Countering MTV Influence in Indonesia and Malaysia 9789814345248

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COUNTERING MTV INFLUENCE IN INDONESIA AND MALAYSIA

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued more than 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.

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COUNTERING   MTV INFLUENCE IN INDONESIA AND MALAYSIA By Kalinga Seneviratne

I5EA5 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Singapore

First published in Singapore in 2012 by ISEAS Publishing Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Pasir Panjang Singapore 119614 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. © 2012 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the author and his interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policies of ISEAS or its supporters. ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Seneviratne, Kalinga. Countering MTV influence in Indonesia and Malaysia. 1. Popular music—Indonesia. 2. Popular music—Malaysia. 3. Music television—Indonesia. 4. Music television—Malaysia. 5. Popular culture—Religious aspects—Islam—Indonesia. 6. Popular culture—Religious aspects—Islam—Malaysia. I. Title. II. Title: Countering Music Television influence in Indonesia and Malaysia M1825 I5S57 2012 ISBN 978-981-4345-23-1 (soft cover) ISBN 978-981-4345-24-8 (E-book PDF) Typeset by Superskill Graphics Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by Chung Printing Pte Ltd

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Contents Preface

vii

1.

Introduction

1

2.

Malay Cultural Landscape and Identity: Malaysia and Indonesia

44

3.

Music, Islam, and Modern Cultural Identities

93

4.

Pop Music, Cultural Imperialism, and Localization

134

5.

Case Studies

190

6.

Countering Cultural Imperialism: Theoretical Analysis

227

References

249

Index

265

About the Author

278

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Preface Two theoretical perspectives related to international communication (i.e., cultural imperialism and cultural identity) reflect the battle between the forces of globalization and local cultural identity taking place all over the world. In the last decade, Indonesia and Malaysia, two predominantly Islamic countries in Southeast Asia, have opened their doors to forces of cultural flows and globalization, especially to the intermediary global media. People in both societies are seeking to come to terms with new cultural identities embracing modern media technologies while at the same time wanting to preserve their liberal Islamic culture. This book sets out to investigate and discuss the multilayered “postmodern” cultural identities that are being negotiated, particularly as these new identities relate to adaptation of the use of new media technologies and media forms to the needs of local culture and religion. The study did not try to look at how Western culture is rejected or resisted by Indonesian and Malaysian youth. Rather it looked at how certain aspects of the Music Television (MTV) formula — mainly the technical aspects of presentation and formatting — could be appropriated and refashioned so that the cultural output of the local product does not reflect a Western cultural expression but a Malaysian or Indonesian cultural expression rebranded to look contemporary/modern, without losing the local

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cultural flavour. Thus, the study examines how aspects of MTV create new cultural identities rooted in the traditional culture but refashioned and reinterpreted for local relevance and consumption, so that youth would see it as an expression of their “modern” identity. Choice of Topic As a teenager growing up in Sri Lanka in the 1970s I was widely exposed to a genre of music called baila.1 Drawing on Sri Lankan drumming, Portuguese folk music rhythms, and Sinhalese lyrics, this music was very popular, especially with the urban youth of the time. However, the lovers of Sinhalese traditional and classical music saw the baila as thupai (corrupted) music, as belonging neither to the Eastern nor to the Western musical traditions. Rather, it was seen as having a corrupting influence on the country’s youth. As a result, those of middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds were discouraged from developing a taste for this genre. It was considered much more desirable to develop a taste for the pop music of the West, the Beatles or rock and roll, for example, and the Jamaican reggae, which was popular with Western youth at the time. While working in Singapore some thirty years later, that is, for a five-year period between 1997 and 2002 teaching mass communications to teenage students at a local polytechnic, I became interested in the type of music they were consuming as teenagers of this era. Although on the surface Singapore may seem a very westernized modern city, Singaporean youth seemed not to have been completely won over by Western pop culture, which is

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widely in evidence in the island state today. While they had developed a taste for Western pop music, including R & B and hip hop, many of the Chinese youth were fans of the Cantopop2 stars from Hong Kong. Young Indians were bhangra3 enthusiasts, bhangra being a lively form of song and dance that originated in the Punjab region of India. The Malays were listening to dangdut, a form of Indonesian pop music that has its roots in the folk music of Indonesia, particularly from Java and Riau provinces, but it has since been heavily influenced by Indian Bollywood film music and Arabic drum/dance rhythms. Looking deeper into the issue of why these young people were eager consumers of their own pop music while at the same time not rejecting the Western music available to them, I began to find some interesting cultural and social forces at play. A major player in this was MTV, which, rather than imposing a Western musical culture on the local youth, was stimulating their interest in their own musical genres and modern dance music by using MTV’s production formulas and promotional techniques. During my frequent visits to Indonesia and Malaysia, I noted that on most of the local television channels, especially in Indonesia, dangdut shows were major attractions. In addition, in most Indonesian cities I visited, dangdut discotheques were very common and extremely popular. Because this particular form of music is very similar to the Sri Lankan baila, I developed an interest in ascertaining how dangdut has become so popular in these predominantly Islamic societies. In 1995 I wrote a story for Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, looking at dangdut’s potential to become the

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Preface

MUSIC-MALAYSIA: Dancing to the Lambada of the East By Kalinga Seneviratne KUALA LUMPUR: Her tunes are heard everywhere, from the farthest kampong or villages to fast-encroaching towns to modern shopping malls in the rapidly growing Malaysian capital. In the city streets, the music of a 22-year-old singer called Norazlina Amir Sharifudin blares out of mini-buses, giving commuters some respite from traffic jams. Popularly known as “Amelina”, Sharifudin is taking Malaysia by storm with her brand of the infectious Malay pop music known as “dangdut”. In the process, she is transforming “dangdut” into what some say could be an international dance music craze. Her latest album, “Dang Dang Dut”, released by Warner Music Malaysia in October, has already sold more than 220,000 copies. “Dangdut is a big thing here now,” said Sharon Menezes, production coordinator of Warner Music Malaysia. “We have received comments from several respected entertainment journalists indicating that this music has all the capabilities of becoming the lambada of the East”. Dangdut puts a novel twist on Indian film music, and has a touch of American swingbeat, Sudanese melodic forms combined with Malay rhythm, says Kean Wong, a magazine editor who is writing a masteral thesis on world music. Believing in the appeal of dangdut, Amelina’s record firm has invested in the largest stable of dangdut artistes in Malaysia. Warner Music Malaysia plans to market the music beyond Malaysia’s shores. Amelina’s latest album is already

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in the market in neighbouring Singapore, and the company hopes to release it soon in Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan. Dangdut has been popular in Indonesia for sometime, with singers like Rhoma Irama enjoying “absolutely massive popularity” there, adds Wong, editor of “Men’s Review”, a popular monthly for Malaysia’s urban middle class. “In Malaysia, the time has certainly come [for dangdut] to take off,” Wong says, adding that Amelina may in fact also put the music on the world map. Wong describes dangdut as a “genre of music that incorporates centuries-old polyrythms and cross cultural styles, stretching several Asian latitudes”. Dangdut songs have a strong Indian [Hindustani] film music influence. The video clip produced by Warner Music for Amelina’s latest hit looks like a reproduction of an Indian film music clip: the sequences, dance styles and colourful dresses could come from a production from Bombay’s “Bollywood”. The lyrics, of course, are in Malay. Amir Muhammad, a columnist for the “New Strait Times” newspaper, agrees that dangdut has a strong Indian flavour. But he added that it is also very much Malay music, popular among the working classes here. “Its origin is quite Hindustani, but the music has been adopted into Malay culture,” Muhammad said. “By analogy, it’s like the blues in the U.S. a few decades ago. It talks about what pop music doesn’t talk about.” “Its a form of underground music … the tone [of the lyrics] is pessimistic,” he said, adding that “dangdut [dances] could get rowdy. Crowds can get over-enthusiastic.” “It is very much the dance music of South-east Asia,” says Wong, “because it draws so much from traditional rhythms, which themselves have derived from traditional popular dance music and has been updated with the use

