(b Bandung, Java, 10 Sept 1951). Indonesian composer. In the early 1970s he caused a stir in the world of Indonesian rock music with his opera Ken Arok and was the first on the Indonesian rock music scene to experiment with gamelan instruments. Having studied at the Bandung Institute of Technology, Roesli left in 1977 to study composition at the Jakarta Arts Institute. A year later he won a scholarship to study percussion and composition at the Rotterdam Conservatory, where he began his deep involvement with contemporary music. On his return to Indonesia in 1982 he caused another commotion by experimenting with forms of musical expression new to the Indonesian people. In LKJMH he set diverse musical idioms in a theatrical form to a text loaded with social criticism. Roesli's consistent tendency to use his compositions as a medium for launching criticism at the excesses of the Suharto regime meant that in Indonesia he was regarded as the musical ‘public enemy number one’, and was frequently in and out of prison. After staging a performance by Roesli in 1996 the Jakarta Percussion Festival received a severe reprimand because the piece openly mocked the regime's corrupt and nepotistic practices. Involved in leading the reform groups which contributed to the deposing of Suharto in 1998, Roesli is a composer who occupies a unique and complex position in the cultural life of Indonesia.
For illustration see Indonesia, §VIII, 2, fig.1.
FRANKI RADEN