Musical Nationalism In Indonesia

This book charts the growth of the Indonesian nationalistic musical genre of lagu seriosa in relation to the archipelago's history in the 1950s and 1960s, examining how folk songs were implemented as a valuable tool for promoting government propaganda. The author reveals how the genre was shaped to fit state ideologies and agendas in the Sukarno and Soeharto eras. It also reveals the very significant role played by Radio Republik Indonesia in the genre’s development and dissemination. Little research has been done to investigate how Indonesian music contributed to nation-building during Indonesia’s immediate post-colonial period. Emulating the European art song, the genre was adapted to compose songs with the purpose of promoting a strengthened collective Indonesian identity, fostered by a group of musicians who functioned as gatekeepers, monitoring and devising various mechanisms for songs to conform to the propagandistic needs of the Indonesian government at the time. The result was the development of classical style of singing and the cultivation of a patriotic collection of music during the Guided Democracy period (1959–1965), which peaked at the height of the Konfrontasi (1963–1966). Lagu seriosa lost popularity as popular music infiltrated Indonesia in the 1970s, but it remains an iconic yet understudied aspect of the nationalistic agenda in Indonesia. The case studies of selected songs reflected continuity and change in musical style and over time. This book is of interest to scholars studying the intersection between history, politics, identity, arts and cultural studies in Indonesia. It is also of interest to researchers investigating the role of music in identity formation and nation-building more widely.

What happens to “local” sound when globalization exposes musicians and audiences to cultural influences from around the world? Jeremy Wallach explores this question as it plays out in the eclectic, evolving world of Indonesian music after the fall of the repressive Soeharto regime. Against the backdrop of Indonesia’s chaotic and momentous transition to democracy, Wallach takes us to recording studios, music stores, concert venues, university campuses, video shoots, and urban neighborhoods. Integrating ground-level ethnographic research with insights drawn from contemporary cultural theory, he shows that access to globally circulating music and technologies has neither extinguished nor homogenized local music-making in Indonesia. Instead, it has provided young Indonesians with creative possibilities for exploring their identity in a diverse nation undergoing dramatic changes in an increasingly interconnected world. Ultimately, he finds, the unofficial, multicultural nationalism of Indonesian popular music provides a viable alternative to the religious, ethnic, regional, and class-based extremism that continues to threaten unity and democracy in that country.

Professor Kahin's classic 1952 study, reprinted for a contemporary audience. An immediate, vibrant portrait of a nation in the age of revolution, featuring interviews with many of the chief players. With new illustrations and a new introduction by Benedict R. O'G. Anderson.

It has always been a matter of national pride that independence came to Indonesia not as the result of a negotiated transfer of sovereignty, though the process was completed in that way, but through a struggle of heroic proportions in whose fires the nation itself was forged. The revolution, indeed, is central to the Republic's perception of itself. To call it a revolution is, of course, to beg a number of important questions. What is a revolution? Is the concept, developed in modern thought on the models of the French and Russian revolutions, applicable to a nationalist struggle for independence? Or must a revolution involve also a transfer of power from one social class to another and a subsequent social transformation? For Indonesians looking back to the birth of the nation, however, such questions do not arise. For them there is no question but that the events of 1945-49 constituted a revolution, a revolution that is seen as the supreme act of national will, the symbol of national self-reliance and, for those caught up in it, as a vast emotional experience in which the people -- the people as a whole -- participated directly. The exploration of Sjahrir's recruitment of a group of followers during the Japanese Occupation and of the character and attitudes of the group is based, in large measure, on interviews with its surviving members. A highly articulate body of people, they clearly enjoyed recalling their youth, remembering particular experiences, and thinking back on the issues that had preoccupied them and the ideas that had excited them as students. For many of them it had obviously been a golden age, perceived all the more vividly now because the world they had hoped for had never come into being. There is, perhaps, a good deal of nostalgia in their memories of what it was like to be a part of a crucial period in their country's history and no doubt some misjudgment about the parts they played. Oral history is a risky business, given the fallibility of human memory and the tendency for interviewer and subject alike to collaborate in re-shaping the past in the light of their later perspectives. The dangers of such a method are discussed below. Nevertheless, provided it is kept in mind that memories are documents of the present and not of the period with which they deal, it is important to gather these recollections while members of the generation in question are still alive.

Over time Dutch and Indonesian musicians have inspired each other and they continue to do so. Recollecting Resonances offers a way of studying these musical encounters and a mutual heritage one today still can listen to.

"Rasmussen has written a classic study of the world of Islamic soundscapes, performances and forms of musical piety in that most complex of societies, Indonesia. With great sensitivity, an alert musical response to players, reciters and audiences, a keen practitioner's ear and eye for subtlety as well as for the complexities of 'noise', she changes common assumptions about Muslim music and, not least, gender in changing Islamic ritual cultures. Her own political awareness and her professional as well as personal relations with women Qu'ran reciters contribute to an exciting an original volume that I recommend to any one exploring the riches of Islamic performances and debates in the contemporary world."—Michael Gilsenan, author of Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative in an Arab Society

Divine Inspirations: Music and Islam in Indonesia brings together the work of 11 international scholars into an unprecedented volume focused on religion and performance in a nation celebrated for its extraordinary arts, religious diversity, and natural beauty. The resulting collection provides a panoramic view of Indonesia's Islamic arts in a variety of settings and communities. Together the authors address how history, politics, spirituality, and gender are expressed through performance and how Indonesian Islamic culture intersects with the ideology and practice of nationalism. Unique and engaging, Divine Inspirations will fascinate readers interested in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Islam, world religions, global discourse, and music, arts and ritual.

Indonesia, with its mix of ethnic cultures, cosmopolitan ethos, and strong national ideology, offers a useful lens for examining the intertwining of tradition and modernity in globalized Asia. In Inventing the Performing Arts, Matthew Isaac Cohen explores the profound change in diverse arts practices from the nineteenth century until 1949. He demonstrates that modern modes of transportation and communication not only brought the Dutch colony of Indonesia into the world economy, but also stimulated the emergence of new art forms and modern attitudes to art, disembedded and remoored traditions, and hybridized foreign and local. In the nineteenth century, access to novel forms of entertainment, such as the circus, and newspapers, which offered a new language of representation and criticism, wrought fundamental changes in theatrical, musical, and choreographic practices. Musical drama disseminated print literature to largely illiterate audiences starting in the 1870s, and spoken drama in the 1920s became a vehicle for exploring social issues. Twentieth-century institutions—including night fairs, the recording industry, schools, itinerant theatre, churches, cabarets, round-the-world cruises, and amusement parks—generated new ways of making, consuming, and comprehending the performing arts. Concerned over the loss of tradition and "Eastern" values, elites codified folk arts, established cultural preservation associations, and experimented in modern stagings of ancient stories. Urban nationalists excavated the past and amalgamated ethnic cultures in dramatic productions that imagined the Indonesian nation. The Japanese occupation (1942–1945) was brief but significant in cultural impact: plays, songs, and dances promoting anti-imperialism, Asian values, and war-time austerity measures were created by Indonesian intellectuals and artists in collaboration with Japanese and Korean civilian and military personnel. Artists were registered, playscripts censored, training programs developed, and a Cultural Center established. Based on more than two decades of archival study in Indonesia, Europe, and the United States, this richly detailed, meticulously researched book demonstrates that traditional and modern artistic forms were created and conceived, that is "invented," in tandem. Intended as a general historical introduction to the performing arts in Indonesia, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Indonesian performance, Asian traditions and modernities, global arts and culture, and local heritage.