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of technology. Which is why it translates so well to urban audiences”. Though dangdut has much more local flavour than Western pop music, it still has an image problem in Malaysia. “Part of it is to do with a fair bit of ignorance by the urban middle-class as to what dangdut is,” Wong said. Due to its kampong origins, it is closely identified with the working class and is seen as unsophisticated music, reflecting “a kind of cultural snobbishness” by urban middle classes. Still, Muhammad believes dangdut music is creeping into the urban middle classes “because the performers are getting younger and prettier”. It is also breaking into the mainstream as top promoters like Warner Music sign on dangdut singers. “Those who buy it and listen to it need not necessarily go into the dance clubs,” he says. “But they may become fans”. The music’s popularity among urban folk has led to a string of exclusively dangdut pubs sprouting here — though some deride them as nothing more than glorified brothels. The dimly-lit night spots usually have live music on weekends and on some weeknights. What bothers dangdut fans, who want the music to have a clean image, is the type of clients these clubs appeal to. Males enter the clubs for free, but their female companions are charged an entry fee. The reason? The clubs employ young female hostesses to keep male patrons company, for anything over 35 ringgit (15 U.S. dollars) an hour. They dance, chat and drink with male clients until closing time, after which they are free to “provide any other services”. As a record company executive put it: “The cosmopolitan city person is not prepared to admit that he or she likes

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dangdut, though you’d find the very same people in dangdut bars. They can’t resist the dangdut vibe, but would rather not talk about it, choosing to be associated with Western music instead!” Amelina herself worries about dangdut’s image. “I hope the imagery associated with dangdut does not degrade to the level of sleaze,” she told “Men’s Review” in a recent interview. It is the artists’ responsibility “to see that the music maintains respectable connotations, not otherwise,” she added. But Wong is confident that dangdut will weather this image problem, being “very populist” music in Malaysia: “The interesting thing now for dangdut is really to see whether it will translate into the broader non-Malay Malaysian community.” “At this stage, so much pop culture in Malaysia is polarised depending on ethnic background. Thus by default, you have Western pop culture being sort of common language,” he pointed out. If dangdut replaces Western pop as the dance music of Malaysia’s urban middle class, that could yet be the first step in making this music the “lambada of the East”. Source: IPS Arts and Culture Bulletin, January 1997

“Lambada of the East” (see boxed story). I researched the rising popularity of the genre in Malaysia after coming across CDs of this form of music in record bars in Kuala Lumpur and being attracted to its rhythms. During the writing of the story I interviewed a number of music critics and record company people as well as several youthful enthusiasts.

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In the following years I listened to a lot of dangdut music on radio, via CD purchases, and in discotheques in Indonesia and Singapore. I also watched dangdut shows on Malaysian and Indonesian television, which could be picked up in Singapore. In 1998 I came across another phenomenon in Malay music, the rise of Raihan, a Malaysian music group which attained pop-star status singing Islamic nasyid religious poetry accompanied by the traditional handheld Malay drum. My introduction to Raihan was at the Hari Raya (end of the Ramadan fast) concert held at the Singapore Indoor Stadium in 1998, when a capacity crowd (of about 5,000), which mainly included families, attended a live performance by Raihan. Then I saw their song clips broadcast on MTV. A few months later I interviewed the group in Kuala Lumpur and subsequently wrote a freelance feature story for IPS news agency under the heading “Islam Goes Pop” (see boxed story). These observations encouraged me to undertake this study and to explore the cultural and social factors contributing to the rising popularity of these genres of music in the region. This was also a time when MTV began expanding in the region. The musical tastes of some youth, especially in Singapore, seem to be influenced by its products, which were mainly “Western” musical genres. Being someone who was greatly influenced by the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO)4 debates of the 1970s and 1980s, and the accompanying arguments surrounding the impact of cultural imperialism, I felt that the popularity of nasyid and dangdut music in the region represented a challenge to that theory.

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Islam Goes Pop By Kalinga Seneviratne KUALA LUMPUR: Move over those Backstreet Boys and Hanson. A new Islamic musical revolution is sweeping Malaysia and is threatening to spread to the rest of Asia. It’s led by a clean-cut singing group of young men called “Raihan”, which in Arabic means “sweet scent to heaven.” The five members of Raihan are singing their way into the hearts of fans through traditional Islamic religious hymns called “nasyids”. Raihan gives these traditional tunes a modern touch, courtesy of percussion instruments. The result? Music that is at once hip and uplifting. “When people hear nasyids, they associate it with Arabic religious musical culture,” Raihan frontman Zarie Ahmad told IPS. “But we didn’t like it to be traditional Arab tunes. It must be contemporary.” “Sometimes we bring ballad songs, sentimental songs, but the music is very poetic,” he added. “We put the love of God, advice of the good deeds. That’s what is called ‘contemporary nasyids’.” Whatever it is, peple are listening and snapping up Raihan’s works. The group’s debut album, “Puji-Pujian”, was released only last year, but already has broke records in Malaysia with 650,000 copies sold so far. The previous record holder sold 350,000 copies. “Puji-Pujian” has outsold not only the songs of other Malaysian pop stars but also Western musical stars. The group’s second album, released three months ago, has sold 150,000 copies and is still going strong. Raihan’s music videos also get regular play on MTV Asia and the group’s

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recording company, Warner Music Malaysia, is betting it will soon become a byword in Asia as it is now in Malaysia. Chandra Muzaffar, director of the Institute for Islamic Understanding and president of the International Movement for a Just World, says Raihan’s success in this country is due in no small measure to a desire by many middleclass Malaysians to identify with what they see as another expression of Islam. “It is a manifestation of a search for an Islamic identity,” argues Muzaffar. “One could argue that it is an attempt to move away from what you see as Western identity — similar to Muslim women giving up Western clothes for Islamic dress.” But social and cultural critic Amir Muhammad thinks Raihan’s fresh take on traditional music should be credited for the group’s rapid rise to fame. “People were in the mood for something soothing and new,” he observes. “Rural Malays, too, were relieved to find music that is slickly produced and local without [being] too tacky.” At the same time, he points to Raihan’s marketing strategy that is aimed at attracting non-Muslims as well. Amir notes that Raihan never puts down other “secular” groups as being “un-Islamic.” He adds that the lyrics of Raihan’s songs emphasise spirituality and compassion, rather than dogma and repression. Of course, it helps that the “their voices and percussion arrangements aren’t bad at all”. “Most of Raihan’s songs have a sing-along quality to them — the type of tune that you hum when you’re walking,” confirms Nurazlaya Bte Alias, an 18-year-old university student. Even children are singing along. Says journalist and consumer activist Ismail Hashim: “Previously, children

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would not memorise [nasyid] songs. They do now. My kids demand it to be played at home and in the car, and they sing along with it.” Says Abu Bakar, Raihan’s background vocalist: “Entertainment and music are the closest thing to today’s youngsters. If we are going to influence them, it will have to be through music.” As a result, the group’s message is more accepted by a sector of society that would otherwise dismiss it as preachy or old-fashioned. “The difference between us and other pop singers is that we sing only about the good things,” says Abu. “We don’t sing about love between boy and girl, but true love to God, His kingdom.” Still, Raihan has had run-ins with some in the religious community. Manager Farahin Abdul Fattah says that when Raihan signed the promotion deal with Warner, some members of the Muslim community said the group had sold its soul. “I said, what we are talking about here is God,” relates Farahin. “What we want is to get the message across to the society as efficiently as possible. Warner Music has a strong marketing arm that we don’t have.” “If you don’t cooperate with non-Muslims because you want to promote Muslim songs, I think it’s not right,” adds Farahin, who has been in the music business since he was 10. “Then you cannot develop a healthy multi-cultural society. It defeats the purpose of being a good Muslim.” The decision to go ahead has paid off, not only in monetary terms. Leader Zarie recalls an incident when an ethnic Chinese toddler recognised him during a concert in a downtown mall, calling him “awa” (uncle). The child’s mother approached Zarie and asked if they were the singers she had seen on TV. When he said yes,

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the woman said, “you know, my kids love your songs” and prompted her son to sing one of them. The boy promptly did so. Says Zarie: “We were very touched [that we] reached such non-Muslims.” That Raihan sings mostly in Bahasa Malaysia should not be too much of an obstacle to its growing popularity abroad — at least, language did not stop it from gaining a fan in the British royal family. Prince Charles was in the audience when Raihan sang at a cultural festival at Edinburgh last year, and he was reportedly so impressed that he sent the group a letter of appreciation bearing his signature. Former British pop star Cat Stevens was also so bowled over by Raihan’s performance that he joined it in a cut in the “Syukur” album. Stevens, better known these days as Yusuf Islam, Muslim preacher, recorded “God is the Light” in English with Raihan at a London studio. Farahin says while the group’s critics may frown on its use of Western methods in promoting and popularising its music, Raihan is the one doing much of the “influencing”. Says Farahin: “Western pop music culture has a lot of negatives attached to it, such as sex and drugs. We are introducing the positives to it such as love of God, ideas of sharing, compassion, respecting elders and the family.” Source: IPS, 20 April 1998

