Word: punks
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...after midnight in Jakarta and, below a highway overpass, a party is just getting started. Students and the unemployed are listening to well-worn cassette tapes, swigging from bottles filled with a cocktail of beer and local wine and loitering in front of Movement Records - a punk-music shop that has become a nexus for local youths. It is also home to Onie, one of Jakarta's self-proclaimed original street punks, who both works and sleeps on the premises. "It is very quiet at night," Onie says. "The shops are closed, so society is O.K. with us being here...
...Although they are from different backgrounds, Onie's cohorts all proudly call themselves punks - a name first coined 30 years ago. His gang must be one of the last anywhere in the world to use the term today, and stepping inside Movement Records is to walk into a shrine to another era. Posters and stickers of their heroes - bands from the 1970s such as the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Clash - adorn every inch of wall space. "Punk is about freedom," says Onie. "People can choose what they want to do and what they want...
...Amriansyah explains that there are thousands of punks in the country. "Through an underground network of fanzines, record trading, the growth of independent distribution outlets and the power of the Internet," he says, "the scene is widely spreading to every region in Indonesia." But these days peer support, not protest, is one of the main attractions. One of Jakarta's youngest punks, 11-year-old Doing, meets up with his friends every afternoon at a playground near Blok M. With calloused bare feet and PUNK tattooed on his fingers, he survives by playing his ukulele on buses for money. "Punks...
...this family's core are the members of Marjinal, a punk band that has helped over a thousand street kids earn cash by teaching them how to busk. "Music gives these kids a way to survive, to make some kind of living," says Mike, Marjinal's lead singer. "Punk, to me, is addressing the things that are rotten in society. It tells us that we have the ability to be independent and take care of each other...
...ones that live on the streets. How are you?" The children sing along as they pile onto the stage. "Let's share the good and the bad times together!" Mike exhorts over the roar of their voices. It may be 30 years late, but for many of these kids punk is the best thing that has ever come to Indonesia...