At a Glimpse : Liyana Fizi: Crossing the lines

She’s fallen in love with Bandung and wants to spread her wings across Indonesia. Time will tell.

Liyana Fizi is not your ordinary girl with a natural gift of a super-sweet smile and then cheerio. She’s sexier than that; imagine a guitar attached to her visual appearance. She has a brilliant debut album.

Coming from our close neighboring country, Malaysia, she’s trying her best to conquer Indonesia’s indie scene.

“I feel that the Indonesian indie scene is something to be admired. There is creativity in the way things are done here,” she says. “In my opinion, the scene here reflects a large supportive community who takes pride in being unique.”

Indonesia’s large size and different character has managed to attract some attention. Probably, uniformity is her best friend back home, so in coming to Indonesia, she believes another approach can be adopted.

“Early in 2011, I finally made my way to Bandung. The music scene, the culture, and the vibe of Bandung really had me hooked. That’s when I decided I wanted to record my album there,” she said, remembering how she got lured into the Indonesian scene.

Her debut album, Between the Lines, was mostly recorded in Bandung. The positive environment grabbed her attention and recently, she conducted a small tour to Bandung and Jakarta, playing a few small indie venues where she could perform in intimate settings and get close to her prospective future fans.

“It was a lot of fun! The audiences were attentive, supportive, and they forgave me for my broken Indonesian language,” she told us.

Liyana’s smile and good looks were loved by everyone during her tour. In addition to the visual pleasure of watching a cute girl with a guitar, the music she played was extraordinarily beautiful.

However, that recent tour was not the first time she had performed for Indonesian audiences. On one occasion previously, she had played in a large-scale festival in Bandung, where she had the chance to share the stage with Pure Saturday, Bandung’s own, well-known band.

“I had the privilege of playing for a huge audience with my Indonesian session players. On top of that, I also had the opportunity to sing a duet and play guitar on Pure Sunday’s song “Desire” during their set. [It was the] best gig ever,” she reminisced.

Unfortunately, Between the Lines is not widely available in Indonesia. Liyana only sells it while she’s on tour. But the Internet does offer another possibility. You can easily find her songs on the net and get ready to fall in love. Meanwhile, her managers are working on a deal so that her brilliant debut album will become available for everyone here.

“So far, the response has been really positive at both live shows and on social networks,” she said. In fact, social networking sites offer fans the chance to get in touch with Liyana directly.

This super-charming girl is a friendly “dudette” at heart. With her kind of music, she deserves to travel Indonesia more that she has done. “I plan to spend more time here and perhaps I will visit Yogyakarta next.”

— Felix Dass

Liyana can be reached at Twitter.com/LiyanaFizi.

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