I noted that hardly any studies had been undertaken on how localized pop music has prospered in these two Islamic societies, giving their youth a new modernist identity. I pondered the role that MTV has played in facilitating this, especially taking into account that MTV launched a

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specialized Indonesian channel in May 2002. I believe that this is an appropriate time to undertake a study of these phenomena, in the context of the current international political climate, which tends to see Islamic societies as both conservative and traditional. Objective of the Study Ann Kaplan (1988, p. 33) claims that MTV is often seen as the flag bearer of postmodernist cultural expression. By abandoning the traditional narrative devices of most popular cultures and on occasion violating cause-effect, time-space, and continuity relationships, MTV, according to Kaplan, has become a continuous advertisement selling its sponsors’ goods, the rock stars’ records, and MTV itself. On the psychological level, it sells an image, the “look” and the style (1988, p. 143). The objective of this study was to examine how this description of MTV fits into the cultural and social environment of a traditional5 but liberal Islamic society and in what ways it is being absorbed by this society so that its youth in particular are able to identify with its cultural contents. In this context, the rapid expansion of MTV in the region and the impact it has had on the popularity of the local dangdut and nasyid music genres in both countries was examined. Rather than weaning the youth away from their own music towards Western genres, it has led to a renaissance in the pop music industry by giving it a local flavour. As a result, it may be that MTV has provided the youth of Indonesia and Malaysia with a new cultural identity that has a postmodernist flavour. So are these countries showing

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the way in how to turn the cultural imperialism theory on its head by absorbing this globalizing media onslaught from the West? Are they in the process of Asianizing or even Islamizing their formulas and icons, promoting localized cultural products to reassert their postcolonial cultural identities? West Indian-born British cultural theorist Stuart Hall (Hall and du Paul 1996) argues that we need to position the debate about cultural identity in relation to all those historically specified developments and practices which have disturbed the relatively “settled” character of many populations and societies, above all as a result of the process of globalization. Hall suggests that: Though they seem to invoke an origin in a historic past with which they continue to correspond, actually identities are about the questions of using the resources of history, language and culture in the process of becoming rather than being: not “who we are” or “where we come from” so much as what we might become, how we have been represented and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves. Identities are therefore constituted within, not outside representation. They relate to invention of tradition as much as to tradition itself. (Hall and du Paul 1996, p. 4)

This study looks at the ways in which such modern identities are constituted in the context of MTV’s influence on the local music and television industry, and by extension on the youth of Indonesia and Malaysia, by applying cultural imperialism, postmodernism, and cultural studies theories to

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the forming of cultural identities. I will attempt to establish whether or not, in these Asian Islamic environments, the postmodernist theory can effectively explain the changing cultural and social impacts of these influences. If not, is there another theoretical perspective from which to describe such cultural trends in Asian societies? The latter have not gone through the same modernizing period as Europe and North America, from where the postmodernist theory originated. Organization of the Book This book consists of six chapters. In the introduction I present the basis of the study, the research focus, and give the context of MTV, the music of Malaysia, the music of Indonesia, and Islamic music. It concludes with a brief introduction to the theoretical perspectives which underpinned the research project,6 including cultural imperialism, postmodernism and postcolonial theories, and those covering globalization and cultural identity. Chapter 2 covers the Malay cultural landscape and identity in Malaysia and Indonesia with particular reference to the role of politics, culture, and media in constructing this identity. This is followed by the chapter discussing music and Islam in the context of this study, with the latter part of the chapter focusing on the field research results from both Malaysia and Indonesia. Chapter 4 focusses on pop music and aspects of cultural imperialism and MTV’s influence in Malaysia and Indonesia. Results of field research related to this area are discussed in this chapter, while the next chapter focusses on three case studies: that of the nasyid musical

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group Raihan from Malaysia, dangdut star Inul Daratista from Indonesia, and Irama Malaysia pop star Siti Nurhaliza from Malaysia. The final chapter discusses the field research results in more detail in the context of the main theoretical perspectives adopted for the study. Notes 1.

2.

3.

Baila has its roots in Portuguese folk music. Portuguese colonizers arrived in Sri Lanka in the fifteenth century, bringing with them cantiga ballads, ukuleles and guitars, along with African slaves, who further diversified the musical roots of the island. These slaves were called kaffrinha, and their dance music was called baila. Baila, which originally consisted of vocals with a guitar and handclaps or otherwise improvised percussion, remains at the roots of modern Sri Lankan (pop) music. Nowadays it includes electric guitars, synthesizers, and other modern developments . Cantopop is a colloquial abbreviation for Cantonese pop music, a form of popular music that is a subgenre of Chinese popular music, or C-pop. Cantopop draws influence not only from other forms of Chinese music but also from a variety of international styles, including jazz, rock and roll, R & B, electronic music, Western pop music, and others. By definition, Cantopop songs are almost invariably performed in Cantonese. Although the genre boasts a multinational fanbase, Hong Kong is its most significant hub . Bhangra, which began as a part of harvest festival celebrations, eventually became a part of such diverse occasions as weddings and New Year celebrations. During the last thirty years, bhangra has enjoyed a surge in popularity worldwide,

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both in traditional form and as a fusion with genres such as hip hop, house, and reggae . 4. See Sean MacBride et al. Many Voices, One World. MacBride Report (Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 1980). 5. The term “traditional” is used here in the context of a society that follows traditional ritualistic aspects of the religion but not necessarily its conservative lifestyle in terms of relating to the wider society. 6. This research project was undertaken for a doctoral thesis in International Communications at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

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1 Introduction

This study involves three major elements — Music Television or MTV Networks, the music of Malaysia, and the music of Indonesia — and it is basically a study of how these three interact in a modern cultural setting. This chapter will thus introduce these three elements as well as discuss briefly the principal theoretical perspectives used in the study. The Development of MTV Networks Music Television (MTV) is not merely a music distributional television channel. It is also a lifestyle distributional television channel that exerts tremendous influence on youth around the world and in turn is influenced by youth audiences located within local cultures of scale. Established in 1981 by Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment Company, a joint venture of Warner Communications and American Express, MTV has attempted to expand the pop music mainstream in new markets around the world in tandem with the liberalization of TV markets and the emergence of pay-TV platforms. When the music industry was looking for a new promotional tool, MTV began broadcasting the “show reels” that music groups were producing to introduce their music to promoters. MTV,

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Countering MTV Influence in Indonesia and Malaysia

which started with an investment of US$20 million, operated as a twenty-four-hour cable TV music video channel. In 1986 U.S. media giant Viacom acquired the channel, which by then had fifty-five million subscribers. Viacom expanded the network by creating five global divisions: MTV Europe, MTV Brazil, MTV Japan, MTV Latino, MTV Mandarin, and MTV Asia (Denisoff 1988). MTV Networks’ diverse holdings include interests in television, digital media, publishing, home video, radio, recorded music, recreation, licensing, and merchandizing. With 150 channels worldwide, MTV Networks1 owns and operates not only Music Television, but also a number of other channels, including childrens’ television channel Nickelodeon and comedy channel COMEDY. Today MTV reaches some 510 million households in 160 countries in thirty-three languages.2 Eight out of ten MTV viewers live outside the United States. Tim Brooks (cited in Clark 2001), TV historian and co-author of The Complete Directory to Primetime Network and Cable Shows, writes of MTV: “They live in today. That means being eternally hip and contemporary.” American Studies lecturer Simon Philo (1999) notes that MTV can justifiably claim to be a truly global phenomenon because of the transnational appeal of its product — pop music — and the world’s “love affair” with Western pop music has made MTV’s success virtually inevitable. He argues that MTV is “unashamedly a capitalist enterprise” and there is no better judgment of that than how it is structured — a whole channel that programmes commercials between commercials. This is because MTV music videos are basically advertisements for the recording companies, which

