The voice of Baceprot: Indonesia’s hijab-wearing metalheads play at Glastonbury
- Author, Kelly Ng and Silvano Hajid Maulana
- Role, in Singapore and Jakarta
The three girls started making metal music in high school, but they never imagined they could make history for Indonesia at Glastonbury.
The band they founded, “Voice of Baceprot,” is playing at the festival this year and when they found out they had been invited, they were “confused.”
“Because we didn’t know how exciting (the festival) was… We didn’t know what to do next,” said the band’s lead singer Firdda Marsya Kurnia.
The pressure was on after the trio realised they would be the first Indonesian band to play at Europe’s biggest music festival. Headliners at this year’s five-day festival include Coldplay and Dua Lipa.
Voice of Baceprot – consisting of Marsya, drummer Euis Siti Aisyah and bassist Widi Rahmawati – will perform on Friday. Baceprot (pronounced “bah-che-prot”) means “noise” in Sundanese, one of the most widely spoken languages in Indonesia.
The three women have come a long way since their village school 10 years ago.
They made international headlines for challenging gender and religious norms and toured internationally, including Europe and the United States.
They have also been praised by the likes of Rage Against the Machine, whose guitarist Tom Morello said he watched one of their videos “ten times in a row and was just blown away.” Flea of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers once tweeted: “I am so excited about Voice of Baceprot.”
But Glastonbury will be their biggest stage yet.
Marsya, Siti, both 24, and Widi, 23, sat down with the BBC a week before their historic show to talk about their journey since they started making music together as three restless schoolgirls.
“Rebel” girl band
Growing up in the rural town of Singajaya in Indonesia’s West Java province, Marsya and Siti became friends in elementary school. They met Widi in middle school – in the school counselor’s office, where they were regularly summoned for “rebellious behavior.”
It was in this unusual place that their love for heavy metal began. They became friends with the advisor, Father Ersa.
“We listened to music from our guidance counselor Abah Ersa’s laptop… We get an adrenaline rush when we listen to heavy metal and we thought it would be so cool if we could cover these songs,” Siti said.
Ersa says he noticed that the girls were not as rebellious as other teenagers who took drugs or caused trouble. Instead, they often spoke out against things they felt were unfair at school.
“They defied the system and often clashed with their teachers. Their comments were seen as provocations at the time,” he said.
Image source, Voice of Baceprot
In 2014, Ersa encouraged the girls to express their feelings through music. He taught Marsya the guitar, Widi the bass, and built Siti a makeshift drum using discarded parts from the school’s brass band.
“We let our anger out in our music… because we don’t want to get in trouble by getting angry at other people.”
“If we protest, it will be a problem. We will be accused of being radical. In our village, protesting women are called crazy,” says Marsya, the most sociable of the three.
Making music also motivated her to go to school, she added.
“We were just told to get good grades… to memorize, to write, to look through books, that was all. That was our daily routine for 12 years. We were bored. Then music came along. That was something new.”
The band describes Ersa as the founder of the band. He was the first to publish their music on YouTube. Today they have 360,000 subscribers on YouTube and 230,000 followers on Instagram.
Shake off criticism
But the band and their music also hit some nerves.
Some people in her predominantly conservative Muslim town did not react well to her attempts to make heavy metal. Marsya was once hit on the head with a rock that had a note attached telling her to “stop making the devil’s music.”
About 87% of the Indonesian population is Muslim. West Java is one of the more conservative provinces and includes denominations that prohibit music and singing.
Some people find the combination of women wearing hijabs and heavy metal music particularly provocative.
“Some even told me to take off my hijab (since our music is not a reflection of a true Muslim). But these are two different things. Metal is just a genre of music. I wear a hijab because that is my identity as a Muslim… and not because I want to be sensational,” Marsya told BBC Indonesian in a previous interview in 2018.
Marsya, Siti and Widi have earned the support of their families over the years, albeit not without resistance – Widi’s older sister had warned her that playing heavy metal would “ruin her future”, while Siti’s family labelled her music career as “frivolous”.
Even the principal of the Islamic school they attended after middle school criticized their music. The girls later dropped out of school.
In 2021 they released the single “God, Allow Me (Please) to Play Music,” which serves as a sensitive plea against this criticism.
The band composed the melody while Ersa wrote the lyrics. The chorus goes: “I’m not the criminal, I’m not the enemy, I just want to sing a song to show my soul… God, please allow me to make music.”
Image source, Getty Images
The band also expressed their frustration with patriarchy and the male gaze in the song “(Not) Public Property” – a challenge they still face as musicians.
The song says: “Our bodies are not public property. There is no room for dirty thoughts. Our bodies are not public property. There is no room for sexist thoughts.”
“It’s disappointing when people don’t notice our music and the effort we put into it. It’s really annoying,” says Marsya.
The band knows that being invited to play Glastonbury is a recognition of their achievements, but it is also nerve-wracking.
“We thought we were ready to tackle it until everyone started praising the festival… We can enjoy performing on stage more when people don’t expect anything from us,” Marsya said.
Siti struck a more optimistic tone. “I’m not ready yet, but whatever, I’m going to pretend I’m the star on stage. You’ll see that when I perform, I often close my eyes because I imagine I’m just jamming with my band in the studio.”
Siti said part of the group’s mental preparation is trying “not to think too much about how many people are going to watch us perform.” “If I know the size of the crowd, I don’t think I can handle it,” she said.
“We are proud of it, but on the other hand it is a big responsibility for us because the audience does not only see VoB, but Indonesia,” said Marsya.
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