• Other Indonesian record companies were caught of exporting series of Indonesian-pirated-version of “Live Aid 1985” cassettes to the middle east

• International music industry sued Indonesian government

• They demanded Indonesian government to sign the Berne Convention Treaty

• Afterwards all the cassettes produced must be withdrawn from the market not longer than 1988

• This followed by the fall of many Indonesian cassette producers

Post-Yess, pro-copyright

• 1988: The demise of Yess and other collector-type cassette producers

• Effect: all the record companies started to project the same idea of genres and style of music, the dominant mainstream had arisen

• 1993: Soon after the closure of various Indonesian cassette producers, international record companies were invading Indonesia (Sony Music, WEA, EMI, BMG, etc.), followed by the invasion of MTV

• Within 5 years time, there has been significant-radical change in Indonesian music industry: Local bands with their original songs

• Local music industry was blossoming, alongside with the idea of copyright as legitimate tool to keep the intellectual for being paid

• Many Indonesian musicians were joining in, signing their record deals with International record companies

• Despite the record collection (Shuker, 2001, 200), the invasion of international record companies gave rise to local music industry to construct its networks of clubs and scenes, magazines, concerts, tv and radio shows

QuickTime™ and a decompressorare needed to see this picture.

The Original CassettesReproduced in the 90’s

Post-Yess, anti-copyright1988: The rise of Yess cassette collectors as a new social force

• Contesting cultural notions: the “decadent” rock music versus the state’s idea of “national culture”

• The intepretation of rock music as a representation for cultural decadence and state’s approved “national” culture narrative become the background of cassette consumption

• Cassette plays as generation difference that not only represents (discrepancy of) analog technology

• Yess can also be viewed as a imaginary contested terrain through its technological appropriation imposed by the technological gap:

• Catalog construction as a form of knowledge hub, and the economical aspects represented by the low-cost material and production

• Yess has constructed an imagined locale for Indonesian rock music consumers

• Yess’ rock cassettes represent a generation’s collective memory that (as if it) is not fully falling into the First World’s popular cultural imperialism

Post-Yess: Yess and the Imagined Popular Culture1988: The rise of Yess cassette collectors

• Muesterberger (1994, from Shuker, 2001, 201): collecting (records) is a way of overcoming childhood anxiety, through sense of order and completion

• How would this be explained in the context of “collecting Indonesian rock cassettes”?

• How this could be examined in Yess’ context? • Collecting fake records can be regarded as

imaginary consumption• Albeit the practice is as real (buying physical

products, Yess’ cassettes/products), but the act of consumption is in a constant imaginary realm

• Yess’ cassette consumers would imagine that they listen to the “original” Genesis’ or Rush’s albums, but somehow it remains imaginary since the albums are pirated (fake) products

• Rock cassette consumers in the 70’s and 80’s Indonesia are never being fully absorbed to the blackhole of the global popular culture, for their consumption practice remains imaginary

• Imaginary consumption with imaginary practice within an imaginary realm of imagined popular culture.

• The absence of copyright discourse has given the local context a chance to construct its space of articulation

• As in Lefebvre’s differential space (Lefebvre, 1991, 397)• Yess’ practice of re-recording vinyls to cassettes and

creating cassette cover and sleeve designs are somehow equal to spatial practice in Lefebvre’s term

• These spatial practices are not merely implying physical appropriation towards lived space

• These practices have constructed (and appropriated) the lived space of Bandung, as the loci of progressive rock music in a virtual sense (the imaginary realm)

• Shields (1998, 185): the existence of such space of articulation in everyday lives clearly indicates that there is a tendency of resistance towards the dominant spatialization

• The presumption that rock music consumers in Indonesia have being subordinated in a scheme of cultural imperialism can be questioned and argued, or at least, re-contextualized

• Why? Indonesian rock music consumers in the 70’s and 80’s seem to be “pitiful”

• They can only consume “fake” products:– Collecting “fake” albums (not buying original vinyl

records, but “localized” cassettes)– watching pre-recorded MTV programs from video cassettes– going to tribute concerts to see tribute bands imitating

the “originals” at local youth center

Fake bands, fake albums… is the consumption also “fake”?

• Lefebvre’s differential space (1991, 397):

Can be put simply as counter-space towards the dominant spatialization. Its role as counter-space makes it equal to the heterotopia

• Shields (1998, 185) elaborates, the existence of such space of articulation in everyday lives clearly indicates that there is a tendency of resistance towards the dominant spatialization

“All sort of tendencies to a counter-space are at work around us, with all their ambiguities. Of these, the most striking are leisure sites, which represent the ultimate commodification of nature and space, but which are also the moment of non-work, or juissance, and festival, which negates the entire dominant spatialisation and social system” (1998, 185)

Fake bands, fake albums… is the consumption also “fake”?

• Hence the media hardship they endure, the 70’s and 80’s generation in Indonesia have different means of consuming rock

• Yess can be an imaginary articulation of modernity – auspices the idea of becoming a part of the world civilization. Or it can be surprisingly, religious

• In this articulation space, re-contextualization of pop culture (rock music) with locality shows there is a contestation between local and global

• Rock music as a global pop culture product is localized by Indonesia’s music industry by cassette reproduction practice

• It can be said that what is consumed by rock consumer in Indonesia has become “glocal” far before globalization become a grand narrative in the 90’s

• It is worthseeing that this could only occur in a situation when copyright - or any other intellectual property mechanisms, is far from intervening.

Media Situation, Articulation and Intellectual Property

Side A Rock Music with Locality• The practice of cassette reproduction (as well

as consumption) explains that the analog technological gap in Indonesian music industry has become instrumental in contextualizing global popular culture:

rock music with locality

• Rock music is about attitude. The attitude is “localizing”

• The lack of information is the result of Indonesia’s isolation from the distribution line of global popular culture, has intensified the practices of reproduction and consumption

• Rock consumers of the 70’s and 80’s Indonesia attain all the information and knowledge needed by themselves for there is not much that mass media can give on rock information

Side B The fake and the imaginary• The practice of reproduction and

consumption of rock music in the 70’s and 80’s Indonesia have become a project to re-contextualize global popular culture

• The consumption practice in the “hard times” collectively construct a shared memory on rock music by itself

• This memory does not refer to rock genre (and sub-genre) interpretation and consumption, but on the typical consumption method: the technology and information gap in analog era

• A consumption practice that is entirely in imaginary level through fake products

• The fakeness of the products are interpreted as an instrument (method) of typical articulation with “local” content

• As the fakeness represents locality, the imaginary consumption represents memory

Yess, Piracy, Fake Consumption and Collective Memory• Collective memory plays an important role in

constructing the identity of indonesia’s 70’s and 80’s rock generation

• This memory shapes their identities as Indonesians• The sequence of reproduction – dissemination –

consumption give Indonesia’s typical interpretation on a (collective) memory of rock music

• Rock, which is uniquely Indonesian:a recollection of globally connoted rock music

• This would also mean that it is necessary to re-contextualize the idea of Indonesian contemporary identity

• Implication: all the debates on national identity needs to be reconsidered

• The cheering supporters of globalization have to re-read the whole new multifaceted identity of Indonesia

• They need to elaborate the collective memory of rock music consumption and to re-examine their cultural position in the vast arena of global popular (industrious) culture

• The cheerleaders of globalization can also reconsider on what is their cultural position in the middle of global popular cultural arena by acknowledging collective memory of Indonesia’s rock generation as a local factor on Indonesia (popular) culture

As Led Zeppelin said, “Thank You.”