Indonesian pop band Kahitna took to the stage, to deliver live music in the country’s capital Jakarta on Saturday at a drive-in concert, reported news agency Reuters. The concert attracted hundreds of eager listeners, who gathered at the spot to attend it for almost two hours.
The band, which had its heyday in the 1990s, played sentimetal, yearning tunes of its hit songs, “Cerita Cinta” and “Love Story” banking on the audience’s nostalgia, as the listeners flashed their mobile torches.
According to Chaeruddin Syah, a concert organiser, the songs were a reminder of the happier times before the COVID-19 pandemic, which has taken a hot on the music industry.
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“Our economy has declined for four to five months, we have not worked at all and have not made any money,” he told Reuters.
The organisers however said that they had kept safety at priority and asked the audience to wear masks and provide negative test results before coming to the concert.
The concert was attended by about 900 people in 300 cars, all of whom had to stay inside while the performance went on. Each vehicle was sprayed with disinfectant upon arrival, and was provided with a carbon dioxide detector, to alert the occupants to open their windows, in case the level of the gas inside the car rose too high.
The cars tuned into an FM radio channel, in order to listen to the performance.
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While talking about the coronavirus-forced adaptions in the music industry, Adib Hiyat, an organiser told Reuters, “If the (drive-in) concept could have a strict protocol and a tight discipline from the audience, it could be one of the new breakthroughs.”
The Southeast Asian country, which has seen a rise in coronavirus cases recently, has recorded about 170,000 infections and 7,261 deaths, according to Reuters. The country also recorded its highest single-day spike in cases on Saturday.