(Photo rollingstone.co.id)

It’s easy to forget with the total domination of female singers like Raisa Andriana and Isyana Sarasvati on the country’s pop scene that, there is also a long history with female performers who would make even some of the most ardent feminists proud.

Singers like Raisa and Isyana may indeed have genuine talent and skills, which could explain their rapid ascent to the top. But we can’t easily discount their role as willing objects to be used as the visual representation of pop music that caters only to the male gaze. The sonic palettes in their music, the romantic theme of their lyrics — mostly written by a team of writers — are used to amplify their roles as the object of affection of an assumed male audience.

Raisa and Isyana could consider themselves lucky to be put on the pedestal in a male-dominated scene, because some of their peers, most notably members of Japanese-influenced girl group JKT48, have been reduced to Barbie dolls on which male fans can project their sexual fantasies.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Back in the 1960s, some female musicians in the country already lived a feminist fantasy. One of the biggest bands from the decade was Dara Puspita (Flower Girls) who, despite their clichéd moniker, turned out to be one of the most radical bands ever to come out from the scene, sonically speaking. While female vocalists of the era relied on backing bands, Dara Puspita not only played their own instruments but also wrote their own material, the type of lo-fi garage sound that would not sound out of place more than 40 years later. In the early 1970s, Dara Puspita took their ferocious live performances, heavy with guitar distortion and lead singer Titiek Hamzah’s yelping and shrieking, to Europe, cutting two singles in the Netherlands but crashing out in 1971 when they returned home. As Dara Puspita faded from the scene and Titiek began writing love songs, her spot in the limelight was taken by Sylvia Saartje.

Sylvia, a native of Malang, East Java, gained recognition for her incendiary renditions of Led Zeppelin’s biggest hits in the early 1970s. She was also known as a versatile vocalist, who could switch from mimicking Robert Plant to channeling Janis Joplin with relative ease. One of Sylvia’s most memorable performances was when she wowed the crowd at Padjajaran University in Bandung, West Java, with her masterful take on Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky,” one of the band’s most operatic compositions. Some of her recorded works were standard pop fare but she is remembered mostly for her ferocious live performances, earning her the title of the country’s first lady rocker.

In spite of the New Order regime’s patriarchal tendency, the next two decades saw the explosion of female rockers who broke the boundaries in pop. Young music fans today — who know Anggun only as a global superstar — will probably be surprised to learn that when she still used Sasmi as her last name, she was the country’s biggest rock superstar.

Those who grew up in the 1980s will most likely recall seeing ripped jeans-wearing Anggun on state-run television station singing her memorable hit “Tua-Tua Keladi” (Dirty Old Man).

Even the rise of male-dominated grunge and heavy metal in the 1990s did not prevent female artists from carving their own niche. In the early years of the decade, folk singer Oppie Andaresta brought a much-needed feminist sensitivity to the mainstream with her debut album Albumnya Oppie (Oppie’s Album) which not only tackles the problem of young women living in a patriarchal society but also made a thinly veiled broadside at the authoritarian regime of president Soeharto.

On the album’s second track, “Cuma Karena Aku Perempuan” (Just Because I’m A Woman), Oppie made a plea to her parents not to discriminate against her because of her gender, aptly backed by a blues-infused tune that harks back to Janis Joplin’s Big Brother and the Holding Company era.

(Photo by Kompas.com)

ARTISTIC INTEGRITY

The start of the new millennium has been unkind to female artists. As the mainstream music industry was struggling to deal with piracy and the rise of online music distribution, major labels ditched their last shreds of idealism and started distributing music that appealed to the broadest spectrum of fans, in the process producing music that fans could respond to easily at the gut level. What’s not to like about a very attractive female singer singing about heartbreak and longing. Raisa and Isyana are two examples that the recipe could work and before we know it, we have Gita Gutawa, Bunga Citra Lestari and Lala Karmela swimming in their slipstream.

As the mainstream succumbed to the pressure of the male-dominated industry, the task of promoting the feminist ideal falls to the country’s independent scene, the only place where idealism still counts and artistic integrity serves as currency.

The second decade of the new millennium saw the quiet ascent of Yogyakarta-based artist Leilani Hermiasih, better known by her stage name Frau. She is one of the new generation of feminist musicians who decided to fight against the stereotypes in their day-to-day struggle by writing her own material, playing her own instrument (a piano named Oscar) and discussing the theme of romance in an unconventional way.

One of the most memorable songs off her debut album, Starlit Carousel, was titled “Sepasang Kekasih Yang Pertama Bercinta Di Luar Angkasa” (A Couple Who First Made Love in Space). It made a veiled attack on run-of-mill love songs by exposing the tendency to paint an unrealistic picture of a couple in love. The album’s first track, “I’m a Sir”, was Frau imagining herself being a man and easily winning the day. “I dress up like a sir// I’d be quite a legend for the next hundred years// My life would never ever be so sad and no tears//. Backed by a roiling piano and her breathless vocalizing, ‘‘I’m a Sir’’ is a contender for the best feminist song ever produced by the country’s music scene. Frau’s penchant for wearing no make-up during live performances also drives home her point about the music industry being too obsessed with beauty and good looks.

At the other end of the spectrum, the independent scene has artists like Kartika Jahja, who addresses the problem of patriarchy head on by writing lyrics that she hopes can raise awareness about the domination by men. If Tika’s debut with her band the Dissidents in 2009, Headless Songstress, gave layers of intricate soundscapes of jazz and indie rock, her latest record “Tubuhku Otoritasku” (My Body, My Authority) is more direct. It’s a feminist call to arms set to punk music.

“‘Tubuhku Otoritasku’ speaks about a woman reclaiming full authority of her body. Women’s bodies go through so much scrutiny, judgment, policing, objectification and all kinds of violence,” Kartika said in a recent interview.

Almost 50 years after Dara Puspita broke all the boundaries, Tika and Frau prove that feminism is alive in music.