by SUI-LEE WEE
Voice of Baceprot has electrified audiences and built a large following in Indonesia. Now the group is taking its music to the West.
The drummer crashed her cymbals. The bass player clawed at her guitar. The crowd raised index and pinkie fingers in approval. The lead singer and guitarist stepped up to the mic and screamed: “Our body is not public property!” And dozens of fans threw themselves into a frenzy for the hijab-wearing heavy metal trio.
“We have no place for the sexist mind,” the lead singer, Firda Kurnia, shrieked into the mic, singing the chorus of one of the band’s hit songs, “(Not) Public Property,” during a December performance in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital.
Nearly a decade after first emerging, Voice of Baceprot (pronounced bachey-PROT, meaning “noise” in Sundanese, one of the main languages spoken in Indonesia) has earned a large domestic following with songs that focus on progressive themes like female empowerment, pacifism and environmental preservation.
Now it is also winning fans overseas. It’s been praised by the likes of Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. In the past year, the band — whose lyrics mix English, Indonesian and Sundanese — has played in the United States, France and the Netherlands.
At the Jakarta gig, Ms. Firda, 23, who goes by Marsya, told the crowd that the band was “a little sad and angry to hear that someone here was a victim of catcalling.”
“Anyone who does something like that, catcall or touch other people’s bodies without consent, those are the worst forms of crime,” she said. “Therefore, we can’t wait to curse this person through the following song.” And then the band played “PMS,” whose chorus is in Indonesian:
“Although I am not as virgin as Virgin Mary/I am not your rotten brain servant/Although I am not as virgin as Virgin Mary/I am free, completely free.”
Voice of Baceprot may be the only prominent heavy-metal band in Indonesia whose members wear hijabs, but the heavy-metal music scene is long established here. Jakarta is the host of Hammersonic, Southeast Asia’s biggest annual heavy metal music festival. The outgoing president, Joko Widodo, is a fan of Metallica and Megadeth.
The members of Voice of Baceprot are all practicing Muslims in their early 20s. With songs that shatter stereotypes of gender, religion and class, they have become role models for many young women in Indonesia. At the concert, many fans moshed and banged their heads in tune to the music.
Still, the group has faced critics. Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation, is not a theocratic state and has always cherished its secular identity, but in recent years, parts of the sprawling archipelago have adopted a more conservative interpretation of Islam — one that disapproves of young women in hijabs playing heavy metal.
“They have come under criticism and all kinds of bullying, but that didn’t affect their determination to make music,” said Karim, a 54-year-old fan who traveled from Bogor to Jakarta for the December concert. Like many Indonesians, he uses one name.
The members of the band — Marsya; the drummer, Eusi Siti Aisyah, known as Sitti; and Widi Rahmati, the bassist — were all born and raised in Garut, a conservative part of West Java Province.
Their
parents are farmers. The house where Marsya grew up still has no
running water, and the internet is spotty. Their childhoods were spent
reading the Quran, playing games in rice paddies and listening to their
parents’ music of choice, dangdut — a flavor of Indonesian pop.
The girls met as junior high students in an Islamic school, where they said they were “troublemakers.”
In 2014, they were sent to be counseled by Cep Ersa Eka Susila Satia, a teacher who first tried to get them into theater. But “their acting was horrible,” said Mr. Ersa, whom the women call “Abah Ersa,” or “Father Ersa.”
He directed them to play music instead, and they became part of a group of 15 students who dabbled in pop music. Then one day, the three girls borrowed Mr. Ersa’s laptop and discovered his playlist. They played “Toxicity,” the hit song by the Armenian American metal band System of a Down, and were instantly hooked.
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