30 The Wire Senyawa Like twin spirits possessed,Javanese duo Senyawa crosswire the energy of thrash metal with the raw power of trance rituals. Together and apart, the pair are key nodes in 's underground scene. By David Novak. Photography by Benjamin Butcher

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Senyawa | The Wire | 31 The sounds pouring out of the monitors and into m y in on the group on tours from Singapore to Malaysia dots of the microscenes s p r e a d i n g out across the ears are raw and powerful as hell: a beat that is both to Los A n g e l e s and back to Java over the past two archipelago. Artist and longtime scene organiser relentless and entrancing, a voice that is beyond years, Shabara and Suryadi trace their musical roots Woto Wibowo ( a k a Wok The Rock) generated a crucial a voice. I'm in the control room at the Jogja Audio deep into the weird alchemical mixtures of Indonesia's node with his open culture netlabel Yes No Wave, School studio, checking out the early mixes of Tabuh dynamic underground. which, since its formation in 2007, released all of Langit Tanduk Jawara (Sky Drums On The Horns Of These days in Jogja (Jogjakarta or in Shabara and Suryadi's recordings as free downloads, The Champion) by Senyawa m e m b e r Rully Shabara's long form), Senyawa are one especially solid branch alongside many of Jogja's core underground acts such new project Setabuhan. Two p e r c u s s i o n i s t s , one extending outward from a lively tangled thicket of as Frau, Punkasila and the noise rock band Seek Sick at each end of a huge skin-covered drum, blast out extreme sounds and experimental art, including Six. Wibowo is also responsible for putting S e n y a w a a complex interlocking matrix driving Shabara's noise collectives and electronic media g r o u p s like together at his Yes No Klub, an itinerant performance distorted, wordless, panting breath in and out of Jogja Noise Bombing, Lifepatch, Yogyakarta Synth series held at ad hoc spaces around the city. the mix, f i r s t a noisy scrabbling submerged into the Ensemble, House Of Natural Fiber and Kenali R a n g k a i "Wukir got up on stage with his instrument and flow of beats, and then punching out in groaning Pakai. In its dual role as both a college town and a started to play," Wok told me, " a n d I i m m e d i a t e l y operatic incantations and whisper-screams that historic centre for Javanese traditional arts, the city texted Rully: 'Drop what you are doing and get down echo in open space. Inspired by the trance-inducing provided rich turf for growing an alternative culture here right now! If you don't come it'll be t h e biggest balia rituals of Shabara's home i s l a n d of Sulawesi, scene since well before the turn of the m i l l e n n i u m . mistake of your life.' Rully arrived on his motorcycle a the visceral mass of sound evokes the technological When I lived in Jogja to study music in 1993-93, few minutes later. I pointed to the stage and said, 'Go possession of Super se-era Boredoms, a r e m i x e d during the long dictatorship of 's New join him.'" bootleg of Einsturzende Neubauten, or a close-miked Order regime, a l t e r n a t i v e media w e r e suppressed. The two recorded their first album a few days later. field recording of a spirit possession ceremony g o n e Underground subcultures were there if you squinted, Wok dubbed the release Senyawa, an Indonesian wrong. Grinning at my a w e d expression, Shabara but only as a public secret at the fringes of social life. word that refers both to a chemical c o m p o u n d a n d pushes my c h a i r toward the mixing board. "Mess with But as the country stumbled blinking out of the long a syncretic mixture of elemental forms. The n a m e it for a minute. See i f you can open up the c o m p r e s s i o n dictatorship and into a new era of economic a n d social stuck, and Senyawa became a staple at Wok's monthly and get the drums to kick harder. I w a n t it to be a s change at the end of the 1990s, grass roots networks shows, where they developed a unique sound and intense as possible - to j u s t fucking rip out of t h e exploded across the country, especially in Java. From began to attract visiting collaborators to Jogja, speakers. It should make you feel like fighting." Bandung to to Jogja, Solo and Surabaya, including Japanese guitar improv great Kazuhisa The sound is as exciting and powerful as the city of organisers brought local independent performance Uchihashi and Arrington De Dionyso's Indo-post-punk Jogja itself, the bright core of a growing Indonesian scenes, as well as DIY publishing and merch (called outfit Malaikat Dan S i n g a . In 2011, curator Kristi network of experimental music. T h e city is home to distro in local parlance), to the foreground of popular Monfries brought Senyawa t o Australia for their Senyawa, Shabara's explosive duo with the equally culture, binding together a