Bengawan Solo (song)

Even though Gesang was Javanese, he decided off the surging nationalist political climate of the day to write the song's lyrics in a form of literary Malay proposed to be the national language "Bahasa Indonesia".

[1] The singer Ichirō Fujiyama, who was in Indonesia and taken prisoner in East Java at the end the war, brought the song's melody and lyrics to Japan on his return home.

[3] A special body was established to manage intellectual property rights in Indonesia after the case and Japan now pays copyright royalty for the song.

It describes how its water changes in the dry and rainy seasons, and that it flows from the city of Surakarta (known locally as Solo) surrounded by mountains, eventually into the sea.

[1] The tune became a big hit among Chinese communities after Malaysian singer Poon Sow Keng sang it with Mandarin lyrics for Hong Kong Pathe in 1956.

[citation needed] The song has also been recorded in Burmese, Dutch, Khmer, English, Korean, Swedish, Polish, Russian, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese.

[8] Many artists have recorded "Bengawan Solo" in the modern Indonesian and Malaysian languages, including Oslan Husein & Teruna Ria, Waljinah, Anneke Grönloh, Chan Yung Yung (陳蓉蓉), Frances Yip, P. Ramlee and Saloma in their guest appearance for the 1961 Hong Kong film Love Parade (花團錦簇),[9] and Siti Nurhaliza with Noh Salleh.

[10] The recording by Oslan Hussein & Teruna Ria was ranked 11th in the list of 150 Best Indonesian Songs of All Time by Rolling Stone Indonesia in 2009.