ON Thursday afternoon last week, his long life came to an end. And just like the lyric of his Bengawan Solo, Gesang, 93, had been going on a long journey through the music that is not much in vogue today.

Keroncong (Indonesian pop music with a Portuguese tint) and Gesang proved hard to separate. Even in his last several days at Muhammadiyah Hospital, Surakarta, when the coronary heart trouble and lung infection he had suffered were easing, he w