I was talking with my friend about the (now) Los Angeles-based hardcore band Hoax when the conversation took a depressing turn.
“Hoax is getting pretty big, huh?” I said. “In Indonesia we have so many bands playing mid-tempo hardcore these days. Why do bands always follow trends from the US?”
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“Honestly, it doesn’t really matter that much if bands over there [in Indonesia] like US hardcore, but it would definitely be cooler if they did their own thing,” my friend said.
What’s so depressing about that? How true his statement actually is. I’ve been a fan of Indonesian music for the past 20 years and, as a fan and an occasional (controversial) music writer, I have read countless boring-as-fuck interviews with these bands that all cover the same ground. The band talks about how—and why—they formed a band in the first place. Then they list off their influences, all of which, honestly, are pretty obvious, and are heavily populated by foreign acts. It’s all left me thinking one thing: Indonesian bands suffer from a serious inferiority complex.
Here’s why: there’s a big difference between being influenced by something and straight-up copying it like some middle school kid scribbling down a friend’s homework answers minutes before class begins. Can you really say you’re “influenced” by a band if you sound exactly the same, have the same song structures, and even steal their most-memorable riffs?
Look, no one can avoid internalizing external influences. The songs you listen to, the literature you read, the movies you watch, it all is subconsciously internalized as a part of your psyche. This is something few of us can actually control. But that doesn’t mean all of these influences need to be 100 percent replicated in some shameless knockoff of another (typically foreign) band.
Indonesian musicians need to learn how to take all of these influences and turn them into something genuine and real that comes from a unique place. Local bands should spend more time honing their own sound and less time obsessing over how to perfectly replicate a band they love from abroad under the misguided hope that it will help them “go international.”
Here’s another cold, hard fact: no one gives a shit about your copycat band. It doesn’t matter how many times you go back-and-forth to the US embassy so you can get your visa to play SXSW or some other overseas music festival we all see as the barometer for really “making it” as a band. “We just played the United States man, how cool is that? Now our fees will go up for sure.” Yeah right. No one cares.
Playing a show in the US isn’t what makes a band “successful.” Just like relentlessly ripping off US bands isn’t the way to get successful abroad. Ever wonder why a band like Senyawa does so well abroad and Pitchfork won’t write about your shoegaze band? Because your shit sounds like every other mediocre US shoegaze band and no one is dying for an Indonesian copy of MBV. If this seems obvious to you then you’re probably not in an Indonesian indie band right now.
Need some examples? Don’t worry, I got you.
The S.I.G.I.T vs The Shrine vs Wolfmother
The S.I.G.I.T:
The Shrine:
Wolfmother:
Hurt’Em vs Trap Them
Hurt’Em:
Trap Them:
Bedchamber vs Beach Fossils
Bedchamber:
Beach Fossils:
Rusa Militan vs Fleet Foxes
Rusa Militan:
Fleet Foxes:
Bangkutaman vs every single Sarah Records release
Bangkutaman:
Sarah Records:
