A Choir Splits Its Parts by Body, Not by Voice

JAKARTA — In a community hall above a flooded-then-reclaimed market district, the Kali Besar Choir is rehearsing a piece its composer wrote for two kinds of body. Half the singers are augmented, roughly in line with the world's five-percent-and-rising; half are not; and the score asks them to hold a note longer than an unaltered breath allows, then hands the sustain to those who can. "We are not showing off the new bodies," said choirmaster Dewi Anggraini, sixty-three, who directs from a folding chair. "We are making the difference audible instead of pretending it away." The effect, in rehearsal, is a note that never quite ends — one set of lungs failing as another takes it up, a seam you can hear. Augmented tenor Bagus Pratama, twenty-nine, is uneasy with the attention. "I did not enhance myself to become a section," he said, smiling. The choir sings the gap between generations the paper keeps writing about, and makes of it, for an hour on a Tuesday, something close to music.