All Grown Up

Sherina Munaf was hailed as a savior of the country’s dismal local film industry at the age of 10.  Seven years on, she has said goodbye to the little-girl image and released an album. She did it all on her own, writes Bruce Emond.

Sherina Munaf sometimes accidentally comes across a TV showing of Petualangan Sherina (Sherina’s Adventure), the movie musical in which she sang and danced her way into the public’s heart.

She sits back and takes a critical look at her younger self, tut-tutting at what she describes as her chubby face and shrill voice. “But my acting wasn’t too bad,” she says.

From the talented team of then up-and-coming director Riri Reza and producer Mira Lesmana, the story of the apple-cheeked tween fending off the bad guys a la Macaulay Culkin was a surprise hit at a time when local movie offerings were reduced to soft-core porn vehicles and slapstick comedies, along with the occasional brave attempt at an art-house film.

After the movie – she had previously released an album, Andai Aku Besar Nanti (If I am Grown Up), in 1999 – Sherina returned to school, only occasionally making appearances with conductor Addie MS’ Twilite Orchestra.

So some were surprised when she released the album Primadona earlier this year at the age of 17. For one thing, she wrote and arranged almost all the songs herself (the English-language track Better than Love is an adaptation of a poem written by her older sister’s boyfriend). The album is polished, listenable and very much in the Vanessa Carlton school of piano-playing young female pop singers.

And, of course, she is not little Sherina anymore, but a pretty, long-haired, slim teenager, despite her quip to the photographer to be careful not to make her look fat.

Still, there are those who would prefer that Sherina remain the poppet of the past. 

“I’m still carrying the child image until now. So people will say things like, ‘This isn’t right for Sherina, it’s not mellow like when she was a kid.’”

Her mother, Luki, who also helps manage her career, warned her about the differences this time around.

“She told me, ‘You are going to have to be very strong mentally, it’s not just fun now.’”

“Some of the people are so nasty,” Sherina says of coming across a music website discussing her transformation. “One of them wrote, ‘Sherina’s got too many accessories, she’s trying to be all grown-up’. I’m just doing what I want, not hurting them. It annoyed me a lot, but then again I think that eventually they’re the ones who get tired doing it.  I have to show them that I am not like that, that I can be more than what they say.

“If I had just stayed mellow, then there would be nothing to talk about.”

There also are the business responsibilities of the profession, which she did not deal with as much as a child, such as promotion. She had back-to-back media interviews on the day I met her. She had enjoyed the earlier interview because she was asked about her love of the gothic romance novelist Anne Rice.

But she recounts an interview with a journalist who suddenly proferred a dislike for her “new” image, that it was too much of a departure from the past.  

It annoyed the teenager who, while courteous, is no pushover with opinionated journalists. “Eventually I asked the person, ‘Is this supposed to be an interview, or a discussion?’”

For there is a big difference between Sherina and many of her peers in the entertainment world.

She is the middle of three daughters of Triawan Munaf, a successful ad industry executive; a musical connection is her uncle Fariz RM, who had several hit songs during the 1980s.

She had hummed along to Disney movies while being fed as a toddler; eventually, her love of singing and pestering of her parents led to the album, with a videoclip directed by Riri. Petualangan Sherina followed.

Yet she was neither one of the many rich kids whose parents bankroll their early vain-glorious projects, nor an unwilling performer pushed on stage by money-grubbing relatives.

Sherina had the talent and smarts; she could sing, dance (she has studied ballet for years) and was already creating colorful imaginary scenarios in her mind from her childhood.

In fact, she says, her parents were “passive” about her career, and discouraged her at the outset. They did not need her to work for their livelihood, and also did not want to bask in her fame.

“Everything was up to me what I wanted to do. They would say, ‘You don’t have to do that, it’s going to be too much trouble’, and I would reply, ‘But I want to be a singer’, and they said, ‘Just take singing classes’. But I kept on asking them, and then eventually they let me.  And I did that, and then I wanted to act.”

She looks back on that defining movie as a fun experience.

“There was never any pressure for me; I’m not saying that because I’m scared or anything. I enjoy this, and I enjoyed the making of the film, because I didn’t just act, but sang as well. I enjoy adventures, all the crew was friendly so it was good. It was really a brilliant concept, and fun.”

The next step could have been TV soaps, but she was not interested because of the grueling shooting schedule. She was afraid it would interfere with school.

She is still a teenager finding herself. She loves her romantic vampires and Marilyn Manson, not for the out-there image, but his musical talent,, as well as reading, writing, photography (“I’m very right-brained”) and going out with friends, . She seems very grounded, solid, normal, somewhat of a perfectionist.

The grounding comes from her family. Her mother, Luki, is a friendly but firm presence, letting her daughter do the talking. Her older sister is studying journalism in Australia, the younger one, Sherina says, is an endearing attention-seeker.  

Sherina knows the cautionary tales of young stars who have crashed and burned; at least two teen idols of the 1990s are rumored to have died of drug-related causes. So far, she has been squeaky clean, failing to register on the far-reaching infotainment radar. She was recently named the celebrity representative for Panasonic, replacing actress Dian Sastrowardoyo.

“My family is a good one, they don’t consume drugs or alcohol, so the probability of me going wild is very small,” Sherina says.

Still, it’s also not easy being a female soloist in Indonesia amid the dominance of boy bands today. She is in select company, along with Agnes Monica and the newly emerging Gita Gutawa (who bears more than a passing physical resemblance to Sherina).

“For me, it’s not about competition,” she says. “I want to take part in expanding and enhancing the range of music in Indonesia.”

She says she is blessed with a great imagination that allows her to explore; she is ambitious, too, although she confesses to being a procrastinator.  While many Indonesian artists have professed an interest in going international, only Anggun has succeeded, and Agnes Monica endured a very public roasting for deferring her plans to move to the U.S. to pursue her career.

“Of course, if I had the chance, it would be great,” says Sherina, who has performed twice in Japan for charity concerts. “Anggun is so amazing, her journey. I’m inspired by her. But I need to finish things here first, focus first on Indonesia.”

She continues to act, but she identifies herself as a musician, not an entertainer. Nascent songs will suddenly come to her.

“Sometimes I am walking, and something inspires me, and I get a song in my head. Something that makes me very sad, or very angry, will help me write a song. I write the lyrics, and then try to make a melody.”

She uses Primadona in the now commonly used English definition for arrogance, not the usual Indonesian usage for somehing exceptional. She reveals in her album notes that the title song was written in a fit of pique.

It’s tantalizingly intriguing – who was the culprit who irritated the talented young songstress?  She thinks for a moment, laughs and says she cannot remember. She prefers to keep some things to herself.

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