Indonesian avant-garde duo Senyawa confront the apocalypse with communityPhilip Montoroon March 4, 2021 at 12:00 pm

“Ideas that are seen as progressive, modern, or radical always have these associations that come from the West,” said Senyawa vocalist Rully Shabara in a February interview with Reader contributor Joshua Minsoo Kim for his online music zine Tone Glow. “But is that true?” Shabara, 38, and instrument inventor Wukir Suryadi, 43, founded this Indonesian duo in 2010, and when I first wrote about them in 2014, I said their largely improvised music “combines the ancient gravity of a firelit ritual and the electric futurism of the avant-garde.” Senyawa know they aren’t engaged in a mass-market enterprise, so their artistic practice foregrounds collaboration, decentralization, and mutual support.…Read More