Rekindled Songs - Di Na Laho Maridi

If you would be interested in my personal take, you can read them by scrolling down past the lyrics.

Words that are in italics are the ones I was not able to find the meaning of. Maridi is translated to berenang (swimming) instead of mandi (bathing) because I would like to imagine the songwriter thought of Lake Toba while composing it. I do not know what pajekkar means, hence I would assume it means mekar (bloom) given the syllable similarities.

Translated contextually into English, the song means something like this:

When I went for a swim – that morning – I saw a flower close to the water source.
The water, the dew, the heat of the sun; the flower bloomed.
If that happened, the flower would wither.

This is a new series, it is called rekindled. As some of my friends know, the vibrant and cosmopolitan culture of pre-1965 Indonesia holds a dear place in my heart, be it Djakartawood ¹ or other art produced during that period. Barely 20 years old, the Indonesian Republic and its art scenes were as stunning as how French revolutionary writers would write of the May 1968 social revolution in the early days: idealistic and a little bit naive.

As I live in the present day, I can see what holds the tests of time and what doesn’t. Most of the time I’m surprised at how artists – given their limited technologies – were still able to produce work that does not feel ordered by someone, but rather something that is squeezed out of their hearts. Technologies may differ, but what one feels inside cannot. Moving on, perhaps in the future, I would perhaps write about rekindled movies, rekindled books, etc. but for now, I will be rekindling a song.

The song titled Di Na Laho Maridi (When I Went For A Swim) is released on the album titled Dago Inang Sarge² and presented by Trio Marihot, a musical group composed of Saulius Hutabarat, Paul Hutabarat, and Marihot Hutabarat; the song is located on the sixth track of the B-side (B6) and can be streamed on Irama Nusantara. I do not know if they are directly related, but what I do know is that both Paul and Marihot were law students at the University of Indonesia³. The published piece by the Ford Foundation describes the world during the time like this:

For college students at that time, life seemed untouched by the outside world. They attended classes when they felt like it. […] Two law students, Marihot and Paul Hutabarat, formed a band that became extremely popular. As their friends hit the dance floor, they played songs reminiscent of Bill Haley and the Comets and The Platters. The students’ drinks of choice: lemonade and sarsaparilla.

Earlier in the article, it was written that “until the late 1950s, student life at Salemba resembled that of their peers in Holland”. I knew about this album before I departed for the Netherlands but I only listened to the Madekdek Magambiri (Candlenuts Falling Off) avidly and nothing more.

It was here in their single-digit weather and the illumination of my dormitory’s warm lights, that this track embedded itself into my heart. In a letter to my friend, I described the feeling as like sitting in front of the fireplace in the company of cosmopolitan Batak friends who are knitting a new culture, without proto-fundametalism, and proto-feudalism. The ones where my friends would not feel shame for living their truth,

It feels like another world, a world that would be so beautiful had people’s blood never dropped.