Tawa Tawa Entertainment successfully held their first event! [22nd March 2014]

Event

Tawa Tawa Entertainment successfully held a tribute event to celebrate L’Arc-en-Ciel’s comeback and YUI’s birthday celebration. This tribute event also celebrate the grand launching of Tawa Tawa Ent as one of promoters and event organizers in Indonesia whose founders are also Japanese music lovers to begin with.

The event was hold on 22nd March 2014 at Basement Cafe – Arion Swiss Belhotel, Kemang. This event was attended by approximately 300 fans of L’Arc-en-Ciel and YUI. When the gate was opened, fans who have bought the tickets and fans who wanted to buy tickets on the spot, queued patiently in front of the entrance.

The event was started in the next 30 minutes while fans can watch L’Arc~en~Ciel and YUI’s PVs inside the cafe. The event was nicely hosted by Barry, who is pretty well known in the Japanese community in Jakarta. The opening band who rocked out the stage first was Black Paper Moon and Devil’s Crown. Black Paper Moon is YUI’s band cover and they performed one of YUI’s best hits, Rolling Star. In the other hand, Devil’s Crown beautifully covered L’Arc~en~Ciel’s trick, Lost Heaven, and Shout at the Devil.

In the middle of the event, Barry gave away some L’Arc~en-Ciel and YUI’s posters and after every segment is finished, he would call 2 fans to the stage and asked them to share their experience as a fan or to sing. There was also a segment where he gave original CD of L’Arc~en~Ciel’s and YUI as door prize.

After the opening bands and give away, Barry continued the event by the traditional ceremony as Tawa Tawa launching moment. They have Tumpeng ceremony (yellow rice) on stage and explained short history of Tawa Tawa Entertainment.

The show was continued with other great performance from Last Exile, Hikari, Offbeat, Choco Miruku, Wasabi, Sekar Khatulistiwa and closed by Obake. As the show got hotter at night, every fans hyped up and sang along together almost in every song.

Interview Tawa Tawa Entertainment (Kenji Hirazawa dan Saskwan)

Tawa Tawa consists of 9 people and each person has their own role with their own division. For this tribute event, the preparation took two months to finish. This tribute was hold to reminisce the old days when J-Wave was a big hit in Indonesia several years ago. Tawa Tawa wants this kind of tribute events mushrooming again in Indonesia.

Tawa Tawa chose to make a tribute to L’Arc~en~Ciel and YUI because the moment is perfect, while L’Arc~en~Ciel had their comeback and even a two-days concert in Kokuritsu Kyogijo and also while YUI is going to have her birthday soon. Besides, both artists have a great number of fans in Indonesia. Tawa Tawa wants to be the place to hear the aspirations from various Japanese fanbase community in Indonesia. They felt that the Japanese fanbase community in Indonesia is very big but recently there’s no new big event being hold. Tawa Tawa also wants to make the event becomes more special for the fans who come to their event. For example, in this tribute event, every band who performed should re-arranged one of the cover songs in their own music arrangement in video formats and it will be sent to L’Arc~en~Ciel Ken’s manager and YUI management.

We can also hope a lot for many different events from Tawa Tawa Entertainment. Soon on March 30th, they will hold a STAND UP COMEDY SHOW at Lotte Avenue.

Kenji and Saskwan also explained that Tawa Tawa has two meanings, the first one is that tawa means laughter in Indonesian and the second tawa is the Japanese Katakana for ‘Tower’, so they want to build a tower with laughter with Tawa Tawa.

Interview with Sekar Khatulistiwa

Sekar has been a fan of YUI since high school and the first YUI’s song that she knew is Feel My Soul. She likes YUI because YUI is a humble musician. Sekar choose to cover YUI’s songs because YUI’s songs are inspirational. Her family responds her music direction positively. In this event she performed YUI’s best hits like Hello, Goodbye Day, Jam, and Happy Birthday to You.

When she was asked about the tribute event, she thought that the event was really good so that the musicians can finally know that they have fans in Indonesia and that their fans in Indonesia are very supportive.  In the future, she hopes YUI can come to Indonesia and hold a concert while for YUI fans in Indonesia, she really wants them to keep solid and support YUI all the way through.

She also shared her unforgettable moment during her live experiences. Before going solo, Sekar has been YUME’s vocalist that covered YUI’s songs in the past. However, in 2011 Sekar had to be in Japan so she has been in hiatus from YUME for a year. In the end, she decided to have a solo carrier. She really loves how the audience in Indonesia always sing along with the song and make it as the highlight of the event, so her performance becomes incredibly beautiful.

In the event, Sekar shared her first single for the audience titled “Insanely Brighter” which was written and arranged by herself. Eventhough the single is still in demo type, but she really hopes it can be released officially soon. Let’s hope for the best for Sekar!

Interview with Obake

Kojacon only managed to have interview with Carlos, Wibi and Omar from Obake this time. The members shared their history when they firstly formed back in 2004 with 5 members, Wibi on vocal, Omar on guitar, Carlos on drums, Amal on Bass, and Vito on Keyboard. Omar said he firstly fell in love with L’Arc~en~Ciel because of their song, 4th avenue cafe, which was the ost for Rurouni Kenshin animation in the national tv that he watched in his childhood.  Meanwhile Wibi likes L’Arc~en~Ciel in 2001 because of Stay Away and Carlos has been a fan since he was invited to be OBAKE’s member. That time, it was his first time listening to SMILE album and gradually like L’Arc~en~Ciel’s music.

OBAKE’s name has been changed for several times in the past and finally before they used OBAKE, they had their band name, BAKEMONO. They explained that in every religion, devil always tries his best to persuade human. They want to take the positive side from the devil’s determination and perseverance in persuading human, well, it’s pretty weird point of view, but most of the fans probably can get what they means, right? haha… But along the way, they thought that BAKEMONO’s name sounded too scary to some people, so they changed their band’s name again to OBAKE, since OBAKE means cute little devil. And they said they want to haunt people with their songs, of course, in positive way. Currently they choose to play pop-rock alternative genre besides covering for L’Arc~en~Ciel.

This year will remark their 10th anniversary, so they have plan to release some singles and as we asked about special event they said they might hold special event although it’s not decided yet.

When we asked about their unforgettable moment during the live, all of them laughed and they said they usually avoided this questions, but in the end Omar admitted it was always him who had accident during the live. There were two accidents he had during the live. The first one was in an event of Wibi’s campus. While everyone has been off stage, Omar was left behind and he shouted, “Wibi, wait for me~” then when Wibi turned his head to Omar, he can’t find Omar anywhere. Soon he found Omar fell down to the 1-meter-ditch near the stage.

And the other accident was on stage. They performed at Magic Cafe where the stage was already set for magic show and there was a sliding floor on stage. In the middle of Driver’s High performance, suddenly Wibi can’t hear any guitar melody and when he checked Omar position, again he can’t find Omar anywhere. Soon he found Omar fell down to the sliding door. Omar bitterly said, actually he wanted to jump but unfortunately he fell down to the sliding door….haha… it was  a pretty chaotic performance, but look at them now, shining and admirable on stage.

OBAKE performed total 6 songs in this event, including Caress of Venus, Chase, 7th Heaven and XXX with their own original arrangement. They hope L’arc~en~Ciel fans wherever they are can be more solid and support their favorite musician all the time.

Photos credit : Tawa Tawa Ent