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Introduction



produce them to promote their artistes and music. Though MTV works hard to make Western “pop music culture’s grip on the world’s youth even stronger”, its near global reach has not necessarily signaled the end for local, regional, or national differences. Many factors have contributed to the success of MTV and among them is demographics (Capell et al. 2002). Almost half of the earth’s inhabitants were between the ages of 10 and 34 in 2000, with this age group increasingly acquiring the financial means to buy music and other consumer items that the network advertises. Other factors include the universality of music, the exploding ownership of television sets and, in particular, access to pay-TV in developing countries, and MTV’s willingness to adopt local music to meet market demand. Bill Roedy claims (cited in Capell et al. 2002, p. 40) that, “We’ve had very little resistance once we explain that we’re not in the business of exporting American culture.” In the 1980s MTV’s most famous slogan was “one world, one image, one channel”, which raised much concern, especially in developing countries that their music would be drowned out by the MTV onslaught. But this did not really happen the way they feared and in the 1990s MTV modified this and adopted the slogan “think global, act local”. Initially, when MTV began to globalize, their executives believed that youth all over the world were clamouring for Anglo-American pop music and if MTV secured access it could garner a substantial local audience. But, once they gained market access, they soon realized that this would not be the case. The young people, wherever they were, would watch international performances for only so long before they wanted to see something of their own (New

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Countering MTV Influence in Indonesia and Malaysia

York Times News Service 2005). This was especially so in parts of Europe, such as in Germany and France, Turkey, India, and many other parts of Asia. Writing a few months after the launch of MTV’s Latin American network, Aaron Gallegos (1994) observed that though MTV promotes the slogan “think globally, act locally”, they were showing less concern for the second part of the phrase. He cited a National Public Radio report which claimed that three-quarters of the music in the Spanish language MTV Latino come from Anglo musicians and the network had decided not to include salsa, merengue, and cumbia rythms that are traditionally heard and produced in the region. However, in recent years, Latin American pop, especially salsa, has become very popular in Asia with salsa dance festivals established in Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, and Malaysia.3 MTV has been credited with having played a role in this, as MTV Asia consistently features Latin musicians such as Ricky Martin and Shakira. However, the fact that Asian pop with similar dance beats such as Indonesia’s dangdut and India’s bhangra have not been able to break cultural barriers in Asia, to have a panAsian appeal, and MTV Asia’s inability or unwillingness to take this music across its own national boundaries to other parts of Asia, while they gleefully promote Latin music across Asia, should again raise questions about whether MTV really understands what they mean by “act locally”. Argues Gallegos (1994): What’s called for isn’t necessarily the censorship of the cultural products the United States exports around the globe. Rather, what’s needed is unwavering scrutiny of

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that element of the mass media that attempts to shape consumer tastes in the United States and internationally — according to its own values, usually not for reasons of art but for profit, often to the detriment of local music and cultural traditions.

This scrutiny unfortunately is not happening in Asia at the moment. Addressing C21 World Marketing Conference in 2000, MTV Asia’s president Frank Brown said, “It’s very important that what we’re going to market in each country fits with the local culture” (cited in Santana 2003). This may be fairly true within national borders where MTV has established a local network. For example, as we will discuss in more detail later, MTV Indonesia could claim credit for mainstreaming dangdut in Indonesia by introducing MTV Salam Dangdut in their local network. As Santana (2003) observed, “Ironically, dangdut has long been unpopular in Indonesia’s music industry. It was only when MTV dared to air this programme that local audiences began to appreciate the music. Young people who had never been interested in music like dangdut before, suddenly began seeing it as ‘cool’ thanks to MTV’s generation Yfriendly approach.” At one stage, Warner Music Malaysia reckoned that dangdut could become the lambada of the east (Seneviratne 1997), but the question here is why couldn’t MTV Asia assist in it by taking dangdut outside Asia to other markets in the region? Santana (2003) argues that through the MTV Asia Awards, Asian artistes get an opportunity to perform in front of a global audience. For example, Indonesian pop

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group Padi received exposure on CNN when it was voted Indonesia’s favourite band at the 2003 MTV Asia Awards and Taiwanese singer Jay Chou was not only voted everybody’s favourite but grabbed the attention of the Irish boy band Blue. Having watched the first two MTV Asia Awards shows in 2002 and 2003, it was clear to me that Asian musicians were presented in the show as mere support acts to the main draw cards of the shows, musicians from the Anglo-American pop music industry such as Westlife, P.O.D., Pink, and American Latin singer Enrique Iglesias. The hosts of the first MTV Asia Awards show (in 2002) were American singer Mandy Moore and British pop star Ronan Keating. It was well into the last quarter of the show when the Asian artistes appeared to perform. One wondered whether the show was designed to promote Western pop stars to a pan-Asian audience rather than a celebration of Asian pop music talent. When this question was put to an MTV Asia executive in Singapore, his response was that if they gave the main acts to Asian stars they will not be able to attract a mass audience in Asia and outside to make the show economically viable.4 However, MTV has been most successful in Asia, which has the world’s largest youth population, with 66 per cent of the population under twenty-five years of age. MTV set up its Asian operations in Singapore in 1995 to serve this market. Since then they have split up the network’s Asian audiences into six twenty-four-hour MTV-operated services encompassing Southeast Asia, China, India, South Korea, and Indonesia. Each market has its unique preferences; there is a combined audience of over 300 million households. Many of these operations have been built on local rhythms (Hansen

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2001), with MTV India carrying 70 per cent Hindi music and the Mandarin channel in China and Taiwan carrying 60 per cent Chinese music. MTV Asia’s president Frank Brown describes most of his audiences as “dual-passport holders” (cited in Hansen 2001), who “wear sneakers and baseball caps but are equally comfortable in traditional dress with their families”. Over the last decade many emerging Asian singers and music groups have gained international exposure through MTV, including Taiwanese pop star Jolin Tsai, Hong Kongborn Coco Lee, Malaysian Islamic pop group Raihan, and Pakistani-born pop singer Adnan Sami. MTV Asia’s strategy in the region has been to harness the desire of youth with middle-class aspirations and rising wealth to feel “cool and modern” while at the same time having their feet firmly planted in Asian soil. Thus they have used new technologies and lifestyle consumerism to create new markets for their products such as the launching of a virtual animated vee-jay in July 2000 to interact with viewers online in five different Asian languages. Across Asia, “TV Mobile” steers consumers to the Internet where they download MTV logos or ringtones of popular MTV artists to put on their cell phones. In India and Singapore the MTV credit card issued through Citibank and United Overseas Bank respectively has attracted thousands of youngsters, who in turn receive discounts on a variety of MTV-connected items such as music, nightclubs, and movies. In Japan MTV has provided its users with wireless Internet connections to download entertainment news. In recent years MTV has ventured into areas such as anti-pollution, anti-racism, pro-democracy, and anti-smoking

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campaigns. In India there are “MTV Dirt Busters” (Clark 2001), MTV-provided garbage trucks which clean up the city of Mumbai. A contest (on TV) asks questions about the local anti-pollution drive. The winner receives a prize in the form of a visit to Singapore, one of the cleanest cities in Asia. According to Frank Brown (cited in Long 2002), MTV Asia’s manager, “what we’re seeing recently is a sea change in what young people think is cool. It used to be all about external appearance, your clothes, make-up, hair, brands that you wear and being hip in a slightly stand-offish way. Today it begins with who you are, what your attitude to life is, what you think, how you express yourself on issues.” Perhaps MTV’s slogan of “think globally, act locally” may be better reflected in some of the international campaigns they have conducted recently, such as a campaign to conserve water, AIDS awareness, and ecotourism. In 2006, in partnership with the United Nations Foundation, MTV produced a special documentary to air on their networks designed to save lives and the planet by raising awareness about the global water crisis (Global Water Challenge, 2007). American rapper Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter traveled to several regions around the world affected by the water crisis, with an MTV film crew recording his reflections in different places. This was telecast on MTV’s worldwide network of 50 locally programmed channels in 179 countries as the “Diary of Jay-Z” on 26 November 2006. Another project initiated in 2006 was “THINK HIV”, a documentary produced with funding support from the Kaiser Family Foundation, where young people tell their stories of how their generation has been affected by the virus.

