Magazine

Inextricably linked to Jamaican dancehall, Shatta emerged in the 2000s and 2010s in Volga-Plage, a neighbourhood of Fort-de-France. From the capital, it quickly spread across the island, then the archipelago, and more recently—and on a larger scale—to the métropole, the Martinican slang for mainland France.

Bandung’s underground music scene isn’t just about the music—it’s a living, breathing culture built on community, resistance, and shared memory. The ritual of nongkrong is its lifeblood, a sacred space where history is passed down, alliances are forged, and creativity thrives against all odds.

From street punks on Jalan Sumatera to death metalheads in Ujung Berung, the straight edge youth crew in neighbouring Sumedang, the anarchist crust punks of Rumah Pirata, and the emerging scene in Buahbatu featured in this issue, the history of the underground and its DIY practices reflects the narratives of local neighbourhood scenes, interlinking shifting underground styles, identities, values, and practices with the evolving urban landscapes of Bandung.

Libertad Fest is an annual punk music festival organised by the Bandung-based Pyrate Punx collective, coming to life every year through the assemblage of itinerant locations and various other collectives from around and outside the Indonesian archipelago.

Studio Pancaroba turns a national crisis into an absurd monument to corruption.

From corpse-painted farmers to sonic cartographies of the countryside, West Java’s black metal scene reimagines agrarian life as radical resistance. Bands like Bvrtan, Pure Wrath, and Sufism parody, honor, and weaponize rural imagery to confront inequality, history, and power.
We have follow the vocal project Ensemble Tikoro, in a trip through Bandung’s countryside.

From early on, the meanings and effects of indigeneity and cosmopolitanism have been core themes of Indonesia’s underground scene, which has gradually gained strength both locally and globally in artistic and political spheres.

A speculative fiction by artist Riar Rizaldi, rooted in Bandung’s underground music history, imagines a city where gangs of preman (freeman, gangsters), devoted to punk, metal, emo, and hardcore, rule the neighborhoods on motorcycles.

Réak is a trance ritual which originated in Bandung, a subregional variant of horse trance dances, a group of pan-Indonesian performances known under various names such as jaranan and jathilan.

There is a district on the outskirts of Bandung where traditional arts and heavy metal have collided since the 1990s—giving rise to pioneering bands, an underground zine scene, and DIY festivals that reshaped Indonesia’s music landscape.

The Ujung Berung metal community has become a case study of a chameleon-like and versatile countercultural space, exemplifying the role of underground music myths in creating environments where education, expression, and dissent intertwine, grow, and evolve.

At a time when music censorship is returning, political mobilization is rising, and student protests are spreading, the story of Buahbatu is not only urgent—it is necessary.

Dembow is a diasporic process that merges the foreign with the familiar, inventing shared dance grounds: an ever-changing rhythmic mantra that re-routes, re-roots, and fruits worldwide among the Dominican communities.

In the Umberto I neighbourhood, each small group, each corner, each bar, kiosk, and bench has its soundtrack: from the most traditional and rhythmic merengue, with its accordion and drum rhythms, to the melodic, guitar-driven bachata, to the fast-paced dembow, a frenzied beat popular among the younger crowd, featuring percussive beats and alternating rap vocals.

Exploring the Dominican sound system culture, known as “kitipó” or “chipeo,” and tracing its journey throughout the diaspora—from its roots in the island’s musicology to its rebirth across the diaspora, including Italy, ultimately transforming culture.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering Ashley Okoli—either in person or online through her numerous creative endeavours—you’ll be a testament to her contagious confidence and freedom of self-expression. If you’re yet familiar with the creative icon, you’re in luck. Ashley Okoli’s presence is one of those rare forces that alters your brain chemistry.

Emerging from Lagos’s peninsular neighbourhoods, the alté scene is shaping an anarchic and infectious lifestyle that defies the constraints of the Nigerian mainstream and reverberates across global contemporary culture.

Exploring the scene’s eclectic aesthetic evolution: from Lagos’s cult horror films and the social critique of Yung Nollywood to gaming visual culture and world-building through Cruel Santino’s Subaru Boys project—and beyond.

It was the classic grammar of celebration: the streets fill with people and empty of rules; the city becomes the set of a post-apocalyptic film, where authority vanishes and anthing, or almost anything, goes.

More than a structured artistic scene, Dimes Square is a real-time mythology; an ecosystem of signals hovering at the boundary between performance and reality. If not explicitly alt-right, it is at the very least slightly reactionary: a glitchy remake of culture where gossip replaces journalism.