The real story
On the night of 28 October 1928, at the close of the Second Youth Congress in Batavia, the young composer and journalist Wage Rudolf Supratman asked to perform his new song. The congress chair, Sugondo Djojopuspito, read the lyrics and worried that their open call for 'Indonesia' would give the Dutch authorities, whose agents were in the room, an excuse to shut the congress down. So Supratman played it on his violin, with no words at all.
Two weeks later the Chinese-Indonesian weekly Sin Po, where he worked as a reporter, printed the score and lyrics. The colonial government later restricted the song, and Supratman died in Surabaya in 1938, seven years before independence. His violin is kept at the Museum Sumpah Pemuda in Jakarta, where a replica is shown to visitors.