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The Music of Malaysia Malaysia, with its interesting blend of cultures, has a population of 25 million comprising 62 per cent bumiputera (Malay and aboriginal), 24 per cent Chinese, 7 per cent Indian, and other small minorities.5 Malaysia is also host to at least five different and distinct cultures: Malay, Chinese, Indian, indigenous, and Western (the latter influenced by its British colonial history). Whereas Malay culture is mainly influenced by Islam, the Chinese draw their cultural inspiration mainly from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The Indians have historically been influenced by South India and more recently by the Bollywood6 film industry. Western musical influences are absorbed by all of these cultures to varying degrees. The Malay gamelan,7 the earliest form of Malay traditional classical music on record (MusicalMall 2002), is distinctly different from the Javanese or Balinese gamelan, not so much in the instruments they use but rather in the music. While gamelan music is played mainly at formal occasions such as royal functions today, there are university-based gamelan orchestras, such as the Laras Gong gamelan orchestra conducted by Sunetra Fernando and based at Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, which is now experimenting with modern blends of gamelan music. These orchestras are blending the musical traditions of the Malay gamelan with Indian Carnatic music and Chinese percussion. Another Malay classical music genre is nobat, a form of court music which is thought to have been brought to Malaysia by Indian Muslim traders in the fourteenth century, during the Melaka Sultanate. It is played

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at religious as well as royal ceremonies and incorporates six musical instruments. The South Indian Carnatic music tradition was introduced to Malaysia by Tamil migrants who were recruited as indentured labour by the British in the eighteenth century to work in the rubber plantations. This music is usually played by members of the Indian community. Lately, due to the popularity of Bollywood movies, Hindi film music has become popular within the community. Indian movies also have a large following within the Malay community. Hence, Hindi pop music is popular among the younger generation of Malays. Modern Chinese orchestras known as hua yue tuan can be found today in Malaysia’s urban centres, where the majority of the Chinese live. While the bulk of their repertoire consists of music imported from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China, they also regularly perform Malay folk tunes to meet the local tastes (Tan Soo Beng, cited in MusicalMall 2002). Dikir barat, which originated in Kelantan state, is a form of singing that is very popular today in many parts of Malaysia. But it also has its critics. The conservative Kelantan state government ruled by the Islamist PAS party banned public performances of the genre for a short period in 1998 (Brennan 2001). Dikir barat is a style of call-andresponse singing led by a tukang karut, who composes the poems spontaneously and sings them as he goes along. The chorus echoes in response, verse by verse. These groups usually perform during festivals; their poems normally take the form of light entertainment with social comment, often influenced by Islamic thought. The development of Malay pop music makes for an interesting study because of the many cross-cultural

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currents which have influenced its development. Given the ethnically, religiously, and regionally complex nature of Malaysian society, the rapid pace of socio-economic change, and the fluctuating pattern of sociocultural influences from outside the country, Malaysian popular music has inevitably undergone considerable transformation over the past few decades (Lockard 1996). While Malay pop music may be seen more in terms of localized development alongside trends in neighbouring Indonesia, Chinese pop music can be largely sourced to the influence of the music industries of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and Indian pop music to the influence of India. The earliest example of Malay pop music is bangsawan, which is eclectic, multi-ethnic, urban popular theatre, shaped by Indonesian, Indian, Chinese, Arab, and Western influences and developed purely for commercial purposes in the early twentieth century (Lockard 1996). This tradition of fusion music was continued by P. Ramlee,8 the most well-known Malaysian musician to date, from the 1950s up to the time of his death in 1973. Ramlee’s vision was to create a unique Malaysian musical tradition based on Malay folk blended with musical influences from other cultures. There is also asli music, a form of Malay folk singing and dance music in modernized form. Joget, a blend of Portuguese and Malay folk music, is yet another popular form of dance music, that is it had been until very recently. Although it has lost its social dance role, joget music is sometimes played in local discotheques. Contemporary pop singers, Siti Nurhaliza for example, have attempted to revive it by incorporating this particular form of music and dance into their music clips.

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The 1960s saw Western pop music influences arrive in Malaysia with the Beatles and rock and roll. Known as the “Pop Yeh Yeh” era, the 1960s and 1970s Malaysian pop music world was dominated by Western pop star imitations. However, the 1980s saw the rise of the local pop group the Alleycats, with their blend of Western folk and pop mixed with local asli music. The 1990s saw several popular Malaysian musicians trying to create a contemporary Malaysian pop music genre with a uniquely local flavour, either from a compositional viewpoint or from the combined use of musical instruments, themes, styles and rhythms derived from different cultures in Malaysia. One such example is the popularity of dangdut music, both a television entertainment genre as well as disco music. Predominantly of Indonesian origin, dangdut is a form of Malay folk music which has graduated from the kampong (village) setting into the modern entertainment scene. Amelina, a popular dangdut singer of the 1990s stated: “Children of the 80s and 90s will find dangdut pop more appealing when compared with traditional dangdut” (Straits Times, 11 December 1997). Siti Nurhaliza, who sings a combination of dangdut and other Malay pop and classical songs, has won several industry awards in recent years, including two MTV Asia awards. The most important development in Malaysian pop music in the last decade was the arrival of nasyid, or Islamic pop music groups. Starting with a group called Rabbani, the nasyid movement reached unprecedented heights with the arrival of the five-member group Raihan in the late 1990s. Their first album Puji Pujian outsold every other music group (including Western) in the Malaysian market,

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thus making them the biggest selling recording artists in Malaysia’s history (Kamin 2003). Their singing of Islamic religious poetry, accompanied by the Malay traditional percussion instrument known as the rebana, has given rise to a large number of replications across Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, including a few all-female groups who sing in traditional Islamic dress (Harrison 1999). Over the last few years Raihan has toured many countries, including Indonesia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Brunei, and South Africa. They have appeared on MTV’s worldwide channel. They also performed live at the closing ceremonies of the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games, which showcased Malaysia’s entertainment talent. Another important landmark of the modern Malaysian music scene is the packaging and the rapid path to stardom of Siti Nurhaliza, especially with a brand of irama Malaysia music genre, heavily supported by the Malaysian television and radio industry and the media in general. The Music of Indonesia Indonesia, with over 13,600 islands and 360 ethnic groups stretched across three time zones, has the world’s largest Muslim population and is the world’s fourth most populous country. It has seen many foreign incursions, including Hindu and Buddhist from India from the third to fourteenth centuries, Islamic from the eleventh to fifteenth centuries, Portuguese in the sixteenth century, Dutch from the seventeenth century to World War II, and short-term occupations by the Japanese and British during the war (1939–45). These various agencies left behind the many musical legacies that are found in

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today’s vast spectrum of Indonesian folk and popular music (Music-Indonesia, 2002). The most widely known genre of traditional Indonesian music is gamelan music, which is said to have been created by a Javanese king in the third century and has retained its ceremonial role in the royal courts of Java and Bali, while evolving into a modern folk art form (Music-Indonesia 2002). Due to Indonesia’s size and its diversity of peoples, many forms of folk music are found across the archipelago. But the three major genres of pop music that have transcended regionalism to become common across the islands are the keroncong, dangdut and jaipongan. A keroncong orchestra consists of (plucked) stringed instruments, a flute, and a female singer. The origins of this genre go back to the sixteenth century when Portuguese string instruments and melodies were introduced to Indonesia. The genre was soon absorbed by the local mixedrace lusophones,9 who developed a form of urban music which became associated with the lower classes. Although considered rather stodgy and old-fashioned by the young, it has been blended with dangdut and reggae by today’s pop music industry (Music-Indonesia 2002). Dangdut is the most popular form of pop music in Indonesia today, with its influence spreading to neighbouring countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. Its roots are in orkes Melayu (Malay orchestra), a mixture of Indian, Arabic, and Portuguese music with recent musical influences absorbed from Indian film and Arabic urban pop music and Western rock. One singer largely responsible for bringing dangdut into the mainstream of Indonesian pop

