Research Guides: International Music Resources by Country: Indonesia

Map of Indonesia

Citation (3)

Books

Dangdut Stories by Andrew N. Weintraub A keen critic of culture in modern Indonesia, Andrew N. Weintraub shows how a genre of Indonesian music called dangdut evolved from a denigrated form of urban popular music to a prominent role in Indonesian cultural politics and the commercial music industry. Dangdut--named onomatopoetically for the music's characteristic drum sounds "dang" and "dut"--is Indonesia's most popular music, heard in streets and homes, public parks and narrow alleyways, stores and restaurants, and all forms of public transportation. Despite dangdut's tremendous popularity in Indonesia and other parts of Asia, it has seldom received the serious critical attention it deserves. Dangdut Stories is a social and musical history of dangdut within a range of broader narratives about class, gender, ethnicity, and nation in post-independence Indonesia (1945-present). Quoted material from interviews, detailed analysis of music and song texts, and ethnography of performance illuminate the stylistic nature of the music and its centrality in public debates about Islam, social class relations, and the role of women in postcolonial Indonesia. Dangdut Stories is the first musicological study to examine the stylistic development of dangdut music itself, using vocal style, melody, rhythm, form, and song texts to articulate symbolic struggles over meaning. Throughout the book the voices and experiences of musicians take center stage in shaping the book's narrative. Dangdut was first developed during the early 1970s, and an historical treatment of the genre's musical style, performance practice, and social meanings is long overdue.
Call Number: ML3502.I5 W45 2010
Divine Inspirations by David Harnish (Editor); Anne Rasmussen (Editor) 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.
Call Number: ML345.I5 D58 2011
Gamelan Girls by Sonja Lynn Downing In recent years, girls' and mixed-gender ensembles have challenged the tradition of male-dominated gamelan performance. The change heralds a fundamental shift in how Balinese think about gender roles and the gender behavior taught in children's music education. It also makes visible a national reorganization of the arts taking place within debates over issues like women's rights and cultural preservation. Sonja Lynn Downing draws on over a decade of immersive ethnographic work to analyze the ways Balinese musical practices have influenced the processes behind these dramatic changes. As Downing shows, girls and young women assert their agency within the gamelan learning process to challenge entrenched notions of performance and gender. One dramatic result is the creation of new combinations of femininity, musicality, and Balinese identity that resist messages about gendered behavior from the Indonesian nation-state and beyond. Such experimentation expands the accepted gender aesthetics of gamelan performance but also sparks new understanding of the role children can and do play in ongoing debates about identity and power.
Call Number: ML3917.I5 D68 2019
Gongs and Pop Songs by Jennifer A. Fraser Scholarship on the musical traditions of Indonesia has long focused on practices from Java and Bali, including famed gamelan traditions, at the expense of the wide diversity of other musical forms within the archipelago. Jennifer A. Fraser counters this tendency by exploring a little-known gong tradition from Sumatra called talempong, long associated with people who identify themselves as Minangkabau. Grounded in rich ethnographic data and supplemented with online audiovisual materials, Gongs and Pop Songs is the first study to chronicle the history and variety of talempong styles. It reveals the continued vitality of older modes in rural communities in the twenty-first century, while tracing the emergence of newer ones with radically different aesthetic frames and values. Each talempong style discussed incorporates into its repertoire Minangkabau pop or indigenous songs, both of which have strong associations with the place and people. These contemporary developments in talempong have taken place against a shifting political, social, and economic backdrop: the institutionalization of indigenous arts, a failed regional rebellion, and the pressures of a free-market economy. Fraser adopts a cognitive approach to ethnicity, asking how people understand themselves as Minangkabau through talempong and how different styles of the genre help create and articulate ethnic sentiments--that is, how they help people sound Minangkabau.
Call Number: ML3758.I537 S83 2015
Unplayed Melodies: Javanese Gamelan by Marc Perlman The gamelan music of Central Java is one of the world's great orchestral traditions. Its rich sonic texture is not based on Western-style harmony or counterpoint, but revolves around a single melody. The nature of that melody, however, is puzzling. In this book, Marc Perlman uses this puzzle as a key to both the art of the gamelan and the nature of musical knowledge in general. Some Javanese musicians have suggested that the gamelan's central melody is inaudible, an implicit or "inner" melody. Yet even musicians who agree on its existence may disagree about its shape. Drawing on the insights of Java's most respected musicians, Perlman shows how irregularities in the relationships between the melodic parts have suggested the existence of "unplayed melodies." To clarify the differences between these implicit-melody concepts, Unplayed Melodies tells the stories behind their formulation, identifying each as the creative contribution of an individual musician in a postcolonial context (sometimes in response to Western ethnomusicological theories). But these stories also contain evidence of the general cognitive processes through which musicians find new ways to conceptualize their music. Perlman's inquiry into these processes illuminates not only the gamelan's polyphonic art, but also the very sources of creative thinking about music.
Call Number: ML345.J3 P46 2004

Garland Encyclopedia of World Music-Indonesia

Indonesia
Read more about Indonesian music!

