STILL ROCKING

WEEKENDER   |  Mon, 08/31/2009 5:24 PM  |  Profile

Oppie Andaresta’s remarkable breakthrough album, bearing an ironic protest message, immediately established her as one of Indonesia’s strongest musical talents. After leaving the spotlight to have children, the singer-songwriter is back making the music that matters to her. M. Taufiqurrahman reports.

Not much can make Oppie Andaresta really angry these days – or at least not like when she first emerged on the music scene. After all, she is older, she says bluntly.

But while some of her peers have slipped into where-are-they-now? obscurity, Oppie continues to find success, even after taking a six-year hiatus that could have been career suicide in the fickle music business.

During the past 16 years, her six full-length albums have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. She has won numerous awards, performed overseas and, in 2006, Rolling Stone Indonesia included her 1993 debut release Albumnya Oppie (Oppie’s Album) on the list of the country’s 150 most influential albums of all time.

She has such strong brand recognition that local label Aquarius gave her complete artistic control over her seventh studio album, scheduled for release in September.

Her label rushed to shoot a video clip for Single Happy, the first single from the as-yet-untitled album even with the release date for the full-length album still tentative. The heavy rotation of the clip on local television stations and the thousands of downloads for ring tones are an indication that Oppie has got things right once again.

However, it is motherhood that has made Oppie happiest. The mother of two-year-old Kai Matari Bejo Kaler from her marriage to American Kurt Maler, Oppie now divides her time between making music and raising her son at a rustic property next to a lake in Tangerang.

Oppie says she prioritizes her son’s needs, of course, but there is still a nod to who she was in the past and remains today.

“Twenty years from now I want my son to say that his mom rocks,” she says.

* * * *

Sixteen years ago, there were a lot of things that infuriated the young folk singer named Oppie Andaresta.

That was the time when Soeharto’s authoritarian regime was at the height of its power, when social injustice and political oppression were the order of the day. When it came to finding inspiration for material, there was never a better time to write protest songs. Blues rockers Slank wrote a song titled “Monopoli”, a searing indictment of the rapacious behavior of Soeharto’s children. A few years earlier, Iwan Fals’ song “Bongkar” (Unload) was a call to arms against the regime.

Oppie Andaresta also could not keep silent about what was going on around her. However, instead of writing fist-pump-inducing protest ballads, the then 22-year-old singer recorded “Cuma Khayalan” (Only in My Imagination), a tongue-in-cheek song about daydreaming of getting rich overnight.

The song’s uncomplicated arrangement, breezy guitar melodies and simple backbeat swiftly connected with millions. It was an easy sell for the record company. The song alone helped shift 100,000 copies of Oppie’s debut album, Albumnya Oppie (Oppie’s Album) and made her a superstar – and rich – overnight.

But while everyone hummed along to what they took to be a harmless, catchy pop song – who doesn’t want to be rich, right? – more astute listeners realized the song’s lyrics were a snide swipe at Soeharto-era civil servants who somehow managed to spend much more than they earned.

“Cuma Khayalan” may not be a standard protest song in the tradition of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” or Joan Baez’s “We Shall Overcome”, but for Oppie it was a personal protest. The song was the fruit of her rebellion against what she considered sexism in the music industry, a personal protest inspired more by Tracy Chapman’s naïve realism than riot grrrls’ third-wave feminism.

In the early 1990s, Oppie had seemed destined to be one of the cookie-cutter performers packaged and sold by recording companies as leather-clad, ballad-crooning female rockers in the same league as Mayang Sari, the late Nike Ardilla and Nicky Astria. Her recording company even came up with what it considered as a more commercially sounding moniker, Ovie Ariesta.

“The term ‘rocker’ at that time had a derogatory meaning to me as it referred to female performers who had to be sexy and beautiful, and it did not really matter what was inside their brain,” Oppie says.

(The Jakarta Post archive)

Even if she had no qualms about wearing a leather jacket, limiting herself to singing ballads would have been a disservice to her talent. In her high school days, Oppie sang lead vocals in a budding jazz band. She even won first place in a Jakarta singing competition when she was barely out of junior high school.

Disappointed with the music business’ sexism and how it mishandled her – she had recorded a full-length “rock” album but her record label never released the material – Oppie decamped to Gang Potlot, a neighborhood in South Jakarta where Slank had their commune.

The members of Slank showed Oppie the way to find her own voice.

“Slank is probably the first band [sic] that could come up with its own slogan or motto. They believe that music has the power to change and they taught me how to deliver a message in every song that I write,” Oppie says.

The Potlot commune was also where Oppie learned about musical heroes that she would mine for influence: Tracy Chapman, Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians and Bob Marley. Oppie’s output from her Potlot period seems to suggest the influence of Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez, but in fact she didn’t discover those two folk rock icons until years later.

Oppie says her biggest influence was Chapman, who could make it in the music business without having a conventional, mass appeal look.


* * * *

There’s one reason the album was titled Albumnya Oppie: It was the first time in her musical career that she was able to gain artistic control over her work.

To her naysayers, that title could be seen as a cocky, territory-marking declaration. The skeptical onlookers doubting her chances at success included her own parents, who from the outset disapproved of their daughter’s decision to go into the music business.

Oppie’s parents, whom she considers conservative, wanted her to lead a more normal, domesticated life just like her four sisters.

