Chasing the song home

Future Farmers of America doesn’t usually serve as a launching pad for a music career, but for Las Cruces native Dzaki Sukarno, it was the moment everything shifted.

“I think every musician is going to say that we all started when we were young, but truthfully I really did,” Sukarno said. “My dad's the one that taught me how to play guitar, but I didn't really take it seriously until I got a bit older.

“I was an FFA member at Centennial High School, and my advisor signed me up for the state talent show. I ended up winning the whole competition. I realized that maybe this is something I can do full-time.”

That realization didn’t come from a typical path, and neither did Sukarno’s background.

Born in Okinawa to Indonesian parents — his father was stationed there in the military — Sukarno moved to Las Cruces as a child and has called New Mexico home ever since. He later spent time in Nashville building his career but eventually returned to Las Cruces to be closer to family as his own career began to grow.

“I never thought that I'd ever bridge the two things together—my music career and Indonesia,” he said. “But about a year and a half ago, we went to Indonesia and I got to film a country music special there. That was pretty fun, to merge the two things that mean so much to me.”

Before that, Sukarno tested his music on bigger stages.

He competed as an FFA singer at the national level and later appeared on American Idol during the COVID-era Season 19. He advanced to Hollywood Week before being eliminated just shy of the live rounds.

“I met a lot of amazing friends along the way,” Sukarno said. “I still keep in touch with them today. I knew it was a reality TV show … but I knew it was one of those opportunities that I might never get again.”

The experience didn’t launch his career overnight—but it clarified it.

Sukarno leaned further into traditional country music, carrying that identity with him through college at New Mexico State University, where he studied agricultural business. During COVID, he built an audience the way many musicians did, through TikTok and local performances at farmers markets, before eventually taking his music on the road.

That road led him to Nashville, where he signed his first record deal.

“I hated being in the city,” he said. “I was barely home … we were on the road most of the month, so I was paying for an apartment that I wasn't really living in, and it didn't feel like home to me.”

When his contract ended, the decision came into focus.

“It’s been the best decision ever,” Sukarno said of moving back. “It was just me and a couple of my band members from Cruces … and now we all have families, and we all decided to move back to New Mexico.”

Now based in Las Cruces, Sukarno tours nationally with a band that reflects those same roots — his guitar player and drummer are from Las Cruces, and his bass player is from Albuquerque. The group has been together for about six years.

Their sound leans heavily into tradition.

“The majority of our set list is stuff that I've written myself with my buddies,” he said. “It’s traditional country — still has steel, some fiddle sounds, but still very honky-tonk. It has that nice grit that you don't really get to hear anymore.”

That full-time music career didn’t come without risk.

Sukarno attended NMSU on a full Air Force ROTC scholarship and once planned to become an aviator. For a time, he tried to balance both paths.

“I went to school from Monday to Thursday, and Thursday nights we packed up the bags and hit the road,” he said. “That was almost every single week. My colonel was really mad at me because I was so exhausted the next morning.”

Eventually, the choice became clear: the Air Force was a backup plan, and music was the path forward.

“I've always wanted to do this since I was a kid,” Sukarno said. “But it was one of those things that was kind of just so out there, like a dream that I never thought would actually happen.”

Now, with a growing family, including a new baby, and a career built on the road and back home, that dream looks a little different than he once imagined.

Not bigger. Not flashier.

Just real, and still playing, in many ways, like that first unexpected moment on an FFA stage.