Java Soulnation 2009

Dira J. Sugandi

At the end on October 2009, Java Festival Production held the anticipated Java Soulnation which brings International Artist such as The Ting Tings, Musiq Soulchild, Tortured Soul, Arrested Development, etc here to Jakarta, Indonesia. Java Soulnation was also brought us Indonesian young talented artist, and of them brightstar is Dira J. Sugandi. Dira was the one who sang with Jason Mraz & Incognito at Java Jazz and her album (which is produced by Incognito's Bluey), is scheduled to be released this year. Dira Sugandi performed with an awesome band which consist Barry Likumahuwa as her music director and also played the bass.

Musiq Soulchild and his band

The next highlight is the soul singer Musiq Soulchild. On the show, I had just find out that his band is All Women, and all of them was freakin great! especially the drummer who just blow my mind right away with her powerfull and skillful play.

Musiq Soulchild

Musiq Soulchild performed most of his well known songs such as "If You Leave", "I Just Wanna Know", "Love", "So Beautiful", "Buddy", "For the Night", "So Beautiful", "Half Crazy", etc. 2 things that bothers me is he didn't sing "Who Knows" and also he performed "Don't Change" just a bit and not the entire song. but overall his performance and the band was amazing.

Tortured Soul

The next best thing i've been waiting to see again is Tortured Soul. They made the crowd moved their feet and dancing wildly to John-Christian Ulrich's beat, Jason Kriveloff's awesome bassline, and Ethan White's (who looked like Adam Brody that night) keys. They performed their songs their first album like "Fall in Love", "How's Your Life", "Enjoy it Now", "Epic" (Mr. Ulrich seemed very enjoyed playing this song), etc. They also performed songs from their other albums such as "Special Lady", "Another Lover" and "Did You Miss Me". and they leave the crowd humming their song as they went home.

John Christian Ulrich of Tortured Soul