The Good, The Bad and The Awesome from Synchronize Fest 2016
Boasting 104 artists, with five stages, and three-day-celebration, Synchronize Fest 2016 is one of the most anticipated festival of the year for music enthusiasts in Indonesia. We came with a high expectation of bustling crowd and youth who lusted over great music. There were in total five stages, District Stage, Gigs Stage, Dynamic Stage, Forest Stage and Lake Stage. There was also a film screening stage that was located behind the Gigs Stage, a marketplace, and exhibition booths. Day one of the festival fell on Friday, and we were greeted by pretty heavy rain. It was a little letdown over the festive feel that we were supposed to have and not many people turned up to the venue on the first day. However, the line-up did not disappoint. Great musicians took turned up to perform on stage one after another. Each stage that Synchronize Fest had, offer different genres and the musicians displayed some new arrangement to their live set, making it sound new and refreshing. Day one highlight included the performances from Sunyotok, Kelompok Penerbang Roket, Sore, DDHEAR, Monita Tahalea, The Upstairs, Payung Teduh and Sheila On 7.
On day 2, the crowd is getting bigger but still too scarce to fill the huge JIExpo Kemayoran. Once again the rain fell and some people were seen wearing raincoat to see their favorite acts perform. On the second day, we tried to venture into various booths in the area and enjoyed the overall experience of the festival. There was mural done by well-known artist, Popoh, the spot quickly became a place to take picture at. Booth by Generasi 90an were also available for the visitors to enjoy, and it provided old-school arcade game and sold official merchandise of the creative brand. Ruru Shop displayed various album and movie posters and artworks that were hung on the wall. Kunto Aji, Bonita & The Hus Band, Monkey to Millionaire, Matajiwa, The Brandals, OM Pengantar Minum Racun, and The Adams are among the highlight on that day. Soneta Group took the cake as the most anticipated act of the day and they did not disappoint, after their set ended the audience asked for more and they delivered an encore. On this day, we led to believe that “dangdut” is truly universal, the audience from metal heads, jazz to indie lovers were dancing in unison to Rhoma Irama’s songs. Truly unbelievable!
The last day was probably the most crowded and packed, the smallest stage, Gigs Stage could not even contain all the audience who wanted to see the artists performed. People were pretty much interested to see all the acts on that day. We sometimes got to run to catch our favorite acts and were willing to get sandwiched in the sea of people. The great thing about Synchronize Fest was its time management. All the acts who performed were on time and they did not cross the limit set by the committee, the experience went smoothly because we could stick to our plan. One thing for sure when you go to festival is listing all the acts you want to see and on Synchronize Fest offered a great time management for music festival. Standouts from day three including Silampukau, Elephant Kind, AriReda, Maliq & D’essentials, Danilla, Tulus, The Trees and The Wild, Shaggy Dog, Efek Rumah Kaca, Seringai and Glenn Fredly.
Overall Synchronize Fest is an ambitious festival, it aimed to merge multiple music genres on one platform and invited the audience to engross on the experience. Did they nail it? Yes, they succeeded to bring all those talents to one event. But did it go smoothly? There were few setbacks, especially technical difficulties that made it a little uncomfortable to watch the performances, they still got a lot of things to improve. We are optimistic about its next installment, and hopefully the concern from Superglad about the expensive tickets could be solved.
