Eerie, strange sounds resembling the shrieking of a thousand monkeys depart the mouth of a man who appeared in a trance during a recent musical performance at the Ruang Rupa Gallery in Tebet, South Jakarta.

Turns out that a monkey was not the only animal that the performer, Rully Shabara, could imitate. He managed to use his vocal cords to imitate the sound of a goat and, at times, tropical birds with hypnotic, melodic and intense delivery.

Standing beside Rully is Wukir Suryadi, who carries a strange string instrument that looks like it was made from the body parts of a spirit-possessed voodoo doll.

The instrument also produces a wide variety of sounds; most of the time, it alternates between the sound of a guitar and a violin, but its unique structure allowed Wukir to produce sounds that more commonly come from percussion instruments.

Wukir calls the unique instrument, which he conceived 10 years ago in Bali, a bambuwukir. The instrument was not invented easily, as it took him two years and seven failures to finally complete its construction.

More than just a musical instrument, the bambuwukir was constructed as if Wukir had been trying to convey environmental and anticolonial messages. The instrument was built mainly with bamboo with a tipped point designed to look like the sharp bamboo weapon used by Balinese warriors in their fights against the soldiers of past colonial powers.

Rully and Wukir are Senyawa, an experimental music duo based in Yogyakarta, who, although still littleknown as a musical entity in their home country, are now well on their way to being one of the most sought-after musical acts in the world.

Senyawa is the Indonesian word for “compound” and that is exactly what Rully and Wukir are all about.

Both came from different cultural backgrounds and their collaboration took place spontaneously, like two matching chemical elements mixed together; the end result is an addictive chemical substance that intoxicates their followers.

Rully grew up in Sulawesi where he absorbed much of the island’s traditional singing style called Raego and transformed it using his own individual vocal delivery, while Wukir is an artist and musician whose career started during his early teenage years when he had been an apprentice working in the studios of the late poet WS Rendra and the late Balinese musician I Wayan Sadra.

Rully made his name singing lead for the Yogyakarta experimental band Zoo.

Wukir also has an impressive resume as a solo performer. He boasts a residency at the world famous STEIM (Studio for Electro Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam and has performed at the STEIM Festival.

“There was no intention at all to create Senyawa. It just happened spontaneously,” Wukir said in an interview following a recent performance by Zoo in Jakarta.

Rully said that their first collaboration took place spontaneously when they were challenged by Wok the Rock, a Yogyakarta-based indie music impresario, to do an impromptu performance during a local music event in 2010.

“Four days later we produced an EP and we have not stopped doing this since,” Rully said.

Following the accidental birth of Senyawa, they have been touring the country extensively in order to introduce their unique sounds and music through various underground and indie music gigs.

Senyawa had its international debut at the Melbourne International Jazz festival in 2011 in Australia, when the two shared the bill with critically acclaimed musicians such as Faust, Yoshida Tatsuya, Tony Conrad and Charlemagne Palestine.

After that break-out performance, Senyawa received invitations to play in countries like Austria, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and China. The duo’s unique sound and fierce performances also attracted interest from big names in the experimental scene like Keiji Haino, Melt Banana, Jon Sass, Damo Suzuki, Jerome Cooper, David Shea and Kazu Ushihashi.

Most recently, Senyawa performed in the Irtijal Festival in Beirut, Lebanon, and the Borderline Festival in Athens, Greece. In between these festivals, they visited Bucharest, Romania, to perform at the Control Club. This August, the duo is expected to perform live at the Eaux Claires Music Festival in Wisconsin, US, sharing the stage with Deafheaven, Beach House and Bon Iver.

Last year, the band’s second studio recording “Menjadi” (To Become) was released by the Berlin-based experimental music label Morphine Records to critical acclaim. There has been talk about the duo releasing their next LP on Sub-Pop, the legendary Seattle-based label that gave birth to grunge progenitor Nirvana.

“Sub Pop offered us [a deal] last year to release an album, but after several talks and negotiations, we decided to turn down the proposal,” Rully said, without giving details on what issues botched the negotiations.

With regards to Senyawa’s international achievements so far, both Rully and Wukir said that they were happy with how things were going, but as artists they are determined to expand their artistic horizons.

“The positive response that we have received so far is quite meaningful for me on a personal level because I know that there are people who appreciate our music. On the other hand, I am still not satisfied yet with the fact that we have not spent much time on tour in Indonesia, outside of Java,” Rully said.

The local music scene continues to be a blind spot for Senyawa. Wukir said that he considered the Indonesian market to be an important area that they need to get into as artists, but he was also aware of the fact that the type of music that Senyawa played only had a niche audience in Indonesia.

“What else can we do? We always find it easier to find gigs outside of Indonesia despite our best efforts to play in our own country as often as possible,” Wukir said. “The issues might be in the fact that there is not a lot of Indonesian promotors who think that experimental music is important territory for them to look into.”

Rully said he personally believed that Indonesian music listeners were ready for new kinds of music that offer unique sounds and compositions like Senyawa.

“It’s just the local media and promotors that need to learn more about alternative high-quality types of music and not get preoccupied with what the mainstream market demands,” he said.

What a terrible loss for local music fans if they continue to take Senyawa for granted! International music critics have described Senyawa as one of the most intense live bands in the world and it is easy to hear why.

During their live performances, Senyawa introduces sounds that conjure up the state of humans in their primeval existence. The music can be gritty, alarmingly dark, sensual, hypnotic, or all of these qualities combined together.

Rully loves to display an energy level that seems to have been molded for thousands of years in the treacherous lava of Indonesia’s ancient volcanoes.

He has a penchant for letting lose during live performances, sometimes summoning the energy of an eagle hovering above its prey, while using his versatile vocal cords to mimic any kind of wildlife sound — all the while keeping the melody intact.

To complement Rully’s impressive vocal work, Wukir’s handmade instrument steals the show. The bambuwukir’s mysterious sound is the most fitting complement to Rully’s stage persona.

One of their biggest fans, Herry “Ucok” Sutresna of the legendary hip hop collective Homicide, said that Senyawa was one-ofa- kind for transcending all musical genres.

“They go beyond ethnic music. They have the intensity of noise music, punk, the anomaly of avant garde and the aggression of hardcore,” Herry said.

Despite all the uniqueness, experimentation and critical acclaim, pretension is the last thing that fans could expect from Wukir and Rully.

“The music just flows. We don’t try to create any type of a musical style; we just play whatever we want to play,” Wukir said.

Photos courtesy of Senyawa.

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