Sensations English Logo
LEVEL B2

Shadowing the newsreader

Listen to the newsreader read out each line and then practise saying it. Record your own voice line by line and submit your voiceover.

Hide View

Nasida Ria, an all-woman band in Indonesia, is a major hit with young festival audiences.

Originally formed 47 years ago as a Qur'an-reading group, the band now blends Arabic and traditional 'dangdut' music.

Once seen as unsophisticated, dangdut and other local cultural music styles are gaining popularity and Nasida Ria mixes these with lyrics on serious themes like justice, human rights and Islam.

However, they're typically dealt with in a humorous way.

Men who treat women badly, for example, are made fun of.

Music specialist Shindu Alpito explains their appeal.

This mixture of music styles and entertaining but powerful lyrics has captured a young, media-friendly audience, who refer to Nasida Ria as the 'Indie Mothers'.

Nasida Ria are well-informed about popular media channels and aware of how to reach their fans.

At the comparatively young age of 27, Nazla Zain's the youngster of the group.

The group, whose front woman Rien Djamain is in her 60s, now have over half a million followers on YouTube and every month 38,000 people listen to their music digitally on Spotify.

Djamain's hopeful that listening to their recordings will change young people's hearts for the better.

REGISTER NOW

Get videos, articles, games and study tools!

Learn at six levels from A1 to C1
Or sign up with your Email
By clicking “Sign Up” above you are accepting our Terms of Service & Privacy Policy.
Already have an account? Sign in

Sign up with email

Enter the following information to create your account.
All sign up options

Log in Or create an account

or

Forgot password?

reset password or login

Crop Image

Crop preview
Add to homescreen