One may have heard of East Javanese style dangdut music; dangdut with West Javanese traditional music nuances or even Malaysian dangdut, but Melbourne-style dangdut?
Melbourne-based music group Yarra Irama recently released their first single ‘Touch On’. Melburnians may be familiar with the phrase ‘touch on’, which refers to passengers touching the detection devices for public transport, such as trams or trains, using the public transport card dubbed Myki.
SBS Indonesian chatted with Chris Redden, who drums for Yarra Irama. While he was hardly a big fan of dangdut music before joining the band, he is currently finding the experience, especially when performing live, to be fun in its own way, due to the crowd’s energy and age diversity.
Michael Raditya, Yarra Irama’s ketipung percussion player, is also a music researcher and has published a book about dangdut music - from its origins to its current shift to less bling and gyrating moves to K-pop style fashion and increasing popularity amongst youth from lower to upper economic classes.
The funkot/koplo style dangdut group Feelkoplo was recently invited to perform at Alun-Alun, a festival organised by the local Indonesian student association (PPIA) in Melbourne - They were quite possibly the first ever dangdut performers to be flown from Indonesia for the festival.
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