What does it take to go to a local music gig in Jakarta? A music enthusiast recounts her journey from the MRT station to an underground music venue in South Jakarta, through chipped pavement and puzzles of bad infrastructure to attend a lively gig organized and attended by friends.

It’s 7:15 PM, forty-five minutes before the first band performs. I walk the chipped pedestrian pavements from Cipete MRT Station to Rossi Musik Fatmawati, South Jakarta. Ideally, it should be less than ten minutes walk, but it’s Jakarta so it is not a pleasant stroll. Walking through Jakarta’s sidewalks means that you have to deal with defective paths, protruding steel bars out of nowhere, and holes right through the sewers awaiting your innocent legs to slip. I walk between people lining up waiting for motorbike taxis and street food vendors with their radios playing Tik Tok’s viral remixes, as cars and buses pass by.

Noises, hustle and bustle we can’t escape.

I begin to think that music subscription services exist so we can choose which noise to listen to. In between rows of buildings along the Fatmawati Raya street, passers-by are offered other options of noises: Studio Ghibli piano covers inside cute coffee shops or Indonesian Top 10 inside a convenient store right next to it.

Rossi Musik, at last! Another space containing noises – its own kind of noise, unavailable elsewhere. I start locating familiar faces among the crowd swarming in the hall of the building. Table booths are lined up, offering door tickets, band merch, freshly printed zines, and choices of booze. Posters of tonight’s gig are fixed on the entrance and right along the wall. I took a couple of pictures of it with my phone to post on Instagram later. It’s a nice poster with a hand-drawn bondage cuff and chain. The artist, Nyon, sits on a chair behind the table full of zines, stickers, and his hand-sewn notebooks.

Nyon entered the sidestream music scene in 2011 when they joined the local community, We.hum collective. Their first task was to be a photographer for a show starring Ansaphone, a shoegaze band from Bandung. From there, Nyon took part in a lot of technical necessities like ticketing, decoration, photography, and merchandise booth before eventually blooming into their true forte: designing posters and merch.

I always love Nyon’s designs. Their posters always capture the vibes of the events and the lineup accurately. The poster is the first thing people see once the event is announced, so it should express the correct mood. For that, Nyon does ample research about the band and their music, as well as taking inspiration from the local rave and underground poster archives. Sometimes it’s challenging, especially when they’re not familiar with the music, but their passion and love for design and the scene conquers all.

Nyon hands me a couple of stickers. It’s their latest design that hasn’t been sold anywhere else. «It’s free for you», they said, grinning. I decide to hangout near Nyon for the familiar comfort while waiting for the first performance when I see Anida from afar. Anida’s family owns the legendary venue, Rossi Musik. She often organizes gigs here under her label, Ordo Nocturno. She looks tired. I know she’s been inside this building since early in the morning to take care of all of the technical necessities, but her face radiates only excitement.

«I am so happy that there are a lot of girls and queers tonight»! Anida says.

Anida is one of only a few women who manages music labels and venues in the male-dominated Indonesian music scene. One of her biggest dreams is to make a safe space where girls and queers can enjoy their favorite bands. In the past years, it seems that there are more and more girls and queers visiting Rossi Musik. We are all cheering for tonight; this is exactly the space that we long for. This is what happens when a woman manages it.

Thirty minutes-ish later, the music starts to play inside a 150-spectator capacity room on the first floor of the building. People clap and cheer, sing, scream their lungs out. What happens here is not just another noise. It’s the unison of energy from a collective of people inside this chamber, showered by red and blue lights. This is the kind of alternative atmosphere I’d choose, hidden away within the city of concrete.

It is not only another noise—but energy melts in a chamber showered by red and blue lights, another alternative of the atmosphere tucked in the city of concrete.

People vibe together. The space is for everyone. The foundation of this community is passion and care for the sidestream music. Opening up a space that is safe for girls and queers. organizing gigs for bands from outside of Jakarta to defy decentralization. Selling zines. Supporting local bands by buying their limited merchandise so they can make new songs and keep the scene going. In so many ways, it is a resistance to the humdrum, overly commercial-infused world.

Building a scene with love, to me, is the purest form of resistance amidst the authoritarianism and commercialization of space. In the city surrounded by concrete, noises, and paid content, resistance doesn’t always take the form of vulgar displays of violence. Resistance also exists in the form of care – care for the alternative spaces, for the music, for the community – that keeps the scenes blooming. Like flowering weeds that bloom through the concrete.

Sometimes the alternative we need is just a safe and comfortable space where we can have fun with friends. It requires a lot of love and energy to build such a space, like what I experienced in Rossi Musik tonight.