generation of Indonesian first overseas tour and things have been nonstop prolific multi-instrumentalist Wukir Suryadi, w h o youth in the politics of punk. And over the last 20 since, with stints at Mona Foma, W O M A D , Unsound, coaxes dark soundscapes and bone-crunching riffs years, Indonesia has boasted the largest subcultures Europalia and the Asian Meeting Festival exposing the from unique handmade instruments, including his of metal, hardcore, grindcore and punk in the world, group to new audiences in Europe and across East iconic spear-like bambu wukir. Since their formation as well as recent surges in more pop based indie and and South East Asia. in 2010, Senyawa have catalysed a t r a n s n a t i o n a l shoegaze bands. But more e x p e r i m e n t a l a p p r o a c h e s Along the way, S e n y a w a b r o u g h t new (or perhaps audience through tours that stretch from Australia tended to circulate mostly in Java and Bali, mainly a s truly old?) influences to Jogja's experimental scene, to Europe to North America a n d Japan. Their studio academic projects in art schools and on the margins drawn from the raw intensity of traditional cultural recordings construct a diverse soundscape of vocal of galleries as performance art. performances. Like most Indonesians living outside and instrumental improvisations, and their magnetic of big cities, Shabara and Suryadi had grown up live street performances have been documented in Neither member of Senyawa w a s born in Jogja but seeing kuda lumping (also known asjathilan), a Vincent Moon's trippy short film Calling The N e w Gods migrated there, like many y o u n g people, to tap into wild improvisatory possession ritual that brings (with a soundtrack newly issued on vinyl by OkraTna its creative resources. When Shabara arrived from young dancers into trances in villages across Java, Records) as well as in breathless YouTube videos shot Sulawesi as a high schooler in the late 1990s, "there shouting, spasming v i o l e n t l y , whipping one another by awestruck audience members in clubs, concert was no scene. No one knew w h e r e t o play, so we j u s t and, according to some accounts, even eating halls and galleries. played at punkgigs, metal gigs, hardcore gigs... and glass. Musicians bang away on cheap and broken With the energy of a teenage thrash metal band no one liked us really," he laughs. We're talking over iron gongs and drumsets, pounding out a hypnotic and the shamanistic tumult of a v i l l a g e exorcism, it's Skype in April. The situation he describes began to accompaniment. impossible to deny their volcanic effect. Senyawa can shift in the 2000s as d i g i t a l infrastructure brought "It's very raw a n d brutal," adds Shabara gleefully, be counted among t h e most thrilling, edgy and original net cafes and mobile phones into daily life, bringing "and it's not like experimental music, or popular forms live performance units anywhere in the world. Indonesians onto the internet en masse, i n contact from elsewhere. It's more punk than punk. It's our with each other, and a world of new media resources. music: this is what we w e r e listening to as kids on the For new audiences, who may have picked up on their Music fans had heard Sepultura and Sonic Youth; streets." early international releases on Morphine in 2015, or now they passed around bootleg mixes of Captain caught the pair at festivals such as Tusk and Unsound Beefheart, Merzbow and Sleep. "I was listening to Wukir Suryadi spent his early life playing in the street. the following year, Senyawa might appear to have stuff like Melt Banana and Boredoms when I was in Born in Malang in , he left his family at 12 manifested from thin air. And for some time, the same college," recalls Shabara. "One g u y [local curator years old to live in a renegade theatre community, was true for Indonesian audiences, who - at least Aji Wartono] had a big collection of pirated CDs, and composing sound effects for plays with stones, metal until the group's spectacular headline-grabbing solo basically all the Jogja musicians copied from him, and sheets and other random j u n k . After apprenticing show at the Jakarta Arts Centre in December 2016 this stuff got copied over and o v e r again - then we'd with avant garde poet Rendra, he moved t o Jakarta - had few o p p o r t u n i t i e s to see S e n y a w a l i v e , barring go to the internet cafe and download more stuff!" to join the infamous street performance scene those lucky enough to stumble upon them in the back The rise of Indonesian digital culture meant that surrounding the Blok M market and red light district. of an art gallery or at a hallucinatory guerrilla street organisers could begin to take the DIY circuit online Suryadi travelled around the city and t h e country for a performance. But as I slowly learned from checking as an open access media n e t w o r k , and connect the decade as a one man unit called Ambience Experiment,

32 | The Wire Senyawa Senyawa | The Wire 33 accompanying guerrilla theatre shows, p u t t i n g out Last year, he began releasing music by friends and comes right up and starts scanning the audience to cassettes with grindcore and weird folk bands such collaborators on his Tills label. "We're thinking about challenge someone, a n d the fighting is real." as Error Scream a n d Bendera Hitam Setengah Tiang how to reconnect music with real life, the best way to (translating as Flying A Black Flag At Half-Mast), live as musicians." Despite such lofty goals, he keeps While Shabara and Suryadi are pleased with the breaking open guitar pedals and microphones, and his tongue planted in his cheek: the label's name is ecstatic overseas reception of Senyawa, both remain using bamboo a n d other natural materials to build silit (asshole) spelled backwards. "It's like, if people measured about its impact on their creative lives. his own unique instruments. "We played anywhere," can't fart for a y e a r . . . their assholes get stopped up "I got back from the last tour," says Suryadi, "and I recalls Suryadi, "in fields, in the streets, in houses, and they end up at the hospital. Keeping on with music wondered why do people g o so crazy about Senyawa? in theatres, for religious ceremonies - it wasn't ever is essential to staying alive." Maybe they have problems w i t h their own history of just music by itself, we always w o r k e d with other artist music and they need something new? What's wrong communities." Shabara, too, is constantly issuing new w o r k w h e n with the world t h a t we want so much from music?" Over the past decade, Suryadi has continued Senyawa are off tour. He i s best known in Jogja as Shabara is more pragmatic: "First things first: we travelling and developing art collaborations, the frontman for Zoo, his longrunning experimental need to get paid properly, like everyone e l s e . Come on, participating in workshops a n d creating instruments rock band. But Zoo is more like a life-encompassing you have to pay us at least the same amount as Sunn and sound installations at STEIM in Amsterdam, and vision than a band. Talking to Shabara about Zoo is 0))). 'Oh but it's far away!' Yeah, you're inviting a band Australia's National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. like listening to a military strategist discuss ways to from Indonesia. Of course it's far away!" he laughs. When I v i s i t his studio in the South Jogja lay waste to a city, and then to a priest, a scholar, and "After that, I j u s t want to hear that it's interesting neighbourhood of Bantul in autumn 2017,1 f o u n d an architect about rebuilding society from the ashes and the music is good, notjust, 'wow! Indonesians Suryadi working on an installation for the Jakarta up. Since their inception in 2006, Zoo have been can make something like this?' Well, we were doing Biennale, an enormous instrument featuring huge releasing a series of themed albums imagining a w o r l d this years ago, actually. And we a r e still doing it. We strips of brass, to be stretched across a wall as moving through developmental epochs, beginning just didn't have the infrastructure to support a n d audiences bounced rubber balls across their surface with language, architecture and religion and following promote it. So t h e West never 'discovered' Senyawa. to create dark gong-like noises. Friends wandered these with science, nations and migration, and then All this 'weird Indonesian stuff they are f i n d i n g out freely in and out of the compound, s m o k i n g , relaxing war and colonisation. about - yes, it's already there." and chatting as we looked over the materials for the "It started out as a normal punk band," says Senyawa plan on digging deeper into the diverse project, a clutter of bamboo and bronze. Shabara, "but slowly I injected this idea of building possibilities of an Indonesian network with a tour to For Suryadi, getting back to this kind of hands-on up a civilisation, one album at a time."Th e language more remote cities. "We couldn't have done this five work after long tours overseas is essential. "If we project includes scrolls of religious lyrics written years ago," declares Shabara, "when these places never stop going with Senyawa, w e don't have time in the invented Kawagaka l a n g u a g e . "We hold just barely had consistent internet - not t o mention to prepare anything new," he declares. "We need workshops where I give people the scrolls and the water and f o o d - so o f course, when y o u look online time to rest, rehearse and learn again." Talking and Kawagaka-lndonesian dictionary and they translate it seems like it's all Java, Java, Java. But now w e c a n eating late into the night under a lightbulb glow it back to Indonesian, and I look to see w h e t h e r it connect with what's actually going on out there, and and surrounded by his in-progress works, Suryadi matches with the original meaning," explains Shabara. we are finding these traditional performers even more contemplated new w a y s to open room for creative "If there's a difference, that's the point, they will openminded than people from DIY punk scenes. W i l l self-knowledge. "I want to get back to the way it w a s make the wrong translation, and then that will be we get inspired by something out there? I bet we will." before the internet, to a more natural space where I published, and they will end up making t h e i r own "We've played so many shows overseas," adds can focus on what I want to do. It's important for me t o religions... Just like the actual Bible! It's not the Suryadi, "I want to know what it feels like w h e n make something notjust because people need it, but translations that matter, it's the translators." Indonesian audiences watch S e n y a w a . " for myself, for my h e a r t , for my s p i r i t u a l i t y . " Shabara's other projects similarly draw t h e general In the meantime, S e n y a w a are working on a new He recently returned to his East Javanese roots public into participation and performance, such as album recorded in the midst of a recent tour to through the Malang based Potro Joyo (meaning the spontaneous improvisation ensemble Raung Australia, when t h e duo took a couple of days off from something like Righteous Behaviour), which invokes Jagat (Roar Of The Universe), w h o use a collective accompanying the Dancenorth/Lucy Guerin d a n c e the spiritual power of the East Javanese mountains improvisation technique reminiscent of Butch troupe to lay down a new session in a local studio in Bromo and Semeru, masked dance traditions and Morris's and Otomo Yoshihide's conduction-style Canberra. The recording has been mixed and mastered syncretic Hindu-animist thought. His S o u n d C l o u d orchestras. Raung J a g a t ensembles a r e composed o f and should be released on Tilis by the end of the year. page posts the group's 2017 debut recording ad hoc groups, with participants who may n e v e r have "It's different. It's more.... normal, I guess?" reports under the tag "Religion & S p i r i t u a l i t y " , but even a performed before. The t e c h n i q u e , says Shabara, c a n Shabara. "Wukir just played a regular electric guitar short listen to the track "Uluk Uluk" quickly dispels work with any group, from older people to children. - well, not regular," he l a u g h s . "It's an e l e c t r i c guitar the notion that this is an unadulterated form of "It's not about making g o o d compositions, about good he made himself. But it's more lyrical, and heavy, of traditional ritual. A rapid-fire burst of Malangan singing," he e x p a n d s . "It's about knowing yourself, course, still heavy: we're keeping it all about the language prayer is filtered, robot-like, through a ring knowing your own v o i c e and that should tell you more." connection with tanah [earth, soil]." modulator; distorted bamboo s t r i n g s mix w i t h rattling The new drum based group Setabuhan, on the other There's no question that Senyawa are grounded in guitar to create an ominous undulating drone, hand, is accompanied b y open combat. "I wanted to something very special, a sonic terrain perhaps unique punctuated by blasts of screeching noise; uncanny reach out to the general public with something really to their unlikely compound mixture of influences, voices chant guttural mantras and bury screams raw and visceral," says Shabara. "Something with the from metal to ritual. But even as their music spreads in clouds of reverb beneath the stereo field. F o r effect of heavy techno, but made with pure muscle." its tendrils out into a global experimental network, Suryadi, Potro Joyo were as much about reconnecting He hired martial artists to perform as they played, Senyawa's local roots run deep. "Even if we are small with hometown f r i e n d s in Malang as opening up new but soon began to invite the audience onstage for as a f i n g e r n a i l , " says Suryadi, "we are still a part of spaces for art and life. "Before making the album," he a kind of improvised f i g h t club. "You can feel the Indonesian culture." D Senyawa's Calling The New says, "we spent a few weeks t a l k i n g about life first. tension," he says, "of people saying to themselves, Gods is released by Okraina. Setabuhan's Tabuh You know, music is notjust for hearing, it's notjust a 'Oh, maybe.... maybe I should go!' There'sthis Langit TandukJawara is released by Yes No. David sound. It's more spiritual. Music is life - it needs to sensation in the room, as they all think about it. Even if Novak's Japanoise: Music At The Edge Of Circulation is be open." they do nothing, the urge is there. But usually someone published by Duke University Press

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