Made in Nusantara

Studies in Popular Music

Adil Johan, Mayco A. Santaella, Adil Johan, Mayco A. Santaella

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367428464
• eBook ISBN: 9781000353792
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicology

Made in Nusantara serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, ethnography, and musicology of historical and contemporary popular music in maritime Southeast Asia.

Each essay covers major figures, styles, and social contexts of genres of a popular nature in the Nusantara region including Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore, and the Philippines. Through a critical investigation of specific genres and their spaces of performance, production, and consumption, the volume is organised into four thematic areas: 1) issues in Nusantara popular music; 2) history; 3) artists and genres; and 4) national vs. local industries.

Written by scholars working in the region, Made in Nusantara brings local perspectives to the history and analysis of popular music and critically considers conceptualisations developed in the West, rendering it an intriguing read for students and scholars of popular and global music.

PART I

Issues in Nusantara Popular Music

Part I introduces the reader to broader issues that inform and contextualise the study of popular music in maritime Southeast Asia. As central to the articulation of modernity in the region, the resonances of the colonial era and the development of nationalism feature prominently. Thus, despite the agencies that are present in unique Nusantara expressions of popular music, the historical context of European colonialism in the region has left an indelible mark on how cultural and national identity is imagined, created, practiced, enforced, and even policed.

This section therefore provides a conceptual “compass” on how to navigate the complexities of Nusantara popular music studies in both its historical and its contemporary contexts. A myriad of musical developments from the Malay Peninsula, Indonesia, and the Philippines are explored in this section, while also highlighting social and national contexts in which such music is produced and consumed as popular culture.

The first chapter of this section, written by this volume’s co-editor, sets the conceptual “stage” for popular music studies in the Nusantara. To study popular music in a region that is inherently interconnected, complex, and diverse in pre- and postcolonial cultural practices and belief systems requires an understanding of how notions of the traditional, as imagined by formal state and ethnic structures, are complicated by the practices of popular culture. Through a broad yet incisive overview of specific Nusantara genres that oscillate between traditional and popular aesthetic approaches, Santaella offers a continuum of analysis for music that indigenises the popular and music that popularises the indigenous. This chapter thus serves as a conceptual foundation to understanding the popular music cases presented throughout the volume as fluid negotiations of “what is indigenised and popularised in the … region as alternative modernity” and why such practices should be regarded as “inherently Nusantara”. Prudente’s chapter continues the discussion about the indigenisation of popular music by providing a brief history of popular music genres in the Philippines from the 1970s to the early 2000s, specifically focusing on otherwise global-Western popular music genres that asserted a “Pinoy” identity in both content and nomenclature (e.g. Pinoy Ska, Pinoy Jazz, and Pinoy Hip-Hop). This marks a consistent narrative in Nusantara popular music, inherently bound to “Western” music, yet also expressing postcolonial agency in the formation of national styles. The following chapter remains in the Philippines but offers an important critique on how certain national genres of popular music in the region are mythified to reinforce a national narrative. Cayabyab takes issue with the mythical national status of Original Pinoy Music (OPM), popularised in the 1970s, that occupies a position of national popular music par excellence. The case of OPM provides the author a means to dissect the concept of popular music myth-making, while also de-mythifying its status through a detailed analysis of Filipino popular culture. Lastly, Shahanum’s chapter offers a rare insight into mainstream popular music and its role in the Malaysian education system. She highlights the pervasive role of global popular culture in influencing the musical tastes of Malaysians, which in turn results in a wealth of popular music content being learnt in educational institutions and music schools. This snapshot of a popular music milieu in the Nusantara reveals larger contexts of mass consumption of both global and local popular music in the region.

