Mira'nda sings soulful sounds

Mira'nda sings soulful sounds

By Adrian Smith and Lise Aumeunier

JAKARTA (JP): In a world that tends to pigeon-hole musical
artists, Mira'nda's music proves something of an anomaly.

The natural ease and conviction with which she uninhibitedly
expresses herself is inspiration to all those who feel that their
individuality can only come to nothing in today's seemingly
technocratic world. This refreshing musical approach came across
at her recent concert held as part of JakArt at Lasalle College.

The Australian self-styled musical artist combines her own
strong passionate vocals with guitar. This, you may think, sounds
pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, but her vocal range and combination
of varying vocal techniques, from humming, singing, yodeling (for
want of a better word) through to chanting, is impressive and
seemingly unrestricted. The closest comparisons that came to mind
were Alannis Morrisette and P.J. Harvey, though even they, it has
to be said, occupy radically different musical realms.

Not content with only playing a guitar in a horizontal
position, she extended the spectrum of sounds normally associated
with an accompanying guitar by moving the instrument to an
upright position and dabbing the strings with what looked like a
giant cotton earbud to produce a rich resonant sound, followed
soon after in contrast by scratchy more dissonant sounds produced
by a small bow.

When asked of her musical influences, rather than name
particular figures she referred to her childhood and the desert
landscapes that surrounded her in southern Australia to which she
still returns for inspiration.

"I don't draw inspiration from anyone in particular, my
creations are borne from my experience of the world, of
everything that I have so far encountered," she said.

Nature and the experience of "being" are not only evident in
her lyrics, but also in the symbolic content of the design
creations that adorn her debut album, So Bravely Human, which
were projected onto a white fabric screen as an accompanying
slide-show. This provided rich, earthy visual color to her
soulful music. By and large, they were photographic close-ups of
living organisms and her own arrangements of various natural
items with slogans that accompanied her lyrics. One that comes to
mind was 'spontaneously free'.

She opened and closed the hour-long concert by standing in
front of the screen wearing a white costume that absorbed the
projected image, displaying her own voice against prerecorded
backing vocals and twisting her body in different movements in
accordance with the music. Throughout the rest of the set she
remained seated and played songs from her current album, as well
as the one she is working on at the moment (due to be released
sometime at he end of 2001 or early 2002), pausing briefly
between each song to talk playfully with the responsive audience.

The venue itself proved an unusual yet interesting choice. The
college is located on the fifth floor of Mal Ambassador on Jl.
Casablanca, which has all the hustle and bustle of local shopping
malls on the lower floors, but appears progressively more sparse
and vacant on the upper storeys.

Mira'nda's textural music clearly reflects the voice of
someone who is still in the process of exploring different ways
of expressing herself.

"I feel I have evolved from someone who began by taking an
intellectual, philosophical approach to music to one that is
producing music from the heart. I'm interested now in
popularizing music that was formerly considered peripheral."

Her rise from penumbra to prominence began when she was
awarded the 1999 Dolphin Awards for Best Female Vocal and Best
Album of the Year in Australia and she has since then performed
around the world, from intimate theaters to huge stadiums, to
much acclaim.

The title of her only album to date perhaps indicates the
struggle she has had to endure to evade musical conventions and
classifications to retain her own individual voice. It
undoubtedly comes across as all the more powerful for it.