First love, last love: Music just won't let Tika go
First love, last love: Music just won't let Tika go
Paul F. Agusta, Contributor, Jakarta
Born into an extended family of musicians, artists and generally creative people, multi-faceted accessory designer/song writer/singer Kartika Jahya, or Tika, just can't run far enough or fast enough to escape the lure of music.
"At one time, I kind of like promised myself never to sing again for the rest of my life," Tika said of a brief fling as a singer/songwriter for a Seattle, Washington, USA based band.
"Then I went home to Indonesia, and I met some guys, like the band 'Lain', and everybody in the independent music scene. And I was just sort of tempted to go back into singing. So here I am," said the vibrant bespectacled, purple-haired young woman, who just released her first solo album, Frozen Love Songs on July 10.
Her on-again-off-again relationship with the art of musical performance began as a child when she would make up lyrics as she went.
"Every time they called me up on stage or in class to sing, I was just kind of like "can I sing two songs instead of one', " said Tika, whose grandmother, Pranawengrum Katamsi, and her aunt, Aning Katamsi, are Indonesia's foremost operatic sopranos.
This infatuation with singing and making up songs continued into junior and senior high school with associations with a band or two, not becoming full-blown until college when although she had opted to study costume design at the Art Institute of Seattle, music lured her back.
"I never really got professionally into music until college ... I joined a band in college and it got pretty serious except that it ended on a sour note," she explained about her involvement in The Rhea Sisters Project, which eventually took the name Yoko Phono.
Currently working and recording in Indonesia with her friends and collaborators, Aghi Narottama, Iman Fattah, Bemby Gusti, and Age, she passionately embraces honesty in any creative expression.
"The biggest problem is that I don't play any instruments. But I have all these ideas in my head about how the music should sound like and the people that I collaborate with ... know me and I can just tell them 'ok this is what I want the music to sound like, this kind of beat, this kind of sound', " Tika told The Jakarta Post.
"They would create while I am there and I would give them input, and after that's done they just sort of like leave me alone in a dark room where I just put on the singing track, the guide track, and write the lyrics. That's how it's usually done," she said, explaining her creative process as a lyricist.
Tika, who writes poetry and prose as well, sees her lyrics as an extension of the music that flows through her soul. "I never use any of the poetry and what not in my new music because I believe that when it's done it's done ... If it is poetry it is poetry, and if it's prose it's prose," she said.
For Tika, her lyrics are "exactly what I am feeling at the moment. You know, you're in a dark room all by yourself and listening to this music and it just kind get set in a certain mood, and, you know, what is unsaid is written down."
"What I feel when I'm writing is that I just want to be totally honest with what I am feeling at the time... I have no intention of being cathartic, I have no intention of being bitter or whatever people say ... that my music is really dark. It is interesting to hear people say those things about your work, you know, cause when you create it you don't have a hidden agenda that says 'my music should sound a certain way', " she explained.
"People are always asking me whether or not I create the songs myself. I can't really say 'yes' and I can't really say 'no' to that because it's a work of collaboration. But people's response in Jakarta, here, is pretty positive as far as I know," she said.
"The album is independently released ... It is fun to see how people react to it, and I would just like to maybe just play more gigs," said Tika of her plans moving forward.
If anything is clear, it is that music has a hold on this gifted young woman, and we are sure to hear her eloquent voice for years to come.