It seems one of the ongoing mantras for this blog is: “Spring where your seeds grow roots.” A perfect example of this mantra in action is the early career of Indonesian R&B and diva, Mellyana Manuhutu. And the perfect entry into a unique slice of dangdut can be found in her kaleidoscopic album, Beatify.
When one hears of Mellyana’s story, one starts to wonder how many things would have shaken out differently, if Mellyana herself didn’t have a certain conviction to forge her own path.
Mellyana was born in 1975, in Jakarta, Indonesia into a family of Ambon and Sundanese descent. Like many children not born into wealth, Mellyana had to find a way to help provide some sort of income for the family. Mellyana’s outgoing personality and precocious gift for singing would lead her to get a job as a child performing for tourists in Ancol, Jakarta’s waterfront resort district.
It was there that Mellyana would fall under the auspices of noted Indonesian choreographer and songwriter Guruh Sukarnoputra, who’d started to introduce American-influenced contemporary dance moves and modern instrumentation into the Javanese pop cultural sphere. Barely a teenager, Mellyana fell hard for the sounds of urban R&B with its mix of hip-hop, house and New Jack Swing. However, it would be in the world of “New Asian Music” that Mellyana would take her first step into becoming a singer herself.
Indonesia itself would play a major role in the discovery of Mellyana. It was there, in the late ‘80s, where Makoto Kubota, one-time member of influential Japanese bands, Les Rallizes Dénudés, Sandii & The Sunsetz and his Sunset Gang, had set up shop and home in Jakarta seeking to explore a deeper connection to the traditional music of Southeast Asia and trying to experiment with it for contemporary audiences.
Whether as a writer, musician, or producer, Makoto’s intent would prove inviting for forward-thinking musicians like Singapore’s Dick Lee and Japan’s Sandii who’d begun to explora that Pan-Asian influence of the Indonesian archipelago. It was at a music school housed in the same recording studio, Triple M, that Kuboto liked to record from that by fate or fortune, Sandii and Dick would introduce Mellyana into the music industry.
Sandii was the first one to admire Mellyana’s charisma and image, stopping her in a hallway when she saw Mellyana walking out of a vocal class at Triple M’s Music School dressed like her idol Whitney Houston. Then known as “Meli”, Mellyana would later meet Sandii again (as Makoto tagged along) and sung to her a song by Sade, flooring them with her singing. They were awestruck. Surely, this girl was destined to be a star?
Surprisingly, it was her school teachers who felt Mellyana would not make it in the Indonesian music world. They were puzzled that Makoto and Sandii thought that she could make it – look at her face – Mellyana was too darkly-complected for Indonesian audiences who preferred white faces for their stars, they surmised. Undeterred, the Japanese duo took it upon themselves to prove them wrong and to champion Mellyana.
They’d convene together with pioneering Indonesian contemporary R&B group, Guest Band, to create a demo tape of a song that would become “Yamko Rambe Yamko” featuring Mellyana on vocals. As astonishing as it was to the Indonesian music industry, it was Mellyana’s demo tape that found itself rocketing up hit charts. Then, as Jakarta-based record labels approached to swoop in and sign Mellyana for a lucrative contract, she turned them all down, choosing instead to follow Makoto to Japan and release records in Japan first.
In 1990 Dick Lee, who invited her to sing on a recording session (what would be her first “professional”) for his Asia Major, heard what Makoto Kubota did: a magnetic, deep voice with profound presence belying her 14 years of age. It was at that age, when Mellyana didn’t even know she could sing, that she completely blew away the take provided originally by a session singer. And in a short time, Mellyana would feature prominently on Dick Lee’s “Cockatoo” putting her on the path to stardom.
Mellyana would sign to Japan’s short-lived big box record store record label, Wave, and for those waiting for a record, it would take a year of shuttling between Jakarta, Tokyo and Singapore to complete what would become her debut, Mellyana (which you can stream at yaoiboi’s channel). By then, Mellyana had done what many had deemed as unlikely: Mellyana was appearing on the front pages of fashion magazines and becoming a force as a burgeoning music idol.
Much like one of her other huge influences of the time, Toshinobu Kubota, Mellyana did not look to fit into any pop genre. Steadfastly, Mellyana remained devoted to becoming a soul singer and took with aplomb interpreting the brilliant songs Guest Band leader, Gustafa Hardjakoesoemo, crafted for her together with Makoto and Sandii. And far from running from her Indonesian roots, songs like the aforementioned “Yamko Rambe Yamko”, “Tokecang”, and “Lenong Lenong”, to name precious few, found the connection between what one could hear sung in islands of Maluku, the hypnotic sentimentality of Borneo, the street rap of Jakarta, and the forward-thinking sound of Soul II Soul and the Hi-NRG of C+C Music Factory.
As aspirational of a debut, it turned out to be far more impressive than all those involved could have imagined. It’s a record that remains, rightfully, a turning point that elusive of dangdut music.
So, for their second record, recorded a few months later, on Mellyana’s urging, all those involved pushed to explore music tied to other styles that weren’t fully touched on the first. For Beatify, my personal favorite, the roots to urban music went deeper, capturing the more esoteric sounds of house music, New Jack Swing, hip-hop, and downtempo. Rather than build on her success and fashion a more pop-oriented sound, Mellyana and friends went harder for the dance floor (and into the Indonesian tradition).
1992’s Beatify begins with “Love At First Sight” which would become its first 12-inch single boasting B-sides, and deep album cuts, like “Apuse” that reimagined an iconic Indonesian folk song into a club-burning number…complete with an equally impressive Soichi Terada remix. Third on the album (and on the 12” release), “Tanase”, with its mix of diva deep house, hip-hop swag, and uncategorizable remixability lent it the air that this album was going to be the masterpiece Makoto envisioned Mellyana was capable of fronting.
Although the “Love At First Sight” single would give everyone a peek at the first three cuts of the album, Beatify itself holds some lovely curveballs afterward. Songs like “Yudis Dwikorana” find Mellyana leveraging that powerful voice into a track that wouldn’t sound out of place on good adult contemporary radio, letting us know that she could tackle Bonnie Raitt-like roots rock (if she wanted to). “Tudung Periuk” does something similar by taking windswept ideas from the baroque pop of the Beach Boys and mutating, reforming them with the contemporary island soul music of her Java.
Of course, the addition of one new guest, Iwa Kusuma (better known as Iwa-K), is what makes what could have been a great record into a masterful one. Iwa-K had blazed his own trail by creating some of the first contemporary rap records in Indonesia. As collaborator, on songs like “Love You A Life Time” and “Panon Hideung Dua”, the duo portray a less-slick more mercurial urban sound that predicts what would come to fruition further in the decade. And even then, what brings you back to Beatify, to its current importance, is just how Indonesian it is.
Rather than run away from the language, songs like “Bersampan” could not have existed if others like Titiek Puspa hadn’t stuck their necks out first to explore the music they only knew via radio waves and record, risking the ire of a conservative establishment unused to such experimentation with their language. In that era, where (thankfully) a younger generation was asking for deeper connections to other parts of the globe, here’s a near-perfect record showing just what was possible, if you found the right singer to sing it.