Alam: Singer who blends hardcore with 'dangdut'

Alam: Singer who blends hardcore with 'dangdut'

Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

It is easy to chuckle, or even roar with laughter, over the
performance and stage act of dangdut singer Alam.

First of all, his music is not the usual hip-shaking ol'
dangdut (popular local music with strong Arab/Indian influences).
Rather, the 21-year-old newcomer has combined loud heavy-metal
guitar and a hoarse voice with a dangdut beat.

With comical lyrics, "Mbah dukun sedang mengobati pasiennya"
("A shaman is healing his patient") followed by a loud spit, it
is enough to turn heads or to make you scratch your head.

And then there's the act. Isn't Michael Jackson's moonwalk
strut way too awkward now, despite the comeback of the 80s wave?

But Alam imitated the strut, joining older sister Vety Vera,
already a well-known dangdut singer, to become dangdut singers
with Jacko's dance steps.

"I'm not imitating, just adapting it. Yes, I admire Michael
Jackson, because he is not just dancing. Through his trademark
movement, Michael can produce a distinguished voice," said Alam,
who also idolizes Jim Carrey.

But with the music, the lyrics, the voice and the act, Alam is
now the hottest item in the country's dangdut scene -- also in
Malaysia -- and has been dubbed "King of Metal Dangdut".

While dangdut album sales were on the decline after the
economic crisis hit the country in 1997, Alam managed to sell
over 400,000 copies of his debut Mbah dukun album.

"The album was released last February when the city was
inundated by floodwaters. But thank God people liked the album,"
said Enok Erny Ibrahim, Alam's mother, producer and manager.

Erny said beside the unique sound, the success was due to a
combination of his son's "cool attitude, relatively educated
background and good looks", although she admitted that Alam was
highly spoilt, strongheaded and a bit indisciplined.

In person, however, Alam is blunt, confident, pretty smart and
knows what he wants to do with his life.

"I don't just want to have a singing career. I want to have
control over everything. We can hardly do that in the dangdut
industry. We have to sing like this, have to do that ... and it
becomes soulless.

"I want to control the concept of the whole package, the
songs, the video clip or even direct (the clip). Maybe other
people will do them but the concept comes from me. I want to be
like (American metal band) Slipknot and also.. who? Yes, Linkin
Park. They do everything by themselves. And the result is good
and has a solid concept," Alam said, while endlessly puffing on a
kretek cigarette.

Although he now has firmly chosen to stick to the genre, in
his younger years, he did not even care about it despite huge
exposure to it at home as his sister is a dangdut singer and his
parents own a dangdut orchestra.

He claims to be a true metalhead. Back in his hometown in
Tasikmalaya, West Java, he once owned a band and led a gang of
young people who were crazy about loud, headbanging music: Punk,
heavymetal, hardcore, grindcore and so on.

With them, Alam did some crazy stuff, including stuffing
certain leaves ("No, not marijuana") deeply into his nose,
passing them through his pharynx and pulling them out of his
mouth.

"The leaves were covered with blood. It's a common technique,
you know, so we can create a deep, hoarse, throaty voice," said
Alam, who has won several singing festivals.

His style from head to toe was purely punk: Stiff hair (with
wood glue), leather outfit and earrings.

"I didn't pierce them though, otherwise I couldn't become an
imam (one who leads Muslim prayers). In that sense, thanks to my
parents' education, I'm quite religious," said Alam, swearing in
the name of God that he never took drugs.

His interest in dangdut grew when accompanying Vety in
recording sessions. He playfully sang some dangdut songs, but
with a different vocal technique, a metal-inflected one.

Erny saw her son's potential, contacted some songwriters,
asked Alam to record his album and the latter said yes.

"I used to sing loud and fast songs and bang my head. Then
suddenly, I listened to dangdut, which is slow ... but it turned
out good to listen to. It's just a bit too slow, so I turned up
the volume and the beat," said Alam, who quit his studies in
mechanical engineering at Bandung's National Institute of
Technology (Itenas) because "school was too boring".

Now he is involved in the industry he has some opinions to
offer. According to Alam, dangdut can never be really big and
penetrate foreign shores because the artists are very
competitive.

"They envy each other and try to bring each other down. Why
has rock gone global? Because the competition is fair, unlike in
dangdut. I've started to experience some ugly stuff," he said.

"And why did album sales decline? Because it has always been
the same music, the same lyrics ... if not love, it's about
divorce. It had become too monotonous."

With a second album already under way, Alam says he is more
involved in songwriting and producing.

"It's harsher, louder, more punky, more solid in concept. I
collaborated with a lot of younger musicians now, my old
friends," he said.

By the way, did his friends laugh or ridicule him because he
had turned to dangdut?

"No. But then again, I was the leader of the gang so they
wouldn't dare to," he said unemotionally.

What if the metal-dangdut thing does not sell anymore?

"I think if we make music for the sake of it, put all of our
effort and soul into it, it can always be good and will sell.
Rock, and also metal has its ups and downs, but it will always
exist. Dangdut, on the other hand, has rich elements. So, I will
continue combining them. I just have to strengthen and sharpen my
character."