Iskandar Widjaja On The Joy of Making Music
Iskandar Widjaja explains the production and meaning behind his music video “Ode To Joy”
As a violinist, singer-songwriter, rapper, and dancer, Iskandar Widjaja is a trained classical musician who has taken a modern approach to building his career. “I was following an unusual path,” Iskandar recalls. “If you want to pursue a solo career, the usual path would be to enter competitions and fight for a place in the finals. I did some youth competitions when I was forced to as a child but later when I had free will to decide what to do, I never actually entered a single competition.” For Iskandar, he had other priorities. He was focused on his violin studies but he also had many other interests. “For some reason competitions did not really appeal to me.”
Born and raised in Germany, Iskandar launched his career when he followed his gut feeling and sent a demo tape to a German label, which signed and released his first album. “The release was well received. A manager approached me and from there it got started.” Since then, he has released music both independently and with labels. “I am a person that is very reluctant with binding relationships in general,” says Iskandar. “I have a lot of different contracts with different labels but only for single releases. This year I started releasing singles and all of them are independent. With every release I decide if I want to release it with a label or without. It's always a very tailored approach.”
“There’s no more honest and direct way of sharing your emotions with your audiences [than song writing], which is the most vulnerable and frightening thing but also the most beautiful.”
With these releases, Iskandar knows their value as a promotional tool, rather than a reliable income stream. “In terms of releases,” he explains, “we're not talking about much money actually, because it's still classical music, it's still a niche audience. All these streams generate a very very small amount of money. For instance, with Spotify or even YouTube and Vevo, you earn per stream but my experience is that if I generate around a million streams on a release, it's around £200. I mean, one million streams is not even enough to pay expenses for a month and it's already considered a lot in classical music. To make money through streams is a far cry but it is a promotional tool and it helps you in the live business.”
Iskandar Widjaja - Ode to Joy (official music video)
Although he identifies himself as a classical musician, Iskandar is inspired to go beyond just playing the classics. He is also a composer and arranger. To him, music writing is anything but routine. “When I try to produce or write, I'm afraid of copying myself again and again,” Iskandar says. “I call this the opening of a magic toolbox and taking out whatever suits this moment from the magic toolbox and that's exactly what I don't want to do. I don’t ever want to use the same ingredients because that's not what art is about. I think it should be genuine and idiomatic and spontaneous and honest.”
His creative writing process is equally spontaneous. “The thing with songwriting is you cannot force it. It just comes. And it usually comes during times where I don't practice so much. Although the songwriting process is not a very long process, it's still a very energy-draining process. It needs a lot of creative reserves and once I have practiced two, three, or four hours of the violin, my energy is gone and my creativity is also gone.”
“Total chaos does not create art. You need the rules to be able to break them.”
On a fundamental level, music exists in order to build connections with people. This concept is always top of mind for Iskandar, whether he is playing his own music or those by other composers. His most critical audiences are often those who are not familiar with classical music. “These audiences cannot be trapped or impressed by “violinistical” things, which are totally not interesting, actually. If you consider a normal human that wants to be reached and touched by music, the feedback and energy that I get from a non-classical audience is very important.” As a composer, he adds: “If you write your own song, there's no more honest and direct way of sharing your emotions with your audiences, which is the most vulnerable and frightening thing but also the most beautiful.”
Iskandar’s career has been as exciting and spectacular as his “Ode To Joy” single. Not one to be easily bound by traditions and rules, he respects the need for rules but is not afraid to break free. “Total chaos does not create art. You need the rules to be able to break them.” He goes on to give an example of his own rule-breaking: “I had to unlearn the approach of ‘technique first, music second,’ and that was the most difficult for me. Everything is so related: your body movements, your feelings, your musical ideas, they’re all related to the violin technique. Even when I slow practice, I need to play – from the start – true and honestly right from the heart because it will form my whole tone, my whole interpretation. It's like a seed that I plant. If I don't plant it in the beginning there's no way that it can grow. That, for me, is the core of making music.”
Interview conducted and written by Louise Lau. Connect with her on social media @offstagetunes
Watch highlights of this interview on the production of “Ode To Joy”