Who are Voice of Baceprot, the Indonesian hijabi heavy metal band playing at Glastonbury?

Hijab-wearing guitar heroes are making waves at home and abroad

A female Indonesian heavy metal band is poised to make a big impact at Glastonbury this week.

The world-famous UK festival is again primed to be one of the blockbuster music events of the summer and Voice of Baceprot, the latter word meaning “noise” in Indonesian language Sundanese, will kick off festivities at Woodsies Stage on Friday morning.

Judging by their swagger and venomous riffs, the band's hijabi members should leave the stage with a new legion of fans.

They will be the first Indonesian band to play at Glastonbury, bringing to light an inspiring story and uncompromising music and values. Here is what we know about Voice of Baceprot.

The beginnings

From left: Marsya (24), Siti (24) and Widi (23) make up Voice of Baceprot. Reuters

Formed in 2014 in Garut, a city in Indonesian province of West Java, the trio consists of lead guitarist and vocalist Marsya, drummer Sitti and bassist Widi Rahmawati. All non-academically inclined, they entered a creative arts programme at high school which allowed them to dabble in theatre and music.

It was after discovering the 2001 hit song Toxicity by Armenian-American band System of a Down on a teacher’s laptop that they expressed an interest in learning heavy metal. Before long, their music moved away from fluffy pop renditions to spirited covers by Rage Against the Machine and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

The breakthrough

Voice of Baceprot on stage at the Trans Musicales music festival in Rennes, western France, in 2021. AFP

After making waves with high school performances and band competitions, Voice of Baceprot got signed by an Indonesian talent agency in 2018 and released their debut single School Revolution.

A defiant calling card with squalling and trashy riffs, frenetic drums and punkish vocals, the lyrics rail against a rigid Indonesian education system. “It was dubbed as the most beautiful prison, but doesn’t provide any evidence,” Marsya sings. “Just a bunch of rules with zero implementation, leaving history that's been forgotten. Don't try to judge us now.”

With the music video, shot in an abandoned warehouse, garnering attention at home and on international metal sites, Voice of Baceprot attracted the attention of some of their heroes with Guns N'Roses guitarist Slash, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello all saluting their efforts.

Morello expressed his admiration for the band in a 2022 online interview with Voice of Baceprot, which was uploaded to YouTube. “It was via Twitter where I heard one of your songs. It was a video clip and I watched it 10 times in a row and I was just blown away by it,” Morello said. “It is an awesome, ferocious band of young women from far away from here.”

Going global

With so much good will from music luminaries, it was only a matter of time before Voice of Baceprot would fulfil their promise. The 2021 single God, Allow Me (Please) to Play Music, whose yearning and dramatic vocals recalls the System of a Down singer Serj Tankian, is a powerful plea to their conservative detractors for understanding.

Last year’s debut album, Rastas, is a compilation of their old and new material, including the new song What's the Holy (Nobel) Today?

Now with a historic slot at Glastonbury on Friday, two days after an intimate warm up gig in London on Wednesday, the band’s legacy already seems assured.

“We get a lot of messages like that, especially from the girls,” Sitti told rock magazine Kerrang. “They say before they knew us, they were afraid to play music, but when VOB got a little bit popular, they had the courage to start a band themselves.”