“All my siblings are females and most of them followed the same path, go to college, graduate, get a job, get married and that’s it,” she says.

After the music industry and her family aligned to block her from pursuing her art, it’s little wonder Albumnya Oppie included songs talking about injustice toward women, the most prominent being “Cuma Karena Aku Perempuan” (Just Because I am a Woman).

She continued her protest in her 1995 sophomore effort Bidadari Badung (Naughty Angel); the title track to the album has Oppie pleading with parents to let their little girls get out of the house to see the wide world. In “Blues for Lyli”, she describes the title character’s daily routine, rising early in the morning to prepare breakfast for her infant and husband. Oppie closes the song with two lines that could be loosely construed as an endorsement of marital bliss or the scourge of female domestication to those who know no other reality.

//Tapi aku tetap hidup masih dengan mimpi-mimpiku (But I am still living with my dreams//Aku bahagia hidup dengan orang tercintaku (I am happy living with people I love//.

It is a fascinating exploration of a woman’s psyche that is beyond the scope of most local singers.

Despite the subtlety of the messages in her songs, fans quickly labeled her an angry female singer, in the same bracket as perennially pissed-off Canadian singer Alanis Morissette (she was also called the female Iwan Falls). By dint of comparison, in 1995 Oppie was billed to open for Morissette when she headlined a show in Jakarta.

The irony was that opening for Morissette led Oppie to something that she had previously had an ambivalent relationship with: Settling down with a family. It was during preparations for the show that Oppie met Kaler, who then worked as a stage manager for Morissette’s concert. Oppie and Kaler became close friends and their relationship continued for six years before the two tied the knot in September 2000.

Put it down to that much-maligned marital bliss, but things changed after the marriage. Her 2001 album Hitam Ke Putih (Black to White) is proof, with some of the songs indicating that Oppie had mellowed. The album’s hit single, “Hanya Kau Yang Bisa” (Only You Can), is a lovelorn ballad that could be mistaken for any of Linda Rondstadt’s old pieces. “Sebelum Ku Bertemu Kamu” (Before I Met You) has the song’s protagonist pleading with her lover to let her be.

But as soon as she made peace with her old demons, Oppie had to face a more menacing specter that came in the form of government censorship. The Attorney General’s Office issued a warrant against the release of one song, “Atas Nama (Benar=Salah=Benar)” (In the Name Of – Right = Wrong = Right). No official explanation was given for why the song was banned but some speculated that it touched on the taboo theme of ethnicity, religion and race. Musica Studio, Oppie’s label for Hitam Ke Putih, had to push back the release date for the album.

The paradox was that it wasn’t her socially conscious songs but more mainstream songs that were banned by Soeharto’s authoritarian regime – and that a harmless song with a cryptic message about nothing in particular never saw the light of day in the era of reform.

A brush with the law certainly did not dissuade Oppie from making music, but Hitam Ke Putih was the last studio album she put out before taking her long break.

In 2003, she released a best-of album titled Lagu Bagusnya Oppie (Oppie’s Good Songs).

She was rarely seen or heard from after that.

* * * *

Fast forward six years. To say that Oppie has aged well is an understatement because, except for cutting her hair short for the “Single Happy” video, the 38-year-old looks almost exactly the same as she did before leaving the spotlight.

Talking to her today is like having a conversation with an older sister who has seen and done a lot. “I have nothing to prove anymore. I am tired of always having to prove something,” Oppie says.

There is something businesslike and professional about how she handles her career. She showed up on time for the WEEKENDER and, after quick introductions, cut to the chase of the interview. She saved some of her confessional — and off the record —statements for the chat after the voice recorder had stopped running.

Oppie’s current work ethos is also a departure from her days as young artist making her name. She is in a way more methodical and understanding of her responsibilities.

She sounds like an all-business artist manager when she says she intends to be more efficient in regularly producing her music rather than just waiting for a spark of inspiration. That is just an excuse for slacking off, she says.

“So what if you are not in the mood for writing songs? Does that mean that you can’t work? It’s just a matter of discipline. I don’t think that you can’t write one song after sitting in your studio for two or three hours strumming on your guitar.”

After being gone for six years, it would be an understatement to say that her recent comeback was not driven by the need to be out in front of a crowd once again.

“I still want to feel the rush of blood to the heart that comes 10 minutes before I go on stage or the energy that I absorb from fans 10 minutes after I leave the stage,” she says.

Or the fact that fame has opened a lot of doors for her, literally and figuratively. “With fame I can go to places that ordinary people are not allowed to go. The law and regulations become friendlier if you are famous,” Oppie says, without any hint of irony.

Or maybe because with the privileges of fame she can speak her thoughts to a greater number of people who would still listen.

In the past couple of years, Oppie has become a spokesperson for a number of institutions addressing issues ranging from global warming, street kids and corruption to breast-feeding and women’s empowerment.

“Fame is important to me but it is not the most important thing, and I have to be smart enough to use it not just for me but for the greater good,” she says, sounding very Bono-ish. Yes, it was Bono’s do-gooder campaigns that served as an inspiration for her to become a socially conscious artist.

The anger of her youth remains, and writing songs to express it remains her only catharsis.

“I am easily angered by what I read in papers or watch on television. But now I write songs to calmly motivate people,” she says. “In the old days, I just shouted and cursed.”

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