Banda Neira Hacks Worker-Class Reality In Music Videos Dream The Billions

Banda Neira (doc. Ist)

JAKARTA - Banda Neira launched a music video for the song Dream of the wild as a marker of one year of its debut album after returning with a new formation, Growing and Being.

This serious visual work highlights the most fundamental issue for millions of residents of big cities: workers' fatigue.

For Banda Neira, Dream of the wild is anode or poem of praise dedicated to the working class. His inspiration is rooted in the experience of everyday life that must face the harsh reality of life.

The dream of a wild one clearly raises one of the darkest conditions experienced by millions of people who every day have to fight against their hard lives in order to get money.

This song started with Ananda Badudu's body collapsing helplessly at night, after traveling 100 kilometers back and forth between Jakarta and Cikarang spending about four hours on the road every day.

At its peak, Ananda once arrived home at around one o'clock in the morning, then fell limp on the floor, reflecting on her condition that felt helpless in facing all the complexities of life.

"I arrived home at one o'clock, then I was only hanging on the fifteenth minute floor. The fatigue was not only that day, but what had accumulated for a long time. From there I felt this should be a song about the life cycle of tired people on the road," Ananda said in her statement, Friday, November 28.

Ananda sees that this fatigue problem is not merely an individual problem, but a complex network between workloads, long distances, poor public transportation, and how it collides with personal relationship nodes, including with partners.

This issue, according to him, has become part of the structure of city life that is impartial to humanity.

"The lyrics I wrote are probably sercis. Because this is experienced by millions of people. Our fatigue often comes from structural things, poor transportation, crazy work distance, cities that don't think about humans. But because every day, we take it for a long time to think it's normal. Even though it's not, "said Ananda.

In the midst of this oppressing reality, Banda Neira found a bright spot: the flash of hope that is maintained by the affection of those closest to you. This hope and dream are fuel to keep going, no matter how heavy the burden is carried.

Sasha calls it a 'home-room,' a small space where two humans strengthen each other so as not to actually fall.

"We can dream in the wild, but things often happen beyond our control. Problems that are beyond our control. But dreams must be maintained, because that is the only space left," said Sasha.

To translate this narrative, Banda Neira entrusted the direction of the music video to Bernardus Raka, who was given full freedom to interpret the song, with directions to first feel the essence of the song.

Banda Neira gave me full freedom to translate it. They just said: feel the song first, then visualize it. That's what makes the process honest," said Raka.

From deep discussions, an important agreement was reached: the world of dreams performed in this video is not a beautiful escape, but a replica that is twisted or distorted from reality.

Raka wants to specifically present the narrative of the working class of people whose lives are dense, narrow, and almost have no room to dream of, except when they sleep.

We agreed to bring the narrative of the working class. People whose lives are dense, narrow, and almost have no room to dream except during sleep. And maybe when they were children, when the reality didn't say hello. We deliberately make the dream world damaged, nothing beautiful. Because for many people, the dream itself sometimes cracks before they wake up, "said Raka.

The music video Dreamlah Seliar-liarnya stars Meidina, Kun Baehaqi Almas, as well as the children's cast Kanaya Nadine Aleesa and Edwin Jesse Nicholas.

Overall, this video presents a broken dream landscape, but feels honest. This video places humans in the middle of a city that doesn't give them space to breathe, but still demands them to wake up and move the next day.

More than just a marker of Banda Neira's maturity in saying life from sweet to outdated visual releases is also the opening of a new chapter of collaboration between their labels, Running Further Records, and KithLabo.