indonesian singer-songwriter

hara

hara is Indonesian singer-songwriter Rara Sekar’s solo project. Her music blends inspiration from folk with Indonesian traditional music, ambient and field recording with a focus on exploring themes of ecology, vulnerability and politics. Her work is an interdisciplinary practice that is informed by Indonesian traditions and rituals, weaving music, social and cultural research and critical pedagogy in her recordings, writings and performances.Her debut single Ati Bolong (2020) and EP Kenduri (2021), were highly celebrated and reviewed by national & international media particularly in Asia. Kenduri was selected as one of Indonesia’s top ten albums of the year 2021 by The Jakarta Post. Her independent debut tour, Tur Kenduri (2022-2023) gained much attention as a tour that applied an alternative approach to music. This tour exercised the ecological themes of the album Kenduri into practice: how the tour was done. hara did the tour on a bike where she performed under sacred trees, in the middle of rice fields, by the sea—in nature without a sound system. She also organized foraging, cooking indigenous wild plants and eating together by the river, and also allowed fans to exchange tickets with food for a music performance-potluck together at the foothill of a mountain in Yogyakarta.She has since released her second EP Layar Terkembang (With Sails Unfurled) in 2024, and two original soundtracks, Niskala (From “Sandiwara Sastra - Misteri Nusantara) and Tak Ada Keluarga yang Sempurna (From “Dua Hati Biru”). Her music was featured in the BBC World Service - Music Life Podcast, BBC Radio 3 - Ultimate Calm with Ólafur Arnalds, BBC The Cultural Frontline and writer/photographer Teju Cole’s playlist, “the same sun”.She has collaborated with many Indonesian artists including Isyana Sarasvati, Hindia, Perunggu, Nosstress, Ugoran Prasad, to the legendary Iwan Fals, and has opened for international artists such as Japanese singer-songwriter, Ichiko Aoba’s Saison de Fleur’s tour in Jakarta. She prefers to perform in quiet or outdoor/natural spaces but has performed at selected music and literary festivals such as Joyland Festival in Jakarta, Indonesia, Ubud Readers and Writers Festival in Bali, Indonesia, Makassar International Writers Festival in Makassar, Indonesia, Camp A Low Hum in Wainuiomata, New Zealand and Newtown Festival in Wellington, New Zealand.In 2023, hara was selected as a OneBeat 11 Fellow by Found Sound Nation for a music residency and tour in the US. hara's current project, Kabut Putih (White Fog), is a project to record one the songs written by a woman political prisoner inside Plantungan concentration camp in Indonesia in 1971. The release of the song is accompanied by a life-long open call that engages the public to respond to the song as a way to learn (and perhaps unlearn) our own history of the 1965 genocide.

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