Saridjah Niung

Biography

She had heard the violin at home since childhood. Saridjah was born on 26 March 1908 in Sukabumi, in West Java, in the Dutch East Indies, the youngest of twelve children. Her father, Mohamad Niung, was a sailor of Bugis origin who had long lived in Sukabumi; he worked as a guard for a jurist named Kramer. Kramer, who came from an Indo-Dutch family with a Javanese noblewoman on his mother’s side, took the girl in as his own and taught her singing, music and the violin himself. He also brought her up in a patriotic spirit.

She went on to study at the Hoogere Kweek School, a teacher-training college in Bandung, where she deepened her studies in voice and music. After graduating she taught in Dutch-language schools for Indonesian children in Jakarta: in Petojo, on Jalan Kartini and at Arjuna. By some accounts this work lasted from 1925 to 1941. Lessons were given in Dutch, and, as people recall, it troubled her that the children looked unhappy. She began writing cheerful, patriotic songs for them in Indonesian.

In 1927 her voice was first heard on the air of the NIROM radio station in Jakarta. Later she presented children’s programmes (until 1962), wrote radio plays and plays for the stage. In 1955 her children’s operetta-ballet “Sumi” was staged at the Jakarta Arts Building. As early as 1926, while taking part in the youth organisation Indonesia Muda (Young Indonesia), she had put together an amateur theatre troupe: the performances raised money for a student hostel.

It is said that on 28 October 1928, at the Youth Congress, she played the violin alongside Wage Rudolf Supratman at the first performance of “Indonesia Raya”. She later linked her patriotic songs with the impression of that day.

She was married to Raden Mas Bintang Soedibjo, and the name Ibu Soed (“Mrs Soed”) comes from an abbreviation of his name. Her songs soon became known: “Burung Kutilang”, “Kupu-kupu”, “Hai Becak”. “Tik Tik Bunyi Hujan” (“Tik-tik, the rain is falling”) was written, as the story goes, when the roof of her rented house on Jalan Kramat began to leak. “Menanam Jagung” (“Planting Corn”) appeared during the Japanese occupation, when rice was scarce. “Nenek Moyangku Seorang Pelaut” (“My Ancestors Were Sailors”) was inspired by her father’s descent from Bugis seafarers.

“Berkibarlah Benderaku” (“Fly, My Flag”) is linked with 1947, with the day before the first Dutch military action. Jusuf Ronodipuro, the head of the RRI radio station, is said to have refused to lower the red-and-white flag on the building under threat of firearms, and the song was written under the impression of that event. In 1945 Dutch soldiers surrounded her house on Jalan Maluku in Jakarta; a Dutch neighbour convinced them that she was merely a songwriter and her husband a trader. A clandestine radio transmitter, by the same accounts, she and a helper had to throw into a well.

In 1962 she represented President Sukarno at the World’s Fair in New York. On her return, according to tradition, “Tanah Airku” (“My Homeland”) was born as a song of homesickness.

She herself believed she had written more than two hundred songs, but by her own estimate about half survived. Shortly before her death she remarked with regret that children’s songs had become too commercial. The composer Ananda Sukarlan has made piano fantasies, variations and toccatas on her melodies, and they are played in competitions and concerts.

She worked in batik: she made it for herself, not for sale, and in old age she kept both writing songs and painting on cloth. In 1983 she received from the Indonesian government the Satyalancana Kebudayaan (the Cultural Merit Medal), and in 1992 the Bintang Budaya Parama Dharma order. She died in Jakarta in 1993; the exact date is disputed, with 26 May and 12 December both given.