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Facts in Brief

Capital: Jakarta

Official Language: Bahasa Indonesia

Area: 1,916,907 sq km

Current Population: 270,203,917

Climate: The climate is tropical, with an annual average temperature of 26°C (79°F) and heavy rainfall during most seasons.

Main Religions: Islam, Christianity

Citation (2)

Gamelan Music in Indonesia

Introduction

Music is exclusively an ensemble tradition, reflecting the communally-organized society. Ensembles, collectively referred to as gamelan (or the Balinese term, gambelan), have historically served specific functions in religious ceremonies and (prior to their demise) in Balinese courts. A standard body of repertory exists in myriad versions and variants, owing to oral transmission and diverse regional styles and practices. Gamelan is mostly performed by men and boys; however, 17th-century manuscripts depict female court musicians, a practice that probably ended with the destruction of the courts in the Dutch conquest. Most villages possess communally-organized gamelan groups that perform for village ceremonial functions, some reaching professional status or employing professional musicians from elsewhere to direct and teach the groups.

Performance Context

The Pancayadnya (five ceremonial categories), which comprise all Balinese religious ceremonies, honour the living (manusayadnya, rites of passage including weddings and tooth filings), the dead (pitrayadnya, e.g. cremations), the gods (dewayadnya, e.g. temple ceremonies), sages (resiyadnya) and demons (bhutayadnya). Music plays a powerful role of accompanying ceremonies: gamelan ensembles, genres, and repertories are associated with each category and with functions within each category, depending on, for example, the ensemble’s age, tuning system, timbre, and dynamic range...in general, the older the genre, the more sacred and unchangeable it is.

Notation

Most Balinese music is transmitted orally. Notation is rarely used in the transmission process and never in performance. However, versions of the notational system known as grantangan are used for preserving the skeletal pitches of long compositions. Syllables comprising the pitch notation systems are also used as vocalized mnemonics in teaching. There are several such systems. The oldest, used in gamelan gambang and other seven-tone sacred ensembles, is derived from sacred vocal music notation in which the vowels of poetry are translated into musical pitches.

Instruments

Gamelan are comprised of gongs, metallophones, xylophones, gong-chimes, drums, cymbals, flutes, and spiked fiddles in various combinations. Materials of construction include bronze, iron, wood, and bamboo. Gongs range in size from small to very large. Most are hung vertically and struck with a padded mallet and provide a framework that marks the form. Metallophones are in pairs and consist of two types: with keys suspended over bamboo resonators (e.g. gender), and with keys resting on trough resonators (e.g. gangsa jongkok). Various sizes of two-headed drums (kendang) are played with and without mallets.

Citation (4)

Sjukur, Slamet Abdul

Slamet Abdul Sjukar

Indonesian composer . After piano lessons from the age of nine, he studied at the Indonesian Music Academy in Yogyakarta (1952–6). In 1957, already well-known as a composer, Sjukur co-founded an important musical institute in Surabaya. Between 1962 and 1967 he studied analysis with Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire and composition with Dutilleux at the Ecole Normale de Musique on a French government scholarship. In Paris he also worked with the Groupe de Recherches Musicales under the leadership of Schaeffer. On his return to Indonesia in 1976, Sjukur taught composition at the Jakarta Arts Institute until 1987, familiarising the younger generation of Indonesian composers with European contemporary music. In the 1970s he was seen as an eccentric personality and was associated by the general public with the strangeness of contemporary music. Sjukur has often used mathematical themes as the basis for his compositions, for example OM for string ensemble, commissioned for the 1995 Contemporary Music and Dance Festival. In the late 1990s he became increasingly interested in using the aesthetic concepts of traditional Indonesian music, such as gamelan, in his compositions.

Citation: Raden, F. Sjukur, Slamet Abdul. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 25 Oct. 2021, from https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000049059.

International Music Resources by Country: Indonesia