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."