A Jakarta born-and-bred girl contemplates the word keras, a nuanced word that can mean both «hard» like a rock and «loud» like an explosion. Jakarta Keras is a common catchphrase that illustrates the harsh, noisy reality of living in the capital city – a city every citizen loves to hate, but still calls home.

Let’s talk about «Jakarta Keras», a phrase that reflects the roughness of Jakarta. Especially, let’s focus on the word «keras» here. An adjective with layered meanings,it can refer to material hardness, toughness, and also conceptual loudness. People would say that Jakarta is keras in a way that it is a tough city to survive in—high living costs, high demand and pressure at work, and so on. Jakarta is a city that never sleeps, where people are striving to make a living amid the hustle, bustle, and ubiquitous loudness where silence is a luxury.

I was born in Jakarta and grew up in the south area of the city commonly referred to as Jaksel (a short version of Jakarta Selatan or South Jakarta). I may say it is less hectic than other parts of Jakarta—more greeneries around the city, not as industrial, and several nooks within the districts are somewhat exclusive. I rarely had friends coming over to my house because of the poor road system in the city, and the non-existent public transport at that time. 

It was hard for me to love my own hometown.

However, in 2015 I moved to study in Yogyakarta, a city 577 km away and came home only on important celebratory days. The distance between home and college nurtured my appreciation of Jakarta. While I was away, I also realized that the city had improved its connectivity with better public transport systems and toll roads. The 2018-built toll-highway connecting Jakarta to the southern suburbs passes through the road near my family’s house, making it even noisier than it used to be, where the sound of traffic is always present at all times. During the construction times, loud noises were also accompanied by thick dust reaching my family’s house, that luckily I was away from.

While I was away from Jakarta, in Yogyakarta, I got access to this short documentary by Steve Pillar Setiabudi. Irama Hari was released in 2008.

The film was set in Tebet, a residential area in the borders of South Jakarta towards Central Jakarta. These were the kinds of sounds I grew up listening to in the street in front of my house. In the morning, a rice porridge seller would go around and tap their ceramic bowl which goes «ting ting ting ting…». A fresh tofu seller would come in the afternoon with their loud motorbike engine, they would say «huuu tahuu…» as they passed your house, or a ketoprak seller would knock his wooden bat that goes «tung tung tung tung…». Irama Hari, or Daily Rhythm in English,  offers a lively account of how street vendors rely on the sounds they make to attract buyers. It is nostalgic for me to watch while being physically away from a city that I «escaped» from.

From this short film, I’m reminded to not miss out on the city. Our ears need to actively listen, since Jakarta is a noisy and nosy city, where silence and privacy is a luxury. Silence is accessible only in gated guarded communities, where my house is partly located.

This is to say that, as a child, I grew up in a calm and filtered area of Jakarta. Growing up and growing away from that, I got to experience other sides of Jakarta that are more keras, because in many cases, Jakarta can feel like this video recorded and uploaded by Mega F. Yohana on YouTube:

This shot was taken in 2010, which according to an investigative video by Faisal Irfani and his team in Narasi, was a part of a documentary shoot. Yohana sadly did not use this shot for the film she was making in 2010, but then uploaded it on YouTube with a clickbaity title, referring to the man kicking the Bajaj as Mad Dog – from Gareth Evan’s 2011 action-thriller film based in Jakarta. The video is a snippet of the noisy hustle and bustle, yet simple or raw side of Jakarta that is keras in many ways. My favorite part is when the meatball vendor kicks the bajaj, and everything continues as a normal day. This video circulated the internet in different periods. I might have seen it before moving to Yogyakarta, but then it reappeared a few years later during COVID lockdowns. By then, I finished my studies and re-migrated back to Jakarta. The reason behind its virality is, of course, its relatability to a lot of people living in Jakarta.

Soundwise, this city does have a big issue with the pollution it creates from the productivity and activity in the city. Back to my situation at home, at any time of the day, I could hear loud noises from (commercial) airplanes hovering, and at night speeding cars in the toll-highway or modified motorcycle exhaust sounds. Jakarta’s sound has shifted from the subtle Irama-Harian-like into heavy amplified noises, including telolet or basuri (harmonic bus horns). As the toll-highway road rises, a regular road is under it and creates an echoing sound that reaches my ear. Vehicles are sure to pass, but the echoing sounds that linger in my ear are the dangdut mobile wagon (gerobak dangdut keliling), who would go back and forth busking under the toll-highway.

As someone who grew up in a city that is constantly alive and loud, I get awkward in cities that are quieter. Yogyakarta in my opinion is less loud, but it is never silent, or at least when I was there I was surrounded with vibrant and student-like activities. Compared to my recent experience of moving to Vienna, a city that has high regulation around noise, I appreciate loudness in my daily life. Since sound is a sign of life, it’s a sign of presence and persistence. The loudness can be tough to love, but with time and distance, it is a treasure.