Java-Futurism

Experimental Music and Sonic Activism in Indonesia

Quiet Riot – but then again…

Graea (Nadya Hatta, Asa Rahmana and Dyah "Woro" Isaka) during our interview with them in Yogyakarta 25 January, 2020. Photo: Sanne Krogh Groth

Fieldwork from a distance III

It has been inspiring to follow the updates on the Nusasonic’s website, a long-term project developed by the Goethe-Institute in Southeast Asia. Nusasonic connects the experimental music scenes in South East Asia with scenes in Europe, especially Berlin. Among the features of Nusasonic, we enjoyed the one-hour long radio episode “Quiet Riot” featuring Indonesian (mainly) female artists. The episode made us recall our own meeting with the trio Graea, who performed at the 2020 Jogja Noise Bombing Festival, and whom we really enjoyed interviewing and hanging out with during our visit to Yogyakarta in January 2020. Graea’s music can best be described through a profile of the three diverse musicians: Nadya Hatta who has a background as a classical pianist improvises on keyboards; Dyah “Woro” Isaka contributes convincingly with layers of harsh noise, while the singer Asa Rahmana adds experimental vocals that also to some extent are manipulated by electronics. You can listen to a track of theirs 40’00 minutes into the Nusasonic episode followed by an interview conducted by Syafiatudina.

“Quiet Riot”, the title of this radio episode, refers to the adamant under also characteristically subtle feminist stance that the interviewed artists take throughout the episode: None of the female artists wishes to make their gender into an essential characteristic of their music, and they refuse any hint of a specifically female aesthetics. Nevertheless, their contributions as female artist is transforming the experimental music scene in Indonesia. It is apparent, for instance, that listening to each other – consciously, carefully, and attentively – is central to their improvisational practices. These all-female collaborations are also strikingly more comfortable with the aesthetic use of silence than most male musicians on the experimental and noise music scene. And they explicitly address the place and role of children and families during rehearsals and concerts on a music scene that tends to pretend it consists of singles only. This is both feminism and experimental music “otherwise” – a quiet riot indeed.

January 5, 2021

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Fieldwork from a distance

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