The 1st Jakarta Beat Society (JBS) was held in 2019 with the purpose of positioning the City of Jakarta, used to be known as The Queen of Asia in the 18th century, as the Center for World Music in the global music scene. Due to the pandemic, JBS can only be revived this year by LOKASWARA. On this 2nd year, JBS is no longer only an international world music festival but it’s also a showcase festival that will provide opportunity, through Open Call, for the new emerging talents to perform.

Since JBS today is a Showcase Festival, the important components of JBS not only the amount of audience, but also the amount and “who’s who” of our ‘buyers’ or DELEGATES (common term) that come to JBS. The expectation is that these Delegates will engage in businesses with Talents that performed on our stages.

Who are these buyers or delegates? They are none others than promoters, booking agents, festival directors, venue owners, producers, records labels, distributors, aggregators, artist managers, music organizations & associations, formal & non-formal music institutions, musicians, singers, song writers, film makers, music lawyers & activists, country representatives, etc. Through WOMEX (Worldwide Music Expo), the world largest music showcase held annually in Europe, one can see that they are thousands of music-related visitors coming and gathering to the event from literally all over the world representing many countries in a strong business mood and ambience. Although WOMEX has changed its name from “World Music Expo” into “Worldwide Music Expo’, the most participants coming to WOMEX are remain those who engages in world music activities.

In the program JBS will have a very important component called Speed Meeting or Business Meeting. Here all the JBS’s Talents will have opportunity to join the One on One meeting with the Delegates to promote their music with the hope that it can be their first steps to get access to the global market.

Although international Delegates are important in this case, local Delegates by no means are also crucial. The local Delegates who will attend JBS this year are those who engage in most important components of our music industry. These Delegates, national and international, will gather in our Conference session as speakers sharing their experiences and expertise in local as well as global music markets. The conference itself was arranged in such a way to provide crucial issues and information in Indonesia, Asia-Pacific and Global contexts for the benefits of all the JBS’s Talents.

This is the aspect that makes JBS different compares to many other festivals in Indonesia. JBS’s goal, first and foremost, is to empower potential Indonesian musicians to become professionals and gaining access to the global market. Due to the huge musical resources available in the country, in the case of the access to global market that amount to over US$100 billions available for Indonesian musicians, this will certainly become a new ‘gold mining’ to generate prosperity for local musicians.

This is the reason why the Jakarta Provincial Government through the Jakarta Tourism and Creative Economy Board quite aware how important for them to provide significance support for JBS to be able to implement the goal for positioning Jakarta as the center for global “world music” industry, at least in Asia.

As a prestigious international festival, JBS still will present top Indonesian as well as foreign Acts that were selected by curatorial team consisting of prominent music journalists such as Shindu Alpito, Dzulfikri Malawi, Mohammad Zaki, and Franki Raden himself, the founder and director of JBS. Among the Acts performed at JBS will be: (1) Voice of Baceprot, (2) White Shoes and the Couples Company, (3) Endah N Rhesa, (4) Ras Muhammad, (5) Kojek Rap Betawi, (6) DEBU, and (7) Indonesian National Orhcestra (INO) who will feature Satya Cipta (singer) and Osama Abdulrasol, Iraqi master of Qanun (zither) who live in Belgium.

In addition to these Line Up, there will be supperb East Timorese Reggae group from Australia: Paulo Almedia, and the powerful British punk rock: LUI SURREAL coming from Rotterdam. Similar to Osama Abdurasol who collaborates with INDONESIAN NATIONAL ORCHESTRA (INO), LUI SURREAL will also collaborate with Indonesian rock musicians.

Beside presenting a collaborative theme, through our conference program JBS will also emphasize on the important of woman’s roles in Asian music industry. From Indonesia, Endah Widiastuti (Endah N Rhesa), prominent female musician and activist, will share her interesting experience working with common people in her songwriting program called Ear House for the past couple of years.

For the purpose of exploring the potentials of Asian musicians in Asian and Global markets, JBS will invite Olivier Renault, a French promoter who lives in Japan and working on both Asian and European music market.

In addition to Olivier Renault, other important Delegates/Speaker for the same topic is Sungchun Lee and Yu Ri Jeong from Korea. Today both of Sungchun Lee and Yu Ri Jeong are the two most important Korea artist/brand managers who are responsible for promoting Korean world music as well K-Pop groups in the global market. At present, Sungchun Lee also begins to pay attention to artists beyond Korea and starts working with ARCHA (world music group from Ambon) and SATYA CIPTA (world music singer from Bali). Soon we might be hearing their names pop up in the global market.

From Indonesia among JBS’s important Delegates are: (1) Satria Ramadhan (SRM Management & AXEAN Festival), (2) Kukuh Rizal (Sun Eater), (3) Kiki Ucup (Pestapora Festival), (4) Donny Heru (LaLaLa Festival), (5) Adi Adrian (WAMI), (6) Hang Dimas Santoso (Artist & Brand Manager), (7) Wendi Putranto (M Bloc Space), (8) Arham Aryadi (Dewan Kesenian Jakarta), (9) Ferry Dermawan (Joyland Festival), (10) Bagas Indyatmono (Jazz Gunung), (11) Anindyo Baskoro (Produser), (12) TuneCore, (13) MASSIVE, (14) Musik Bagus, and (15) Langit Musik.

On the top of our showcase performance and conference, JBS has an important after JBS competitive program called “JBS Award”. This award will give an opportunity to 1 selected Talents to compose and perform a new song guided by the famous songwriter: Endah N Rhesa after the festival in Ear House venue for their youtube platform. The judges for this competitive program are Endah Widiastuti and our three curators: Shindu Alpito, Dzulfikri Malawi and Mohammad Zaki.

Congratulations to all the musicians who got selected for Jakarta Beat Society 2025! See you all at Lapangan Banteng on April 24-27 from morning (conference) to midnight (performance).