1

Revisiting the “Traditional” and the “Popular” in Maritime Southeast Asia

Towards a Nusantara Popular Praxis

Mayco A. Santaella

This introductory chapter investigates regional and national performing arts genres as the popularisation of indigenous and indigenisation of popular forms (Sutton 2002) that are both product and producers of alternative modernities (Gaonkar 2001) in maritime Southeast Asia. While local popular performance genres developed both before and after national independence, national popular genres were largely a post-independence experience under new national industries that helped define the character of national boundaries. Revisiting western conceptualisations of “popular music” as a field and its global applications, the chapter considers alternative experiences of popular performance genres including the analysis of “popular traditions” supported by regional industries, the prominent role of dance and movement, as well as Southeast Asian aesthetics that shape the production of such genres. The examination also considers cross-border influences and 21st-century developments. Following a decentralisation process and within a post-national performing arts era in maritime Southeast Asia (Santaella 2014), the analysis examines the popular as a process and an experience that negotiates the “traditional” and global genres producing new forms that continue to carry aesthetics, sensibilities, and affect features hereby conceived as inherently Nusantara (see Trimillos 2016).

The field of popular music has been defined and redefined as both the discourse and new genres have developed in Europe and the United States. Williams (1976) highlighted the “people-oriented” nature of the term and its Latin roots. Adorno (2001) posited that the study of popular music, in contrast to serious music, is a reflection of communal experiences and that the inclusion of popular music to the curricula of higher education institutions is analogous to the development of ethnomusicological studies. Simon Frith analysed popular music aesthetics produced by the industry, which discusses “not what… popular music reveal(s) about ‘the people’ but how… it construct(s) them” (Frith 2004, 36). The study of “world music” and “hybrid formations” as categorised in Rojek (2011) included non-western discussions of globalisation and localisation (Ho 2011) and deterritorialisation of place and identity (Connell and Gibson 2011). Such global trends that conceptualised popular music against serious music as well as emerging rhetorics that linked popularity to inferiority (Rojek 2011) highlight a western bias. Shuker acknowledged a geographical “Anglo-American” and “English language centric” nature of cultural and media studies (Shuker 2017, 3). Fabbri and Plastino’s “made in” series has paved the way for indigenous conceptualisations of national genres and experiences (Shin and Lee 2017) as well as negotiations with western forms focusing on local aesthetics (Mitsui 2014) in East Asia. Considering these pivotal developments and with a focus on maritime Southeast Asia, this chapter presents analytical strategies towards the “popular” through a historical overview, alternative conceptualisations, and finally the rationales for a Nusantara popular praxis.

Popular Music in Maritime Southeast Asia

The development of popular music in maritime Southeast Asia is characterised by a historical experience defined by shared musical periods in the region. Pre-existing and newly created genres developed synchronically following common external influences of colonialism, regional exchanges, and the advent of global genres. These shared experiences resulted in a diachronic emergence of collective popular music eras and in the modification of existing forms and styles as well as the creation of new ones. The diachronic development of genres considers social forms during seven identified time periods: colonial era (19th century and early 20th century), musical changes in theatrical productions (early 20th century), the evolution of jazz (first half of the 20th century), the development of film music genres (1950s–1960s), the importation of global popular genres (1950s–1980s), the development of national popular genres (1970s–1990s), and the spread of post-colonial world beat (1990s–2000s). These seven eras were not isolated, but rather served as fields of continuity from which musical seeds planted in every era have evolved into new styles and new genres until the present day.

The early presence of the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and British in maritime Southeast Asia was driven by an economic impetus to control the spice trade in Eastern Indonesia and the trade in the straits of Melaka, and to eventually control their colonies. The presence of Europeans established several musical legacies such as church music in Eastern Indonesia, with early 16th-century traditions by the Portuguese and Spanish including Ambrosian and Gregorian music traditions (Sylado 1998), and in the Philippines under the Spanish, with a strong centre in Bohol in the Visayas having Baclayon as the cabezera and strong centre of musical ontogenies (Iñigo-Chua 2010). Military music left numerous legacies including marching bands (orkes barisan, mosiko) and their indigenous versions (musik bambu, mosikong frumfrong), and influenced the development of new repertoire and traditions such as the Filipino kumintang (war song) and the Minahasan maengket (folk dance). Classical music was another legacy of the Europeans with new vocal genres conceived during the 19th century and early 20th century such as the kundiman (love song) in the Philippines and seriosa (art songs) in Indonesia, both of which developed sentiments of resistance against the Spanish and the Dutch respectively.

