Anggun Cipta Sasmi - a name surely inscribed somewhere on a golden gateway to the East, along with a prediction that someday all of us will know the story of this "grace born out of a dream" - a story that began in Jakarta, Indonesia on April 29th, 1974. Anggun is a woman with music woven into every strand of her being, a Javanese princess rocked to sleep as an infant by her mother crooning ancient folk songs, with Elvis as counterpoint.
In the exotic land of Anggun's birth, people live to sing - or sing to live - and by the age of seven she was already performing in public. Two years later she recorded her first album, three years after that, her second. Her third album, released when she was 17, won Indonesia's "Most Popular Artist Award 1990-91", and her fifth (1993) sent her straight to the Number 1 spot on the Indonesian charts, where she remained for 4 weeks.
"I was born at daybreak, to the road I did take..." Her first stop was London, then she moved on to Paris where the vital spark she sought was kindled in the person of Erick Benzi, a sorcerer of sound trailing a glowing stream of platinum and diamond-winning luminaries (Céline Dion, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Johnny Hallyday) in his wake. Together Benzi and Anggun embarked on a musical itinerary for which lyrics are passports to lands with no frontiers where the sensual and the spiritual are one.
The "Anggun" album, featuring Benzi's stunning production sound and Anggun's emotionally charged singing, pinpoints the ports of call on a journey spanning five continents. When we listen to Anggun, we know just where we're going. To a realm where the future lies in the voice of a woman. "Silent treasures, tender blushes, soft surrender...". Serene, assured.
