Gugum Gumbira

Gugum Gumbira is a Sundanese composer, orchestra leader, choreographer, and entrepreneur from Bandung, Indonesia. After 1961, when the Indonesian President Sukarno banned all forms of western music and challenged his people to revive their cultural music, Gugum Gumbira made this task his own. In order to do this he studied the rural, festival dance music for twelve years. His result was jaipongan. He created his own recording studio in Indonesia called Jugala.
Gugum Gumbira was born in 1945 in Bandung, Indonesia. He attended college in Bandung where he majored in social and political UNPAD. Once he left college, he took up a position at the Ministry of Finance and later moved to Government Vehicles. He also lectured at the Academy of Finance until 1988.
He currently owns a recording studio called Jugala where he conducts his orchestra also called Jugala and a dance troupe that shares the same name. They travel around the world to perform. As the choreographer for Jugala, he met his wife, Euis Komariah, who was the singer for the orchestra and a dancer in the troupe.