How to Write the Soundtrack for Indonesia's First Feminist 'Sate Western'

A lone woman calmly rides a horse down a seemingly endless road running through savanna grasslands parched by the blistering sun. She's dressed in a blouse, a sarong, and a pair of thin sandals. Her one hand is holding the reins of her horse. Her other clutches a length of white cloth wrapped around a severed human head—all that's left of the man who raped her.

This stark image is a scene in Indonesian director Mouly Surya's latest film, the Western-tinged revenge yard Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts. The movie, a feminist rape-revenge story shot in Eastern Indonesia's Sumba island, is a unique hybrid. It's a Western, but told though a modern Indonesian lens, one that relies heavily on creative genre splicing and culture mixing to tell a story that probably couldn't be told by anyone else.

The island of Sumba ended up being the perfect spot for an Indonesian Western. The island's rocky, dry landscape is like nowhere else in this tropical country. Just like the Italian directors of the 1960s used the arid land of Italy and Spain to shoot Spaghetti Westerns, Mouly used Sumba to recreate a facsimile of the American Southwest.

So we all know what a Western looks like. But what's it sound like? Musicians Yudhi Arfani and Zeke Khaseli were in charge of scoring the film. But the pair had never set foot in Sumba. They only had photos of the island and the film's script to work from.

“I was looking for inspiration for the tone and feel of the scoring from the film’s promotional poster at the time,” Yudhi told me. “So I just stared at the image long and hard for some time.”

Music in Western films are usually characterized by elements of classical music, surf rock, Irish folk, and some Mexican tunes. It’s the kind of music that automatically reminds you of a man in wide-brimmed cowboy hat and boots, chewing on hay, and holding a revolver. Yudhi told me that he was influenced by the Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who has created some of the most memorable Western scores to date. But Yudhi said the biggest challenge he faced was not replicating the genre’s obvious tropes, but rather creating Western-style tunes that fit the tone of Marlina, which wasn’t easy.

“How do I create a Western score that fits a female protagonist?” he told me. “Westerns are usually dominated by male lead characters.”

Marlina isn’t the first Indonesian anti-Western film to hit local theaters. In the mid 1970s and throughout 1980s, “cowboy movies” were all the rage. Bing Slamet Koboi Cengeng (1974), Koboi Cilik (1977), Benyamin Koboi Ngungsi (1975), and Tiga Janggo (1976) made actors Bing Slamet and Benyamin Sueb household names. But back then, those movies were mostly a parodies of the "real" Westerns. Marlina, on the other hand, is a serious arthouse film that has earned praise at film festivals worldwide, including the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

Marlina is not like other Western films. By using a female character as its protagonist and telling the story through her own experiences, Mouly tries to break down the conventions of a typical Western movie. “Western movies are very masculine and misogynistic,” the director told VICE. “Marlina is trying to flip those conventions.”

Yudhi and Zeke used took a similar approach to the film's score. Although they still incorporated the iconic Western sound, they inserted doses of femininity by choosing "less masculine" sounding notes and progressions in their composition.

You can hear this clearly on “Lazuardi,” a single released a week before the movie premiered in Indonesian theaters. Cholil Mahmud, the singer of Indonesia’s biggest indie rock band Efek Rumah Kaca, lends his vocals on the song, making “Lazuardi” the standout in an otherwise mostly instrumental score.

“Lazuardi” starts with a gentle acoustic guitar fingerpicking before it launches into a ¾ waltz beat. Twangy distorted guitar comes on, and Cholil's vocal lulls us in.

Chill said he was mindful about his position as a man singing about a woman’s struggle. So he tried to adopt a different mindset as he was writing the lyrics, he said.

“After watching the movie, I reflected on myself about how a woman would go through situations that Marlina faces,” Cholil told me. “How strong and tough she is dealing with the problems.”

Lazuardi—Bahasa Indonesia for "sky blue," refers to Sumba’s bright sky as a witness to Marlina’s struggle with her own inner darkness. It captures the essence of Marlina’s life, full of twists and turns not unlike Sumba’s highway, as Cholil ends the song on a somber, bittersweet note.

Listen to the song below and check out the movie, which is in Indonesian theaters now.