RAMPAK G Is Giving Durban Gqom an Indonesian Accent

Start in Durban, not Jakarta. Sometime around 2012, producers in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal townships started stripping house music down to its studs. Out went the four-on-the-floor kick that every dancefloor on earth had been built on. In came a heavy, distorted sub-bass hit called a log drum, laid over broken, lopsided rhythms that felt more like a threat than an invitation. They called it gqom, a Zulu word that just means "drum," and it turned Durban into one of the most influential dance music exports of the decade, carried by names like DJ Lag and Distruction Boyz.

Now it's turned up more than 5,000 miles away, filtered through Indonesian gendang and released on cassette-culture Bandcamp pages. RAMPAK G, a small experimental label built around a rotating cast of Indonesian producers, has spent the last year making a case that gqom and Indonesian percussion were always going to find each other eventually. Mixmag Asia's July essential-listening roundup put it plainly: "Indonesia is going heavy on the Gqom, and RAMPAK G's Symbiotic II is the clearest proof yet."

Where the Name Comes From

RAMPAK G takes its name from rampak gendang, an Indonesian phrase describing a style of drum performance where multiple players hit in unison. Rampak means together or synchronised, gendang is the traditional drum itself. It's a fitting name for a label built on collision rather than one lane. Co-founder Sanjonas, also known as Yonaz Kristy, a graphic designer, DJ and producer based in Yogyakarta, started the project with sujaatse and wazabii after getting hooked on the energy of Tokyo's TYO GQOM collective. "At its core, RAMPAK G is about genre-bending and embracing the beauty of trial and error," Sanjonas has said. "We're not here to stick to one lane."

Two Compilations In

The label's debut, Symbiotic I, landed in June 2025 with contributions from sujaatse, wazabii, Sanjonas and NOISY NOISE, all working the same brief: take gqom's hypnotic, kick-less pulse and bend it toward something more local. Symbiotic II followed on April 1 this year, pulling in two new names, Alkahfa and MAHAMBORO, alongside the returning core. Sanjonas opens the record with "Boss Fight," a track that plays more like a fight scene than a warm-up. Alkahfa's "Void" strips things down further, sujaatse's "whisper" leans into negative space, wazabii's "VAI NO G!" is the most club-ready cut on the record, and MAHAMBORO closes it out with "CYBERQOM," which does exactly what the title promises.

Does It Actually Work?

Fusion records like this live or die on whether they feel like a gimmick or a genuine second language. This one leans toward the latter. The log drum stays recognisably gqom throughout, but the layering underneath it, hand percussion, microtonal runs, the odd distorted guitar, keeps pulling it somewhere else. Mixmag called Symbiotic II "mind-bending at every turn, overflowing with restless energy," and that tracks. It's not always an easy listen. Some of it is closer to a fever dream than a dancefloor tool. But that restlessness is the point, and it's a more interesting risk than another straight tech house EP out of Jakarta this month.

Part of a Bigger Pattern

RAMPAK G isn't operating in isolation. Yogyakarta's wider experimental scene has been feeding off itself for a while now, from the DIY circles around GAUNG to the bigger commercial machinery of festivals like DWP, a short flight away in Jakarta. RAMPAK G sits closer to the former: small runs, pay-what-you-want digital pricing, a logo that looks hand-carved. If gqom's crossover into amapiano and mainstream pop over the last few years taught the industry anything, it's that these South African rhythms travel well. RAMPAK G is betting that Indonesia is the next stop, and on the evidence of Symbiotic II, they might be onto something.

Cover photo: gendang beleq drummers, Lombok. Raiyani Muharramah, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.