This week's picks for Song of the Day were chosen by the Asian Pacific American staff of KEXP, spotlighting APA artists as part of our Pushing Boundaries celebration. Today's Song of the Day is “Climbing Clouds” by Empat Lima, a 2021 self-released single.
Australian-based trio Empat Lima were influenced by 1960s girl groups from South East Asia, particularly Surabaya-based 1960s all-female garage rock band Dara Puspita. (They even cover their 1967 single "Au Go Go" on their debut EP Satu BOOM!.) "Although they are amazing musicians, it is the energy and spirit of their sound that captured our attention and continues to inspire us," explained bassist and founding member Sooji Kim in an interview with the Australia‐Indonesia Youth Association. "These women were revolutionary, and it is this energy that we hope to capture in our music."
As a Korean and second-generation Australian, Kim looked to Indonesia to connect with her Asian roots, living in Jogjakarta and attending Indonesia’s Institute for the Arts (ISI). "Korea not being that convenient or close by, I guess I just turned to the nearest neighbours," she admitted to Art Radar Journal. "I went over there to live, to explore my ‘Asian-ness’ really, the sorts of values that were not being expressed here in this Western culture."
The band's connection to Indonesia inspired Kim to launch WANITA: Women’s Art Network Indonesia to Australia, an organization designed to facilitate networks between the female arts communities in Jakarta and Melbourne. "Within the last few years there’s been an escalation of expressions of racism, which seems to be more accepted," Kim said back in 2015. "And it really concerned me and started to feel like a personal issue, something that I felt like I wanted to do something about within the communities that I could express it within…I feel like if we develop more communication and connection with women in our neighbouring countries and we do it at a level where we can implement some sort of change, even though it seems like it’s in a very tiny way, I feel like there’s nothing negative about it – it has some potential to make a start."
I (Janice Headley, Digital Content Producer — hiya!) chose this song for this week's Song of the Day podcast after discovering the band on the Typical Girls, Volume 5 compilation (as written about in the March edition of In Our Headphones). Their post-punk-tinged surf-pop is right down my alley, and learning about their efforts to elevate South East Asian art and music just made me love them even more.