New music genres with Portuguese and Spanish influence included string instruments. The term keroncong alluded to the lute in the 19th century (Yampolsky 2013) linked to the Portuguese cavaquinho, and presently it commonly makes reference to the ensemble (guitar, cello, cak, cuk, and melodic instruments such as flute, violin, and voice), the performance, and the repertoire of this genre. The music was originally accompanied by pantun (extemporaneous verses in quadratic form) although it eventually developed into song form with different styles. A historical centre lies in Tugu, a village close to the port and north of Batavia (Jakarta) populated by mardijkers (freed slaves) where a Creole version of Portuguese was spoken. As social music, keroncong was popular in many urban centres, sung in the Malay language, and enjoyed by many including the Chinese Peranakan (of mixed-race heritage in local communities). Keroncong was also prominent in Melaka, a historical centre of trade in Malaya with both a Portuguese settlement and a Peranakan community (see Tan 2019).

The ronggeng was also a popular genre of social music and dance from the straits of Melaka. The instrumentation includes two frame drums (rebana) that provide the characteristic rhythm for each dance, a violin that provides melody in addition to the vocal melodic line used for the extemporaneous exchange of pantun verses by the participants, and a gong that provides punctuation. The generic dance repertoire begins with a buka panggung, followed by the lagu mak inang, the senandung/gunung sayang, and the lagu dua. Dance genres that developed from this repertoire include the graceful inang, the elegant asli, and the fast-paced joget. Joget is performed in 6/8 meter and is influenced by the Portuguese branyo which is still performed nowadays by the Portuguese community in Melaka (see Sarkissian 2000). The term “joget”, which also means “to dance”, is a floating term commonly used across the archipelago and often maintains celebratory and flirtatious connotations present in ronggeng and earlier forms of keroncong through the exchange of pantun verses.

In the Philippines, the rondalla is a popular ensemble of plucked strings that include the banduria, laud, octavina, guitar, and bajo de uñas (bass). With Spanish roots, the rondalla evolved with new instruments, repertoire, and performance contexts. The ensemble is associated historically with love songs and the harana (serenade). The rondalla developed to include folk songs, dance, popular songs, new compositions, and existing classical repertoire, making the ensemble a versatile and all-embracing symbol of the Philippines. The repertoire of dances from the Spanish colonial era includes the habanera, jota, pandanggo, polka, and cariñosa, among others. Similar to keroncong in Indonesia, the ensemble does not have a specific ethnic identity, but rather a national one (with colonial roots) that incorporates songs from the existing repertoire and melodies from a number of different genres.

Social music and dance genres such as ronggeng and keroncong were not only performed during wedding ceremonies and other communal events, but were also incorporated into bangsawan, a theatrical performance that developed in Penang and the Straits of Melaka. Bangsawan (Malay for “nobleman”) stories centred on a royal figure from Malay, Chinese, Indian, Javanese, Arabic, and western stories. Scene changes included “extra turns” where numerous music genres (generally with an accompanying dance) were performed including the ronggeng repertoire as well as localised global genres such as rumba, waltz, foxtrot, and tango, among others (see Tan 1993). A similar theatre form and structure developed in Surabaya (East Java) known as komedie stamboel (Istanbul comedy) influenced by wayang parsi Indian theatre troupes (see Cohen 2006). The theatre form also included performances between acts that influenced radio pro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Popular Music as a Means of Conceptualising the Nusantara
• Part I: Issues in Nusantara Popular Music
• Part II: History
• Part III: Artists and Genres
• Part IV: National vs. Local Industries
• CODA: Global Movements, Local Sounds: Nusantara Music and Artists Overseas
• Afterword: Bercerita (Sharing Stories) with M. Nasir, Joey Ayala, Dwiki Dharmawan, and Pra Budi Dharma on Nusantara Popular Music
• Notes on Contributors
• Selected Bibliography
• Index