FROM GERMANY TO INDONESIA – A FRIENDSHIP FORGED IN REGGAE!

There is a certain truth to this statement: When German reggae artist Uwe Kaa and his One Drop Band were invited to tour the archipelago with Indonesian musician Ras Muhamad last year, he was excited, yet he didn’t expect the collaboration to last longer than the two-week trip, let alone become good friends with Ras in the process.

The tour, which took place in late January and early February last year in Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Surabaya and Manado, was organized by the Goethe-Institut Indonesia, the German cultural center and its initiative “Schools: Partners for the Future,” which has established a network of Germany-Indonesia partner schools.

The collaboration between Uwe and Ras went far beyond sharing the stage. They also conducted educational music workshops at the partner schools in each city in which the students wrote their own lyrics to Uwe’s songs.

Now, one year later, Uwe has returned to Indonesia to work on some exciting new projects in collaboration with Ras.

“It was a very intense and emotional tour,” Uwe said about last year’s experience. “This is why I am so thankful for the possibility to come back. It was brand new for everyone who was participating, and I think this is a memory that will stay with me forever.

“Before we came here, we regarded the whole trip as a new project, but we never thought it would get this deep, on a personal level,” Uwe added.

It was the first time that Uwe performed outside of Europe, therefore, he was able to learn a lot from his time in Indonesia. It is a notion that Ras agrees with.

“The tour was an incredible experience,” Ras said. “Not only did we collaborate on stage, but we also formed a friendship. It didn’t just finish there, after the tour, instead we’re still here now.”

The two singers kept in touch after Uwe went back to Germany, leading to more joint projects. Ras has released five singles through Austrian and German labels, which are also available internationally. He is currently working on a full album to be released on a German label later this year.

“Every other week, I’d receive a text message from Ras, and we had a nice flow in our communication,” Uwe said. That way, he added, he still felt close to Indonesia despite it being so far away from his native home in Munich.

They have also recorded a new song together. While Uwe was in Jakarta last week, they shot some scenes for the video clip. “I was trying to give something back [to the Indonesian people] so I wrote a song about my experience here,” Uwe recalled when asked how the collaboration on the new song came into being.

He continued, “I wrote an Indonesian hook and put some German verses on it, and to me, it [captured] perfectly the whole meaning of the song.”

Uwe then sent the tune over to Ras — who for the first time heard Uwe sing in Indonesian — and he decided to add some of his own ideas to the song. The lyrics now tell the story of Uwe and Ras’ tour last year from both singers’ perspective.

“What makes it special is that this was the first song that Uwe wrote for his new album, and it is about Indonesia,” Ras said.

Another thing that Uwe picked up during his time in Indonesia is the use of social media platforms to keep in touch with his fans.

“I learned how to use Twitter in Indonesia,” he said, laughing. “Before, I was more into Facebook, because in Germany nobody really uses Twitter. But it is a big thing in Indonesia, so I tried to find out more about it, and now I am a huge fan. Most of my followers are actually from Indonesia.”

“Social media keeps artists very close to their fan base and lets them have a sort of personal connection, while only a few years ago that wasn’t possible,” Ras explained. “It also makes it easy to link musicians with one another.”

Thomas Freundorfer, who heads the Goethe-Institut’s partner-schools initiative, said that even though the cultural center organizes many events, the lasting collaboration between Ras and Uwe was something very unique.

Freundorfer, who is a reggae lover hims elf, wanted to organize a music event that included an educational component. “It was the first German-Indonesian reggae tour ever,” he said. “There were about 4,000 people at our concerts, and we also had the workshops at the schools, which is actually the main focus of the work that ‘Schools: Partners for the Future’ does,” he added.

“Ras and Uwe performed in four cities, and in each city, we held a workshop with students and teachers,” Freundorfer said. “They wrote their own lyrics to one of Uwe’s songs, called ‘Rund um die Uhr’ (‘Around the clock’).”

“Ten months after the tour, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Goethe-Institut,” he added. “There, we had a school band that learned how to play Uwe’s song and the same students came back on stage and performed the song again.”

18-year-old Eki Ayu Oktafiani, a student from 31 Senior High School in Jakarta was a participant. She said that she had a lot of fun working with Uwe.

“It was a new experience for all of us,” she said, adding that most students hadn’t been exposed to reggae music before the workshop but had come to like it since.

According to Freundorfer everything was a huge success, and quite unexpectedly the project and collaboration still continues to grow. It is a development that has made the organizing side quite proud.

“We developed an idea, we organized everything, and to see that this ongoing collaboration is because of that is really great,” he said. “I think we really started something long-lasting this time.”

“Schools: Partner for the Future” is planning to organize a so-called student’s academy in September, which will last for two weeks. During that time, they will revisit all the different workshops that have been held for the students over the last few years that not only included music, but film, comics and more.

For this event, Freundorfer said he is trying to bring Uwe back to Jakarta once again. In addition, Ras and Uwe also are looking ahead.

“In 2014, I hope that Ras can make it all the way to Germany for a tour,” Uwe said. “This is what we are planning at the moment. Maybe there will also be another song that we can record together, in addition to the one we already have.”