Those words—Christ, they haunt me like dead leaves
scratching against a window on an October night. They were the last verse of “Bing,”
a song that rose from the ashes of grief when Titiek Puspa watched her friend
Bing Slamet—Indonesia’s comedy maestro—slip into that dark forever we all
pretend doesn’t wait for us at the end.
Now it was Thursday, April 10, 2025, 4:25 PM Western
Indonesian Time, and Titiek herself had finally walked through that door none
of us can lock, following Bing Slamet to whatever waits on the other side.
Funny how the songs we write for the dead eventually become our own funeral
march. That’s the way of things. We never see it coming until it’s right there
in our rearview, grinning like a skull.
I guess that’s how it happens. One minute you’re filming
some TV show—Lapor Pak at the Trans 7 Studio—and the next, you’re on the
cold linoleum floor with people shouting your name from what sounds like the
bottom of a well. They rushed her to Medistra Hospital, South Jakarta. Blood
vessel burst in the left side of her brain. The kind of stroke that doesn’t
send warning letters ahead of time.
“She left many impressions,” Inul Daratista said later,
standing in the shadow of death at Titiek’s home in Gatot Subroto, “but what’s
clear is that she was very beautiful. Her smile and body were not wrinkled at
all, very beautiful.”
Beautiful. That’s the word they use when they don’t know
what else to say. When the enormity of a life reduced to past tense is too much
to fit into sentences.
In her prime, Titiek performed almost without competitors.
Her voice was the kind that made the hairs on your arms stand up, like feeling
a cold spot in a room that was warm only moments ago. When she sang, there was
something in the notes that remembered old sorrows, old joys—the kind that make
you feel like you’ve known them your whole life, even if you’re hearing them
for the first time.
You know the type. In the heartland, we’d call her “fierce
as a twister but warm as a porch light in July.” The Indonesians called her
their diva, their legend.
But here’s the thing about legends: they start as people.
Little Sudarwati—that was her real name—born to Tugeno Puspowidjojo and Siti
Mariam on November 1, 1937, in Tanjung Tabalong, South Kalimantan. And she wasn’t
born a legend, no sir. She was born sickly.
The kind of child who watches her siblings play from the
porch because the merest wisp of wind might lay her flat with fever. The kind
who grows up wondering if she’ll grow up at all. Her father, desperate as
fathers get when medicine fails, changed her name not once but twice—first to
Kadarwati, then to Sumarti—hoping to trick whatever dark fates had their hooks
in his daughter.
It got worse. Typhoid. Malaria. The kind of double-barrel
sickness that leaves you shivering one minute and burning the next, headaches
pounding like a deranged carpenter in your skull. There were moments—she
admitted this later—when dying seemed like a reasonable way out.
That’s the thing about pain. It narrows your vision until
all you can see is the exit sign.
But she didn’t die. Something in her—call it stubbornness,
call it destiny, call it what you will—kept her heart beating. And when she
finally uncurled from that ball of suffering, she emerged with something inside
her that wouldn’t be quiet.
At 14, when most girls her age were thinking about boys and
school dances, Titiek wanted to sing. Her parents thought it worse than death. “Entertainer,”
they spat the word like it was rotten fruit. In 1950s Indonesia, it was almost
synonymous with “woman of questionable morals.” You know the type—the kind that
makes parents lock up their daughters at night.
She went anyway. Changed her name to Titiek Puspa—a clever
combination of her nickname and her father’s surname—and sneaked off to compete
in “Bintang Radio,” a talent search in Semarang in 1954.
She won second place. That’s how it begins for most
artists—one small victory that tastes so sweet, you’d walk through fire for
another bite.
Soon after, she performed “Chandra Buana,” accompanied by
the Jakarta Symphony Orchestra led by Sjaiful Bachri. He offered her a spot
with OSD, paying 75 cents per performance. Not enough to buy a decent pair of
shoes now, but back then? It was the first step on a road that would stretch
longer than she could have dreamed.
While reaching for the stars, she found love too—Zainal
Ardi. They married in ‘57, had two daughters—Petty Tunjungsari and Ella
Puspasari—but the marriage collapsed after eleven years. That’s how it goes
sometimes. Love is a bird that doesn’t always return to the same branch.
Her career, though—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—that was
something else. Her first vinyl record under the Gembira label. Songs like “Di
Sudut Bibirmu” and “Esok Malam Kau Kujelang.” Even a duet with Tuty Daulay.
By 1960, her voice had reached the presidential palace.
President Sukarno himself—the first leader of independent Indonesia—requested
her as a palace singer. He was the one who officially blessed her stage name:
Titiek Puspa. The diva who would rule Indonesian music across generations.
During Soeharto’s era, she returned to the “Pop Singer
Contest” as a judge and guest star. No longer the nervous contestant but the
standard by which others were measured. She performed with a twelve-violin
orchestra, moving her body to the rhythm like it was a second language she’d
always known.
In ‘71, she shared the stage with Koes Plus, Indonesia’s
answer to The Beatles, at Jakarta Arts Week. The sky threatened rain, but the
crowd packed Taman Ismail Marzuki anyway, umbrellas at the ready. The faithful,
come to worship at the altar of her voice.
By then, she was married to Mus Mualim, pianist of the
Indonesia Lima group. Together, they made music that would echo through
decades. Albums like Si Hitam and Pita catapulted her into the
stratosphere of fame.
The song “Gang Kelinci” painted life in Jakarta’s narrow
alleys, where children played among laundry lines and cooking smoke. “Kupu-Kupu
Malam”—Christ, that one was a gut-punch—told the story of a prostitute Titiek
had met after a show. The kind of woman most people look through rather than
at.
That was Titiek’s gift. She saw people—really saw them. The
invisible ones. The forgotten ones. She took their stories and spun them into
melodies that would stick in your head like burrs on a wool jacket.
As a producer, she knew voices like a watchmaker knows
gears. She didn’t give “Bing” to Eddy Silitonga but chose Grace Simon instead.
She picked Euis Darliah for “Apanya Dong” because she had that playful,
ticklish voice the song needed. When she handed “Kepergiannya” to Hetty Koes
Endang, it won the 1977 Pop Song Festival.
Six hundred songs. Six hundred stories that will outlast us
all. From Sukarno to Prabowo, her voice was the thread that stitched together
the fabric of Indonesian musical history.
Funny thing about death—it doesn’t care about your legacy.
Doesn’t negotiate. Doesn’t take bribes. It just comes, silent as snow, and
takes what it came for.
In Titiek’s case, it came for the handwritten sheet of “Bing”
first—lost in a house fire in Menteng in 1985. The paper turned to ash and
smoke, rising perhaps to join Bing Slamet in whatever comes next. A rehearsal,
you might say, for when Titiek herself would follow.
And now she has.
Rest in peace, Titiek Puspa. Like your name—as fragrant as a
flower—you’ve left a perfume in the air that will linger long after the song
ends.
In the words of your own song, “No name is as fragrant as
yours anymore.” And I reckon that’s true, though it’s a hell of a thing to have
to admit.
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