Barry Likumahuwa Reveals Big PR In The Field Of Religious, Traditional, And Tourism Music

JAKARTA - Barry Likumahuwa is part of the Music Ecosystem Advancement Team that works in a volatile manner and was formed to carry out recommendations for the results of the 2025 Indonesian Music Conference which was held in Jakarta, last October.

In this case, Barry and several music industry practitioners are tasked with finding solutions for improvement in the realm of religious music, tradition, and tourism.

The 42-year-old bass player said that each field has its own problems and challenges, with a lot of 'homework' (PR) to be done.

In the realm of religious music, Barry said, the largest homework that must be completed immediately lies in data collection issues, making it difficult when talking about royalty distribution.

As a musician who is also active in the realm of Christian spiritual music, Barry said, many songwriters of this type of music have not earned economic rights to their work properly.

"Many songwriters whose songs are sung everywhere, but their lives are also far from prosperous," said Barry when contacted by VOI recently.

Even though they did create it, the goal was for service, not for seeking economic rights, but actually when we talked about the song being distributed or the song was released, it had economic rights there. Economic rights are actually their rights," he continued.

For Barry, the advantage of a musical work, including religious songs, is not something shabu to talk about. Economic rights remain one of the rights attached to every songwriter.

While in the realm of traditional music, PR is largest in conservation, where the regeneration of traditional musicians must run better.

"In traditional music, one of the things we are fighting for is how traditional music can be preserved. Because many areas are now short of people who can continue that traditional music," said Barry.

"In a sense, there are not as many young people as before who study traditional musical instruments. There are even some whose instruments have disappeared altogether," he continued. Well, things like that that we need to fix. We need to work on it again so that Indonesian traditional music can survive.

Then in the tourism realm, the Maluku-blooded Barry, carried a personal mission to make Ambon a world music city.

"In the tourism sector, if I am one of the main concerns because I am from Maluku and I feel it is also my responsibility to be about the Ambon Music City, so how does the Ambon Music City, which is not only a city of music in Indonesia but also a world music city, can really be a tourism destination, even become a tourist destination for people from abroad," he said.

In addition to what has been mentioned above, Barry said that there are still many problems that must be resolved. With the Music Ecosystem Advancement Work Team, he hopes that all challenges can be overcome to create a better Indonesian music ecosystem.

"The homework is still a long way off, it's a long way to go. At least we try to take it slowly so that we start to describe what we need to do," he concluded.