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music in the 1980s and 1990s is Rhoma Irama, a workingclass hero whose songs managed to combine Islamic piety, social criticism, and family values while simultaneously glamourizing his rags-to-riches tale (Music-Indonesia 2002). Dangdut has traditionally drawn its audiences largely from among the young Muslims of lower- and lower-middleclass backgrounds and has thus remained as the country’s most popular music for over thirty years. In most Indonesian cities and towns one could hear dangdut blaring out of speakers in cafes, shopping centres (not upmarket malls), and other public places, including many public and private buses. The market for dangdut was mainly driven through cassette music sales (Campbell 1998). Dangdut extended its reach to urban audiences in the early 1990s via commercial television thus extending dangdut’s popularity among the middle classes and putting it in a powerful social position (Weintraub 2006). In July 1997 national broadcaster TPI launched the Dangdut Music Awards (Anugerah Dangdut 97) and many urban radio stations also followed the trend with some 80 per cent of stations in Java playing dangdut music (Campbell 1998). In 1999 MTV Asia launched Salam Dangdut, which featured music videos, interviews with stars, and tips on how to shake one’s hips or goyang. In addition to music videos, television producers developed dangdut serials and in 2005 TPI launched KDI (Kontest Dangdut Idol), a highly popular series based on the American Idol format. Weintraub (2006, p. 412) argues that dangdut has been touted as the music of “the people” (rakyat) with great frequency. Thus he says:

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“The people” is not a singular unified category, and neither is dangdut’s audience, but the term signifies the juxtaposition of class and nation that characterizes the discourse about dangdut. Dangdut is thought to reflect the desires and aspirations of “the people”, primarily those who occupy the lower stratum of the political and economic structure: “little people” (rakyat kecil), “common people” (rakyat jelata), “poverty-stricken” (rakyat jembel), “underclass group” (golongan bawah), “marginalised group” (kaum marginal); those who have been pushed aside (pinggiran); and “the middle class and below” (kelas menengah ke bawah).

Lately many female dangdut singers have stolen the spotlight with their hip gyrating dance sequences. Their performances have been screened and recorded by MTV and the music video industry. Twenty-four-year-old Inul Daratista created a national stir when Irama called for her to be banned from television for “immoral” dancing (Yamin 2003). In the early 1990s dangdut was banned from elite dance spots because it was seen as the music of the lower classes. But lately it has seen a revival with discotheques playing dangdut music in most urban centres and on MTV Indonesia and other Indonesian television channels such as Trans TV, broadcasting popular dangdut programmes regularly (MTV Asia website). Jaipongan emerged in the 1970s out of West Java and spread rapidly across Indonesia on the wave of Indigenous popular music after President Sukarno banned all foreign music in the 1960s. The jaipongan ensemble consists of a pot gong and other gongs, a rebab (two-stringed fiddle), barrel drums, and a female singer-dancer who usually

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performs sensual dance sequences. The latter, which have offended conservative elements in the government, have never been banned (ikomerz.com 2003). The official ban on foreign pop music lasted only a few years. Today Indonesian music groups may play any type of music; television and radio stations have almost complete freedom to broadcast whatever they choose. Bodden (2005) observed that throughout the 1990s “alternative” music genres such as rap, punk, and hard rock derived from North American and European commercial culture have captured the attention of large numbers of Indonesian youth, leading to the formation of local bands like Slank and rapper Iwa-K, propelling them to the top of the Indonesian pop charts. These groups have become popular “because they created songs relevant to the daily experiences and thoughts of the younger generation” (university student quoted in Bodden 2005, p. 13). Islamic Music There is much debate nowadays as to whether music is forbidden in Islam or not. Before I address this argument it is important to point out that throughout history, Islamic societies have developed a very diverse variety of musical cultures, though these are not necessarily related to Islamic practices or rituals. Since the founding of Islam in ad 622, music and dance have flourished in many Muslim societies; for example, in Arabia, Persia, and later in India and Southeast Asia. However, this has often been accompanied by hostility exercised towards music and dance by orthodox clergy

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and Islamic scholars. Because of opposition from religious leaders, Islamic music has been relatively restricted to forms of poetry, the call to prayer or cantillation of the Qur’an.10 Opponents of music have argued that the cantillation of the Qur’an is technically distinct from singing. Shiloah (1997) observes that from the very beginning the religious authorities in Islam, be they legalists, traditionalists, or theologians, adopted a reserved attitude towards the overt use of music in worship. In doing so they have become the major cause of the absence of a recognized official mosque music. He argues that one of the major difficulties encountered in dealing with the question of legality of music in Islam is that the most scared text — the Qur’an — “contains almost nothing expressly concerning music” (1997, p. 144). Ayoub (1993) argues that traditionally Muslims have approached the Qur’an from two distinct but interrelated points of view — as the Qur’an interpreted and Qur’an recited — with Muslims dedicating their best minds to the former and their best voices and musical talents to the latter. While the science of exegesis (tafsir) aims at uncovering the meanings of the sacred text, the art of recitation (tilawah) has been the chief vehicle of its dissemination. The purpose of reciting the Qur’an is to please God and obtain his blessings, but it also fulfills a unique social and liturgical role in Muslim society. Islamic Art scholar Lois Ibsen al Faruqi (1980, p. 57) says that religious music in Islam can be defined as “any music which is connected with a liturgical or prayer service, as well as musical setting of poetry or drama which has a religious setting or theme”. She names four categories of

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Arabic music that could be classified as “Religious Music”. These are Qur’anic chant (qira’ah), the call to prayer (adhan), the aural art of the dhikr (remembrance) service of the mystical brotherhoods and similar examples of takbirat (exaltation of God), hamd (thanks to God), madih (praise of the Prophet Muhamad), or dua (supplication). However, she reiterates that most Arabs do not consider Qur’anic chant, the adhan, or much of the art of the dhikr service as music. The art of reciting the Qur’an, argues Ayoub (1993), goes back to the time of the Prophet and his companions. According to Prophetic tradition, it should be melodiously chanted, but not sung. In other words, the recitation should not be viewed as entertainment. But with the Arab cultural renaissance of the late nineteenth and twentieth century, this recitation of the Qur’an has been incorporated into the rich musical traditions of many Arab countries, particularly Egypt, Iran, and Turkey. Modern Qur’an recitation broadly consists of two forms — tajwid and tartil. The former shows the reciter’s musical talent and virtuosity, while the latter is a public musical recital which could have the same emotional effect on the audience as any secular musical performance (Ayoub 1993). As al Faruqi (1997) notes, there is no clear indication as to the role of music in Islam in the Hadith,11 which are the second most authoritative source for Muslim practices and ideas. Thus the music of the Sufi12 brotherhoods, although it was enjoyed and participated in by some Muslims, was regarded with suspicion by others because of its association with the excesses and irrational behaviour to which it and other dhikr activities sometimes led. As for secular music,

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it was considered the pastime of those who indulged in forbidden practices (alcohol, prostitution, gambling). Thus, she argues, “rather than to say Islam prohibited music, one ought to realise that in these ideological battles over music that were waged throughout the centuries of Islamic history, there was a cultural orientation in musical style going on which has had its effect until today” (1997, p. 59). A table of the hierarchy of music in Islamic societies has been drawn up by al Faruqi (1985) where at the top is “legitimate” (halal) “non-music” genres such as Qur’anic chant, religious chants like adhan, takbirat, and tahmid and chanted poetry with noble themes (i.e., shi’r). Next comes — still within the halal category — family and celebration music (i.e., lullabies, wedding songs), occupational music (i.e., caravan chants, shepherds’ tunes) and military music. This category consists of music which is “controversial” but acceptable within the aesthetic and moral ideals of the society. Though they are not considered as Qur’anic chants, they are regarded as halal sound art expressions. The next category is also controversial and includes vocal/ instrumental improvizations, songs of a serious metre, and instrumental music. This music has been favoured by a large proportion of Muslim society, though they have not been universally approved. At the bottom of the list is music related to pre-Islamic or non-Islamic origins and sensual music associated with such prohibited practices as taking alcohol or prostitution. These are definitely prohibited (haram) music. In Islamic literature the creation of a specific liturgy, composed of prayer, litanies, song, music, and sometimes dance, is known as sama. Shiloah (1997, p. 144) says that

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the interminable debate about sama emerged as early as the first century of the Islamic era and has been perpetuated with various degrees of intensity until today. Thus he notes: In all the major centres of Islam extending from India, Indonesia and Central Asia to Africa, legalists, theologians, spiritual leaders, urban custodians of morality, the literati and leaders of mystic confraternities, all took part in this debate which elicited views that vary from complete negation to full admittance of all musical forms and means including the controversial dance. Between the two extremes, one can find all possible nuances. Some authorities, for instance, tolerated rudimentary form of cantillation and functional song, but banned any instrumental accompaniment; others allowed the use of a frame drum but without disc, forbidding all other instruments, particularly those belonging to the chordophone family. The mystic orders, for whom music and dance held a vital part in the performing of spiritual and ecstatic rites, were seriously concerned with the debate and participated ardently in the polemics. In this respect, one should remember that most of the harshest attacks against music and dance led by the jurists were obviously directed against the mystics or Sufis, and their singing and dancing practices, which in given cases embodied manifestations of profligacy.

