Quo Vadis: Tika and The Dissidents

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Tika and The Dissidents

Burn, Baby, Burn
By Jason Tedjasukmana Monday, Nov. 30, 2009

Participants at U.S. labor rallies tend not to draw inspiration from
Indonesian divas — but Kartika Jahja was asked if her jazzy scorcher
of a protest song, Mayday (sung in English), could be used by a
coalition of writers and journalists at a protest in Detroit. "And we
are the ones who work their fields/ And we are the ones who fight
their wars," the track goes. "And we are the ones to cut this crap."
The passionate defiance is signature Tika (as she's more commonly
known), and something that sets the 28-year-old singer-songwriter
apart from Indonesia's hyper-conservative entertainment establishment.
"Every time I turn on the TV something pisses me off," she says. "I
feel like I am witnessing the massacre of people's intelligence."
On her sophomore album, The Headless Songstress, Tika and her band —
the aptly named Dissidents — file slow-burning postcards from the
Jakartan edge. Recorded in a mix of English and Indonesian, these are
songs of cynicism ("My midlife crisis was at its peak that Friday
night"), urban ennui ("My dad's religious, my mum's a bore/ Can we
talk about something else?") and modern manners ("Harry loves Betty
.../ But daddy wants Betty to marry Eddy/ But Eddy loves Larry").
Classic jazz scoring — for piano, acoustic bass and drums — steeps the
work in an atmosphere of late nights and darkened rooms. (See "Best of
Asia: Best Alternative-Music Scene.")
Style connoisseurs will coo happily over the packaging: copies come
with a whimsically designed notebook and fabric pouch, and a dedicated
team puts the time-consuming assemblage together by hand. "No label
would be crazy enough to package a CD like this and sell it for the
price we do," Tika concedes. "That's why we formed our own label, with
each band member as a shareholder, so we could do what we wanted." One
really can't imagine Tika having it any other way. See suaratika.com
for more.