Senyawa are a contemporary duo originating from Jogjakarta, Indonesia. Rully Shabara (extreme vocals) coupled with Wukir Suryadi's deft instrumentals (and homemade instruments) produce one of the most profound examples of experimental via traditional music happening anywhere today. By weaving Indonesian folkloric moods with various shades of modern genre hybrids, Senyawa has been navigating unexplored musical terrain for more than a decade. Sujudtheir premier release on the Sublime Frequencies label, is the latest chapter of this very special and singular sound of the past, present, and future. The basic theme of the record can be summed up with one extremely powerful Bahasa Indonesian word, "tanah", which translates to "soil-ground-land-earth". Shabara's vocals are an expressive force, conjuring spirits from the soil with a deep humility and respect for the land and their existence in the universe. Suryadi has built a new guitar for these tracks and pushes the Senyawa sound into new territory, utilizing delay, loops, and other effects creating grounded backdrops of folk metal, punk attitudinal, and droning earthscapes - providing Shabara the perfect context to explore his whispering poetry and jagged, sharp-as-a-kris animistic powers.
There is simply no other sound like it and Sublime Frequencies is thrilled to present this new direction in their discography.
Senyawa's sound is comprised of Rully Shabara’s deft extended vocal techniques punctuating the frenetic sounds of instrument builder, Wukir Suryadi’s modern-primitive instrumentation. Inventions like his handcrafted ‘Bamboo Spear’; a thick stem of bamboo strung up with percussive strips of the animal skin along side steel strings. Amplified it fuses elements of traditional Indonesian instrumentation with garage guitar distortion. Sonically dynamic, the instrument can be rhythmically percussive on one side whilst being melodically bowed and plucked on the other.
As a duo they have been performing and playing together extensively over 5 years and have toured Indonesia several times over. In 2011 they were invited to perform internationally for the first time at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival sharing the stage with many great musicians such as Faust, Tony Conrad and Charlemagne Palestine.
Since then they have gone on to perform at MONA FOMA Festival in Tasmania, the Adelaide Festival with Korean singer Bae Il Dong, toured as special guests of Australian supergroup Regurgitator, performed at theGlatt und Verkert Festival in Austria along side Japanese guitar master Kazuhisa Uchihashi, as well as the Malmo Sommarscen Festival in Sweden, Salihara Literature Festival in Jakarta, CTM Festival in Berlin, SuperDeluxe Tokyo, Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Clandestino Festival in Norway and Oct Loft Jazz Festival in China.