Lewisohn (1997) argues that it was the Sufis and their sama ceremonies that became the chief guardians and patrons of Islamic music throughout the periods of history when puritanism dominated the social fabric of Muslim society and the cultivation of music was discouraged. Thus sama

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connotes in the Sufi tradition a hearing with the “ear of the heart”, an attitude of reverently listening to music and/or the singing of mystic poetry with the intent of increasing awareness and understanding of the divine object described; it is a type of meditation focusing on musical melody, by the use of instruments, mystic songs or combining both (p. 4). The Syrian mystic theologian al-Nabulusi has defended the role of music in Islam in several treatises written in the eighteenth century, where he argues that it does not mean musical instruments are necessarily used for the purpose of diversion. If the true believer employs them with good intention and for beneficial purposes, they cannot be harmful in any way. They should be considered as a whole and cannot be separated into lawful and unlawful. Hence, if singing, playing instruments, and dancing serve good purposes, they are permissible. Conversely, music in all its forms must be banished if associated with passion and intoxication (Shiloah 1997). In recent times the debate surrounding the role of music in Islam has intensified. As mentioned earlier the Malaysian pop music group Raihan has elevated nasyid singing to a new level. In Pakistan, qawwali singers such as the late Fateh Ali Khan transformed this form of Islamic “Sufi” music into a modern concert performance genre. In recent years the U.S.-based Pakistani music group Junoon has transformed qawwali into what they call “Islamic rock music”. Junoon, which was formed in 1990, created a distinctive sound — electric rock braided with Pakistani folk music — and lyrics that draw from the Qur’an and Sufi poets. Junoon has sold 25 million albums — as many as Nirvana,

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ZZ Top, and Janet Jackson have sold in America — and many of Junoon’s songs have topped the MTV India music charts for weeks on end (Sacirbey 2006). Former British pop star Cat Stevens who embraced Islam in 1977 and took the name of Yusuf Islam has, after many years of contemplation, taken up recording music again. But this time to promote Islam via his London based Mountain of Light organization. In a recent posting on his website,13 he had this to say of music in Islam: Whilst I agree that some songs and musical influences are haram, this judgement does not apply to every singer or every single note and crotchet played. We must distinguish for example, what is the message in the words of the song? What is the moral context and environment where the songs are being played? What is the time it is happening? Who is delivering the song? How is it delivered? And importantly, what is the intention? Some scholars say that as long as it conforms to moral norms and doesn’t divert a person from his or her duties in worshipping Allah Most High, then it has its place in the culture of Islam. … after having studied this subject for more than twenty five years, I can say that it is certainly not as black and white as some have tried to make us believe. I used to be doubtful about the issue but now realise that many of the hadith used to support its banning are either weak, unclear or they do not balance with other specific hadith showing its allowability. The actual word “music” was never recorded in the original sayings of the Prophet and cannot be found in the preserved “Arabic” language of the Qur’an — and Allah surely knows best.

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Theoretical Perspectives: Cultural Studies and Identity Culture — be it religious thought or traditions, music, dance, or other forms of cultural expression — has been travelling across borders, across regions, and globally for centuries, ever since man invented the wheel and learned to navigate the oceans. But globalization as a modern phenomenon gathered steam in the 1980s and became an onslaught following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. What are the theoretical perspectives that underpin this onslaught? I will introduce here briefly the theories on globalization, cultural imperialism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, and cultural identity that encompass this study. Globalization — A Definition Globalisation, drawing more and more of the globe into the net of the global capitalist market, is, of course, no recent, post-“Big-Bang” phenomenon. It has been going on since the Spanish and the Portuguese initiated the West’s “encounter” with the Rest at the end of the fifteenth century. The recent integration of the financial systems, the internationalisation of production and consumption, the spread of global communication networks, is only the latest — albeit distinctive — phase in a long, historical process. However, this latest phase of capitalist globalisation, with its brutal compressions and recordings across time and space, has not necessarily resulted in the destruction of those specific structures and particularistic attachments and identifications which go with the more localised

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communities which a homogenised modernity is supposed to replace. (Hall and du Paul 1993, p. 353)

The term “globalization” started to gain worldwide tender in the 1990s, when transnational capital began to spread across the world at lightning speed, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Newly emerging satellite broadcasting and telecommunication technologies made it possible for information and entertainment systems, and global capital, to cross national borders with a high level of impunity. These flows were intended to capture the increasing interconnectedness of different parts of the world. According to Herman and McChesney (1997, p. 8), the central features of globalization of the media “have been larger cross-border flows of media outputs, the growth of media TNCs (Transnational Corporations) and the tendency towards centralization of media control, and the spread and intensification of commercialization”. This power is not only economic and political, but it also has an ideological component because of its ability to control (or guide) basic assumptions or modes of thought. And, these authors argue, this ideology has replaced religion as the basis of control. Ahmed and Donnan (1994) contend that globalization is not necessarily wholly a novel phenomenon, unique to the latter half of the twentieth century. They point out that a similar process occurred in earlier centuries when local elites collaborated with representatives of colonial powers to help them rule the colonies. This relationship has mainly been seen in terms of economics: a difference today may be that the emphasis on the discourse on globalization has shifted to cultural flows. And although these cultural flows are not

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detached from economic and political realities, because most of them come from the West, there is a perception that they have more force than others to reach a wider audience. But former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (1998) points out that the current discourse on globalization all too often makes the assumption that this is a phenomenon without precedent, emphasizing that Southeast Asia has been globalizing for centuries and giving as examples the absorption of Hindu and Buddhist cultures across the region, as well as Muslim cultures in Malaysia and Indonesia. He finds it ironic that globalization, which is supposed to bring uniformity, is happening at a time of pronounced religious revival, resurgent nationalism, and intense assertion of cultural identity. Defining Cultural Imperialism When studying or analysing the impact of globalization it is important to take into account the theories of cultural imperialism. In the 1970s a similar debate took place regarding the impact of Western culture on the indigenous cultures of developing countries, when electronic media technologies, with their power to circulate images and sound around the world, began to take shape. One of the major theoretical frameworks that was used to understand these flows became known as cultural imperialism, which determined how ideology, a politics, or a way of life is exported into other territories through the transmission of cultural products. This theoretical perspective has been the subject of much debate over the past forty years. The term “cultural imperialism” entered into international discourse in the 1960s, when the leaders of postcolonial

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societies tried to assert a new unifying ethos derived from local roots. Since then it has been consistently defined and redefined. Cultural theorist Barker maintains that “cultural imperialism is said to involve the domination of one culture by another and is usually thought of as a set of processes involving the ascendancy of one nation and/or the global domination of consumer capitalism. This argument stresses the loss of cultural autonomy for the ‘dominated’ nation and the worldwide growth of cultural homogeneity or ‘sameness’ ” (Barker 2004, p. 38). One description of cultural imperialism which has been consistently articulated over the last two decades suggests that the globalization of communication, driven by the large U.S.-based transnational corporations’ pursuit of commercial interests, often acting in collaboration with Western (predominantly American) political and military interests, has resulted in a new form of dependency in which traditional cultures are destroyed through the intrusion of Western values. Petras (1993) stresses that the United States’ cultural imperialism has two major goals; one economic and the other political: to capture markets for their cultural commodities and to establish hegemony by shaping popular consciousness. He sees the export of entertainment commodities as one of the most important sources of capital accumulation, and its global profits already displacing manufacturing exports as the major income earner for the U.S. economy. Petras further states, In the political sphere, cultural imperialism plays a major role in dissociating people from their cultural

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roots and traditions of solidarity, replacing them with media-created “needs”, which change with every political campaign. The political effect is to alienate people from traditional class and community bonds, atomising and separating individuals from each other. (1993, p. 30)

The above views, originally articulated by Herbert Schiller and others, were enormously influential in defining cultural imperialism in the 1970s and 1980s. But this theory has also been subject to a lot of criticism in recent years with the rise of the media capabilities in many countries of the South.14 Today few scholars would accept this analysis unreservedly, even though it could be the basis of their critical analysis. In order to understand the notion of cultural imperialism as media imperialism, one needs to look at the “mediated” nature of contemporary Western culture and ask the question: What is it that is “imposed” on other cultures? What components of it pose a threat to these cultures? The commodification of music by MTV and its international success provides much material for such analysis, which is attempted by this study. As Lacey (2002, p. 86) observes, “How what began as a channel that playlisted videos the way radio played records became the epitome of youth culture in many countries is an excellent case study of media imperialism.” He points out that MTV executives, aware of the potential of charges of cultural imperialism vis-à-vis their operating methods, coined the slogan to identify the channel as “think globally, act locally”, which stresses that the company is sensitive to local cultures (as discussed earlier).

