Photos courtesy of lokanantaFounded in 1956, first as a music studio and later a pressing plant for vinyl records, Lokananta Studio should not have survived this long. None of its contemporaries, big names like Indra Records, Remaco Records or Irama Tara, record labels who dominated the country’s popular music scene in the 1960s and the 1970s, are still around today.

In fact, as a state-owned enterprise Lokananta declared bankruptcy in 2001 after years in a bureaucratic mess. In 1999, the administration of president Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid decided to disband the Information Ministry, to which Lokananta was attached throughout the years of its operation. Without a ministry to oversee its operations, the government decided to liquidate the studio but no follow-up was made on the decision, until in 2001 the state-owned Printing Press Company (PNRI) found out that the studi...