But the players are waiting to start, the strumming has ceased and they are looking to the leader for the first tune. There comes an introductory four slow notes on the fiddle and then, on the first beat of the next bar, the guitars and ukeleles thrum down on a quivering chord and the melody of Poting Padi, one of the oldest Javanese kronchongs, is selected to start off the evening. It is as impossible to describe as it is to notate kronchong rhythm, for though the melody is wistfully maintained on the fiddle, there is such an interweaving, such a criss-cross pattern of rhythm and counter-rhythm from the other strings, that though all are quite separate, they somehow, being interwoven, become one. The ukelele is generally a repeated, throbbing chord with or against the beat. Two guitars pick out separate, fast little tunes of their own, playing all round the theme, yet never quite touching it. And the string-bass? Well, Leider never knows what he’s going to play till he feels the music, and then such a crazy, twanging, booming rhythm is produced, as Eastern as it could possibly be, that yet contrives to fit perfectly into the whole performance. The instruments come to the end of the melody, and where before the violin led into the verse, after a sudden break comes the voice of the singer: ‘Waktu potong padi . . .’ The perfect kronchong voice is controlled, resonant, and somehow plaintive. As this man sings, he sinks his cheek onto his guitar and stares unseeingly at the floor.

When the song ends there is a chorus of shouts like ‘Ayoh!’ ‘Nyah!’ and a half dozen alternative suggestions called out for the next song. But the programme has been arranged beforehand, and Tari has probably selected it as this is his day. He is very conscious of his responsibility as host tonight and, when he is not looking after the coffee, he is sitting very erect smoking interminable cigarettes. He’s only just escaped having to sing a Javanese song himself because of it being his birthday.

But we’re off again. The last song had dealt with the cutting of the rice harvest, and comparing the happy days in sight of Java’s padifields with the sad condition of their existence in Burma and Thailand where so many of their friends had died. This new tune, however, is Oleh Sio, a jolly little Ambonese song of quite straightforward rhythm and the instruments have been passed over to the Ambonese bay opposite us, where the strings are twanging like mad things.