Shunned in the West, Ye hands Indonesia a rare mega-tour coup

Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga each chose Singapore as their only Southeast Asian stop on recent world tours. Fellow American singer Olivia Rodrigo played Thailand and the Philippines, but likewise skipped Indonesia.

Next weekend, however, Jakarta is finally getting the big international headline act it has been craving – in the form of Ye.

The controversial American rapper, formerly known as Kanye West, is set to play Indonesia’s capital next Saturday, marking the only Southeast Asian appearance on his current tour.

The promoter, Raw Vision Collective, expects 15,000 international visitors to attend. In the first 24 hours of ticket sales going live, foreign buyers from 73 countries made up 52.8 per cent of purchases, according to marketing and communications lead Karen Tjahja.

“For the first time in Indonesia’s concert history, international attendees are expected to exceed more than 5 to 9 per cent of concertgoers,” Tjahja told This Week in Asia.

But the choice of Ye, who has faced travel restrictions and had concerts cancelled over his controversial remarks, has prompted questions about whether he is the right act to put Indonesia back on the international music map.

Capital gains

Raw Vision Collective says it invited Ye “less as competition” with neighbouring countries and “more as an opportunity to strengthen Southeast Asia’s live-entertainment ecosystem”.

It points to a large domestic audience, a vibrant creative scene and Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno Stadium, which can hold about 77,000 concertgoers.

Officials have thrown their weight behind the performance. At a press conference held by Raw Vision Collective last month, Indonesia’s Tourism Minister Widiyanti Putri Wardhana noted the potential for concerts by major overseas acts to generate benefits across various economic sectors, from accommodation and transport to food.

Jakarta Governor Pramono Anung also pledged the city’s full support for the concert, calling it an opportunity to showcase Indonesia’s capital to the world.

“We believe Jakarta can build on its own strengths,” Tjahja said, adding that successful productions elsewhere in the region had helped “establish Southeast Asia as a stronger destination for global tours”.

“We hope that with the success of this concert, this will just be the beginning of Indonesia positively being back on the global stage.”

Singapore serves as an example. The city state “has shown how major concerts can attract regional visitors and drive tourism”, Tjahja said.

Yet Singapore’s success has often come at the expense of its neighbours. Swift played six nights in the city state and nowhere else in the region in 2024. A year later, Lady Gaga also played four exclusive nights.

Permits and piety

Musicians who know the scene well say paperwork is part of Indonesia’s problem.

Herry Sutresna, also known by his stage name Morgue Vanguard and the founder of Indonesian hip-hop group Homicide, told This Week in Asia that Indonesia could attract foreign talent but was a harder sell than Singapore or Australia, partly because of its famously unwieldy bureaucracy.

“It’s not really about convincing the artists themselves, but rather the difficulty of organising concerts locally regarding permits, costs and all the other red tape involved,” he said.

Still, plenty of foreign performers have played Indonesia in the past. Hikmawan “Indra” Saefullah, who played guitar in the Indonesian indie band Alone at Last from 2002 to 2013, listed Deep Purple, Mick Jagger, Sepultura, Metallica and Green Day, as well as multi-day live music events such as the Java Jazz Festival and Hammersonic.

Lady Gaga was meant to play Jakarta in 2012, with all 52,000 tickets already sold for a concert when several organisations, including the Islamic Defenders Front, objected to the singer’s dance moves and outfits, calling her “a devil worshipper”.

Police subsequently refused to issue an event permit, saying they could not guarantee safety, and the show was ultimately scrapped.

Sutresna said such mass protest campaigns were relatively rare, however, pointing instead to routine logistical and bureaucratic issues as the cause of most event disruptions in Indonesia.

Purely business?

Ye is “a special case” because of his past controversies, according to Saefullah.

The rapper has been widely condemned in recent years for making antisemitic remarks that cost him major sponsorships and performance opportunities.

Last year, he released a song titled “Heil Hitler”, which several streaming platforms banned, after previously expressing admiration for the Nazi dictator in interviews, publicly denying the existence of the Holocaust and saying he identified as a Nazi himself.

Planned Ye concerts in Poland, France, Switzerland and India have been cancelled this year, with venues variously citing security and legal concerns. He was also slated to headline a festival in Britain this summer before the entire event was aborted after he was barred from entering the country.

In January, he took out a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal, explicitly apologising to black and Jewish people, opening up about a previously undiagnosed brain injury and detailing his treatment for bipolar disorder.

Saefullah said Ye had a strong fan base in Indonesia, where rap had long been popular in “inspiring the growth of the hip-hop subculture within the local music scene” – but he still saw opportunism in Ye’s Jakarta booking.

“Regarding him performing only in Jakarta, I see it as a purely business-driven decision,” he said. “Raw Vision Collective capitalised on the situation Ye and his team were facing, with tour dates being cancelled elsewhere.”

Tjahja said the promoter understood “the concerns surrounding Ye’s past public statements” but was “not in a position to comment on an artist’s personal views or ideology”. This Week in Asia has asked Ye’s management for comment.

Yohanes Sulaiman, a lecturer in international relations at Jenderal Achmad Yani University, said Ye’s past remarks were unlikely to be much of an issue in Indonesia, given its tense relationship with Israel, with which it has no formal diplomatic ties.

A number of Indonesian public figures had made antisemitic remarks over the years without consequence, he added.

“In Indonesia, he will probably have a lot of cheerleaders,” Sutresna said. “Unless he suddenly swings in another direction, like supporting [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu … That would be a different story.”