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Iskandar Widjaja’s ‘Papa’ a new flight as versatile artist
The violinist gets up close and personal with his latest release.
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Soul searching: German-Indonesian violinist Iskandar Widjaja will return with new single "Papa", the video for which was shot in Pula Arena in Croatia. (Courtesy of Iskandar Widjaja/-)
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erman-Indonesian violinist Iskandar Widjaja will debut as a singer-songwriter with his single “Papa”, scheduled for release on Nov. 12.
Iskandar said it came out as a pleasant surprise for him after a fan told him that the release date coincides with Father’s Day celebration.
An homage to his father, who passed away in June 2015 in Berlin after struggling with ventricular fibrillation, the song is a testimony to Iskandar’s growth as a versatile artist.
His father, sociologist Ivan Abubakar Hadar, better known as Ivan Al Hadar, was the co-founder of the Indonesian Institute for Democracy Education (Indonesian IDe) and in his youth had a stint as a writer with The Jakarta Post.
With his educational background as an urban architect, he contributed to the formulation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), poverty alleviation strategies, as well as peace strategies and conflict resolutions for Indonesia.
The song narrates his absence in Iskandar’s youth, of longing for a family and of solitude. A transitioned rap highlights that the fatherly absence has extensively formed Iskandar’s artistic personality.
The song ends in conciliation with the insight that life helps those who fight like a tiger.
The accompanying music video was shot in Pula Arena, Croatia, one of the world’s six surviving Roman arenas. The colossal architecture makes the “lostness” of the artist even more perceptible.
A gripping symbiosis of crooning fused with violin tones serves as another dimension in enjoying Iskandar’s music.
While singing is considered as something very intimate for Iskandar, he tries to imitate the human voice as he plays the violin by using the fiddle as an extension of the human body.
From his work, it is obvious that he is less interested in clean, clinically perfect tones, but more the fractions of sound and its raw qualities that bring out the music’s — and the artist's — audible breath and vulnerability.
His talent in music was a reminder of his maternal grandfather, Udin Widjaja, a known prodigy in singing and choir conducting and later a music arranger working closely with founding president Sukarno to compose nationalist songs for the young country.
The 34-year-old is among the musicians who continued working during the pandemic in his search for the “soul of the artist”, which gets lost in much of the overproduced and effect-overloaded pop music, making his name among the world’s most daring classical crossover artists.
He successfully published his original instrumental song “Spirited Away” in March, which has over 600,000 views on YouTube to date, while his last release “Hip Hop Symphony” has more than 390,000 views since Oct. 2. (ste)
