JAKARTA – The drummer crashed her cymbals. The bass player clawed at her guitar. The crowd raised index and pinkie fingers in approval. The lead singer and guitarist stepped up to the microphone, and screamed: “Our body is not public property!”

And dozens of fans threw themselves into a frenzy for the hijab-wearing heavy metal trio.

“We have no place for the sexist mind,” lead singer Firda Kurnia shrieked into the microphone, singing the chorus of one of the band’s hit songs, (Not) Public Property, during a December 2023 performance in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital.

Nearly a decade after emerging, Voice of Baceprot (pronounced bachey-prot, meaning “noise” in Sundanese, one of the main languages spoken in Indonesia) have earned a large domestic following with songs that focus on progressive themes such as female empowerment, pacifism and environmental preservation.

Now, they are also winning fans overseas. They have been praised by the likes of bassist Flea from American rock group Red Hot Chili Peppers and guitarist Tom Morello from American rock group Rage Against The Machine.

In the past year, Voice of Baceprot – whose lyrics mix English, Indonesian and Sundanese – have played in the United States, France and the Netherlands.

At the Jakarta gig, Firda, 23, who goes by Marsya, told the crowd the band were “a little sad and angry to hear that someone here was a victim of catcalling”.

“Anyone who does something like that, catcall or touch other people’s bodies without consent, those are the worst forms of crime,” she said. “Therefore, we can’t wait to curse this person through the following song.”

And then the band played PMS, whose chorus is in Indonesian: “Although I am not as virgin as Virgin Mary/I am not your rotten brain servant/Although I am not as virgin as Virgin Mary/I am free, completely free.”

Voice of Baceprot may be the only prominent heavy metal band in Indonesia whose members wear hijabs, but the heavy metal music scene is long established there.

Jakarta is the host of Hammersonic, South-east Asia’s biggest annual heavy metal music festival. The outgoing president, Mr Joko Widodo, is a fan of American rockers Metallica and Megadeth.

The members of Voice of Baceprot are all practising Muslims in their early 20s. With songs that shatter stereotypes of gender, religion and class, they have become role models for many young women in Indonesia.

At the concert, many fans moshed and banged their heads to the music.

Still, the group have faced critics. Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation, is not a theocratic state and has always cherished its secular identity, but in recent years, parts of the sprawling archipelago have adopted a more conservative interpretation of Islam – one that disapproves of young women in hijabs playing heavy metal.

The members of the band – Marsya; drummer Eusi Siti Aisyah, known as Sitti; and bassist Widi Rahmati – were all born and raised in Garut, a conservative part of West Java province.

Their parents are farmers. The house where Marsya grew up still has no running water, and the internet is spotty. Their childhoods were spent reading the Quran, playing games in rice paddies and listening to their parents’ music of choice, dangdut – a flavour of Indonesian pop.

The girls met as junior high students in an Islamic school, where they said they were “troublemakers”.

In 2014, they were sent to be counselled by Cep Ersa Eka Susila Satia, a teacher who first tried to get them into theatre. But “their acting was horrible”, said Ersa, whom the women call “Abah Ersa” or “Father Ersa”.

He directed them to play music instead, and they became part of a group of 15 students who dabbled in pop music. Then one day, the three girls borrowed Ersa’s laptop and discovered his playlist. They played Toxicity, the 2002 hit song by Armenian-American metal band System Of A Down, and were instantly hooked.

They asked Ersa to teach them how to play, and they started covering popular heavy metal songs and posting videos of their performances online. They were a hit.

At first, the women were called all manner of profanities. The band offended many Muslim men who believed women wearing hijabs should be docile, not head-banging to metal.

One day in 2015, someone threw a rock at Marsya. Attached to it was a note with an expletive.

They were having trouble at school too, where they were regarded as “public enemies”, said Sitti, 23. Their principal told the girls, Marsya recalled, that their music was haram, or forbidden, and that they were “going to hell”.

They dropped out, but eventually graduated from another school.

The hostility took a toll. “We told Abah we were tired, and we wanted to stop playing music because of that,” Marsya said. “And Abah said, ‘Why bother with humans? Just ask God directly.’”

That led to their 2021 hit song, God, Allow Me (Please) To Play Music. Ersa wrote the lyrics, and the women composed the music. They write their own lyrics now, but continue to seek Ersa’s guidance.

In 2023, the band went on their first tour in the West, performing in France, the Netherlands and nine cities in the US. In Oakland, California, fans in the audience shouted, “Allahu akbar”, the Arabic phrase that means “God is great” at them.

The women say the frequent questions about their headscarves bewildered them. “A lot of journalists asked about the hijab more than our music, like, ‘Who forced you to wear a hijab?’” Marsya said. “It was so weird.”

“We tell them that we wear hijabs because we want to,” she added. “And at first, yeah, our parents told us to try to wear the hijab, but after we’ve grown up, we can choose what we want.”

The women say they started wearing hijabs in elementary school. “But we wore miniskirts. The top was the Arab version; the bottom was the Japanese version,” Marsya said, laughing.

The women said they want to continue focusing their songs on female empowerment and the environment. “We are worried about our future. Will we still be able to see the forest 10 years from now?” Marsya asked.

Many girls in their village are pressured to marry at a very young age, some as young as 12.

“We realise now it’s a privilege for us to be heard by a lot of people,” Marsya added. “That’s the thing that not all the girls from our village can have.” NYTIMES