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Lacey argues that this sensitivity is not simply a result of enlightened business practices but a recognition that youth culture is very important to young people’s identity. If they (MTV) tried to ride rough shod over music that was sub-culturally important, then they would risk rejection. In assessing whether the station supports local culture, he suggests that one should assess the degree to which local music is played compared with Anglo-American music. The extent to which MTV localizes in any given country, which I try to assess in this study, would also depend on the forces of nationalism inherent in that society. These forces of nationalism, in today’s global context, are played out in an environment where forces of globalization and modernity have a tremendous influence on how this battle is fought, as the postcolonial era gives way to the age of modernity. Theory of Postcolonialism Postcolonialism is a critical theory that explores the colonial relations and their aftermath. It may be taken as the period starting with the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. However, within cultural studies it is commonly taken to include the colonial discourse itself. Postcolonial theory explores colonial relations and their aftermath constituted through representation. Two key concerns of postcolonial theory are those of domination-subordination and hybriditycreolization. Misra and Hodge argue that, Post-colonialism is a neologism that grew out of older elements to capture a seemingly unique moment in world history, a configuration of experiences and

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insights, hopes and dreams arising from a hitherto silenced part of the world, taking advantage of new conditions to “search for alternatives to the discourses of the colonial era”, creating an altogether different vantage point from which to review the past and the future. (2005, p. 378)

Postcolonial theory is built in large part around the concept of “otherness”. There are, however, problems or complexities associated with this concept of otherness because it includes doubleness in both identity and difference: it includes the values and meaning of the colonizing culture even as it rejects its power to define. This also leads to the concept of “hybridity”, an important concept in postcolonial theory, referring to the integration (or mingling) of cultural signs and practices peculiar to both the colonizing and colonized cultures. The assimilation and adaptation of cultural practices, the cross-fertilization of cultures, can be seen as positive, enriching, and dynamic, as well as oppressive. Hybridity is a useful concept for helping to break down the false sense that colonized cultures — or colonizing cultures (for that matter) — are either monolithic or have essential, unchanging features (Lye 1998). Postcolonialism deals with many issues for societies that have undergone colonialism, such as the dilemmas of developing a national identity in the wake of colonial rule: the ways in which writers from colonized countries attempt to articulate and even celebrate their cultural identities and reclaim them from the colonizers; the ways in which knowledge of the colonized people have served the interests of colonizers, how knowledge of subordinate people is produced and used; and the ways in which the literature of

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the colonial powers is used to justify colonialism through the perpetuation of images of the colonized as inferior. Chinese scholar Shaobo Xie (1997) argues that in historic terms postcolonialism should refer to the period where there is a need to deconstruct residues of older colonialism and withstand neocolonialism, which is shifting the battlefield from the political and military on to the cultural terrain. It also means moving beyond the “Eurocentric ideology, beyond colonialist binary structures of self/other, and ultimately beyond any form of racism”. Thus Xie says, Post-colonialism represents an urgent need and determination to dismantle imperial structures in the realm of culture. The postcolonial does not signify the demise or pastness of coloniality; rather it points to a colonial past that remains to be interrogated and critiqued. It admits an indebtedness to the past and a responsibility to the future; it intends to clear the ground of older colonialism in order to resist neocolonialism. (1997, p. 13)

Postcolonial theory became part of critical discourse in the 1970s. Many credit the late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said’s Orientalism with being the theory’s founding work. His work highlighted the inaccuracies of a wide variety of assumptions about the “Orient” and the “Oriental”, and questioned various paradigms of thought which are accepted on individual, academic, and political levels. Aijaz Ahmad (1992) finds postcolonialism theory based on the “Three World” concept to be too focused on the experience of colonialism and imperialism, and it does not recognize centuries of literary works from Asia and the

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Arab world in particular. He observes that if the “West” is the same as the “Graeco-Judaic” period and their work, then why can the Third World not be the same as the texts emanating from the Bhagavad-Gita, the edicts of Manu, the Qur’an itself, and more than ten centuries of Chinese literature? Discourses on Postmodernism The theory of cultural imperialism, as discussed earlier in the chapter, implies that when cultural influences driven by modern media such as television, emanating from a powerful country, arrive in a developing country, they will invariably impose alien cultural values on the host community. Yet, in recent years, cultural studies theorists have challenged this presumption. They tend to argue that under contemporary conditions it is no longer the case — if ever it was — that the global flow of cultural discourses is constituted as one-way traffic. It is no longer a flow from West to East and North to South: the current process of globalization leads to many forms of homogenization, where the forces of fragmentation and hybridity are equally strong (Barker 2004, p. 38). The application of postmodernism theories to the study of these cultural trends when applied to developing countries of the South which are going through various phases of postcolonialism and modernism rather than postmodernism, gives rise to problems of definition. Since many postmodernism theories have been developed in either a European or a Western context, it is important to consider to what degree they could effectively be applied to examining expressions of cultural identity in postcolonial societies.

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Kwame Appiah (1991) argues that a postmodern contemporary culture, though transnational, does not necessarily mean that it is the culture of every person in the world. He also observes that many of the markers for this postmodern culture are set by concepts of Western modernity; concepts that need to be challenged. Stuart Hall, responding to critiques of postmodernism, stated, I think the label “postmodernism”, especially in its American appropriation (and it is about how the world dreams itself to be “American”) carries two additional charges: it not only points to how things are going in modern culture, but it says, first, that there is nothing else of any significance — no contradictory forces, and no counter-tendencies; and second, that these changes are terrific, and all we have to do is to reconcile ourselves to them. It is, in my view, being deployed in an essentialist and uncritical way. And it is irrevocably Euro- or Western-centric in its whole episteme. (cited in Chen and Morley 1996, p. 132)

Postmodern culture is marked by a historic blurring, which Barker (2003, p. 209) describes as “representations of the past and present displayed together in a bricolage”. He explains that a bricolage involves the rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning; for example, MTV’s noted formula of presenting pop culture which is blended from a variety of periods and locations. As Hall states, postmodernism is a “Western” phenomenon, for “three-quarters of the human race have not yet entered the era of what we are pleased to call the real” (cited in Chen and Morley 1996, p. 133). Hall further

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suggests that although we need to constantly update our theories in order to deal with new experiences, there is no such thing as an absolute novel and unified thing, i.e., the postmodern condition. While conceding that the modes of cultural production and consumption may have changed, he insists that this does not mean representation itself has changed. Representation may well have become a more problematic process, but this does not mean the end of representation. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (1996) observes that very often the homogenization argument subspeciates into either an argument about Americanization or an argument about commoditization, and that very often the two arguments are closely linked. He states that what these arguments fail to consider is that as rapidly as forces from various metropolises are brought into new societies, they tend to become indigenized in one way or another. Theory of Hybridity In his hybridity theory, Homi Bhabha (1984, cited in Turkmen 2003) insists that hybridity shifts power and questions discursive authority. He suggests that colonial discourse is never wholly in the control of the colonizer. Its authority is always reinflected, split, syncretized, and to an extent menaced by its confrontation with its object. Yet it is hybridity and creolization which together challenge the basic concepts of the postcolonial theory. It is dialogue, with the values and customs of the past, which allows traditions to be transformed and new ones created. This process may herald a change in the meaning

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of the old word as new words are brought into being. As Barker observes, “Cultural hybridity challenges not only the centrality of the colonial culture and the marginalization of the colonized but also the very idea of center and margin as being anything other than ‘representational effect’ ” (2003, p. 276). Momin (1996) observes that cultural hybridity has been part and parcel of India’s cultural identity development for centuries: over time, India has played host to a stream of migrant groups and communities from different parts of the world. