Adhyatmika used to laugh at the hardcore fans of the Jakarta band The Upstairs. The band dubbed their fans the "Modern Darlings," and they had a habit of wearing colorful outfits, tartan pants, and white-rimmed glasses. Then he saw the band perform live.Now, a decade later, Adhyatmika has wrapped on the documentary Terekam—a lovingly rendered short doc that chronicles rise of four bands—The Upstairs, White Shoes And The Couples Company, Goodnight Electric, and The Adams—that perfectly encapsulate the capital's indie rock scene in the mid-aughts.VICE Indonesia's Yudhistira spoke with Adhyatmika, "Mika" to friends, and his script writer Reshan Janotama, or Echan, about the golden era of Jakarta's indie scene and its relevance today.VICE Indonesia: There are so few music documentaries produced in Indonesia that something like Terekam is pretty rare.
Mika: Somehow pop culture in Indonesia is often overlooked. It annoys me. People still think our culture is angklung, gamelan, batik. Yes, all those things need to be preserved, but this is the 21st century, cultures evolve.Our culture also represents us as a nation. There should always be medium to show the world how much our culture has evolved, to show our music, our films. In this documentary, White Shoes' singer Sari admitted of once being asked "Do you guys have PlayStation in Indonesia?" Indonesia is still often seen as a "backward" or traditional country that only supports traditional dances and anything old-fashioned even though we have awesome bands with distinguished sounds that can compete with anyone internationally.So is Terekam an attempt to change this mindset?
Mika: I was talking with my friend Getar [Terekam's narrator] about all those bands we used to watch in university. What happened to them? They used to play every month. A friend from IKJ [the Jakarta Art Institute] once told me 'indie bands go nowhere.' The statement reeked of disappointment. So I became curious about the whereabouts of all of these indie bands. What struggles do musicians go through?But one big motivation for me was when our 23-year-old intern told us her taste in music. She was into Beyonce, Rihanna, and contemporary pop songs. I was like, 'jeez, don't you have something else?' I was being such a snob [laughs]. I gave her The Upstairs and White Shoes and it made her confused since she had never heard of them. We were only five years apart, man. That made me realize that someone has to make a music doc to reintroduce these bands from the past.All the bands were IKJ alumni. Was that on purpose?
Mika: We wanted to highlight the struggles of artists and IKJ has always been associated with the arts. Some asked us why legendary bands like Rumah Sakit or Bandempo weren't featured in the movie. When Echan and I graduated high school in 2005-2006 pensi [high school art festivals] was huge. It was a phenomenon.All four bands came onto the scene almost at the same time. They all released albums in the mid-2000s and became the kings of pensi together. It was like the new wave of indie bands. This is important because other bands like Naif and Rumah Sakit were moving on their own sporadically. These four bands were legends to high school kids at the time. This is the music of our youth that we want to preserve.These bands sort of represent the peak of Jakarta's indie scene. How did that happen?
Echan: The internet and the media helped a lot. In high school, I was listening to radio stations like Trax FM. The DJs were friends with those bands and would often play their songs. Magazines also wrote a lot about indie bands. Distros were huge back then. I would go to distros to buy CDs, cassettes, and music magazines like Ripple. So there were a lot of factors: friendships, the media, and also the timing of it all.
Mika: One factor that we didn't get to talk about in the documentary was the internet. While previous generations of indie bands like Rumah Sakit still relied on the old-school way of spreading their music: MTV and the radio. White Shoes and Co utilized MySpace and Multiply—which was big at the time. Indonesian music was also pretty stagnant at the time, starting with Peter Pan. Peter Pan were so huge so that there was a big gap between them and the listeners. I would have never been able to meet them. How the hell could I meet Ariel [the singer]? I still don't know how to reach him. [laughs]Almost a decade later, these four bands still headline music shows. How did they survive this long?
Echan: Because they are consistent. There are other important bands from the era, but most of them disappeared due to inactivity.Why is Terekam so short?
Mika: We feel historical moments are more effective when we post it on the internet. If we did a full-length or short movie for festivals, people would have forgotten about it in a year. And accessing it would be difficult. Let's say you want to watch a certain documentary, where would you watch it? Putting something on the internet will make it last forever and make it accessible, as long as YouTube is still around. Indonesians' attention spans are also rather low. A 25-minute movie often intimidates people right off the bat and stops them from watching it. This is something we need to avoid.It makes us happy when people said the movie was too short. That means the content is good and that people want more of it. There are some ideas that we're working on right now. There's a lot of material that we didn't include in the movie, things like the roles of distro, music videos, and the role of big commercial movies like Janji Joni. Now that IKJ has been written about, we're going to cover other things.With YouTube we now have things like Sounds From The Corner and pfphotoworks. Has this changed people's mindset at all about music documentaries?
Echan: It's possible since technology helps make things easier. You can even use a smartphone's camera. Those channels are really helpful when I can't make it to a gig. And, in the long run, they will be treasures for those who want to make something out of it.
Mika: But it needs to be noted that bands should have well-preserved documentation of their own work. Years from now, if someone wants to create a documentary they won't remember these channels but they will remember the bands themselves. This happened to us We got the material, but not from the bands themselves and that's just sad.
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Mika: Somehow pop culture in Indonesia is often overlooked. It annoys me. People still think our culture is angklung, gamelan, batik. Yes, all those things need to be preserved, but this is the 21st century, cultures evolve.Our culture also represents us as a nation. There should always be medium to show the world how much our culture has evolved, to show our music, our films. In this documentary, White Shoes' singer Sari admitted of once being asked "Do you guys have PlayStation in Indonesia?" Indonesia is still often seen as a "backward" or traditional country that only supports traditional dances and anything old-fashioned even though we have awesome bands with distinguished sounds that can compete with anyone internationally.So is Terekam an attempt to change this mindset?
Mika: I was talking with my friend Getar [Terekam's narrator] about all those bands we used to watch in university. What happened to them? They used to play every month. A friend from IKJ [the Jakarta Art Institute] once told me 'indie bands go nowhere.' The statement reeked of disappointment. So I became curious about the whereabouts of all of these indie bands. What struggles do musicians go through?
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Mika: We wanted to highlight the struggles of artists and IKJ has always been associated with the arts. Some asked us why legendary bands like Rumah Sakit or Bandempo weren't featured in the movie. When Echan and I graduated high school in 2005-2006 pensi [high school art festivals] was huge. It was a phenomenon.All four bands came onto the scene almost at the same time. They all released albums in the mid-2000s and became the kings of pensi together. It was like the new wave of indie bands. This is important because other bands like Naif and Rumah Sakit were moving on their own sporadically. These four bands were legends to high school kids at the time. This is the music of our youth that we want to preserve.These bands sort of represent the peak of Jakarta's indie scene. How did that happen?
Echan: The internet and the media helped a lot. In high school, I was listening to radio stations like Trax FM. The DJs were friends with those bands and would often play their songs. Magazines also wrote a lot about indie bands. Distros were huge back then. I would go to distros to buy CDs, cassettes, and music magazines like Ripple. So there were a lot of factors: friendships, the media, and also the timing of it all.
Mika: One factor that we didn't get to talk about in the documentary was the internet. While previous generations of indie bands like Rumah Sakit still relied on the old-school way of spreading their music: MTV and the radio. White Shoes and Co utilized MySpace and Multiply—which was big at the time. Indonesian music was also pretty stagnant at the time, starting with Peter Pan. Peter Pan were so huge so that there was a big gap between them and the listeners. I would have never been able to meet them. How the hell could I meet Ariel [the singer]? I still don't know how to reach him. [laughs]Almost a decade later, these four bands still headline music shows. How did they survive this long?
Echan: Because they are consistent. There are other important bands from the era, but most of them disappeared due to inactivity.Why is Terekam so short?
Mika: We feel historical moments are more effective when we post it on the internet. If we did a full-length or short movie for festivals, people would have forgotten about it in a year. And accessing it would be difficult. Let's say you want to watch a certain documentary, where would you watch it? Putting something on the internet will make it last forever and make it accessible, as long as YouTube is still around. Indonesians' attention spans are also rather low. A 25-minute movie often intimidates people right off the bat and stops them from watching it. This is something we need to avoid.It makes us happy when people said the movie was too short. That means the content is good and that people want more of it. There are some ideas that we're working on right now. There's a lot of material that we didn't include in the movie, things like the roles of distro, music videos, and the role of big commercial movies like Janji Joni. Now that IKJ has been written about, we're going to cover other things.With YouTube we now have things like Sounds From The Corner and pfphotoworks. Has this changed people's mindset at all about music documentaries?
Echan: It's possible since technology helps make things easier. You can even use a smartphone's camera. Those channels are really helpful when I can't make it to a gig. And, in the long run, they will be treasures for those who want to make something out of it.
Mika: But it needs to be noted that bands should have well-preserved documentation of their own work. Years from now, if someone wants to create a documentary they won't remember these channels but they will remember the bands themselves. This happened to us We got the material, but not from the bands themselves and that's just sad.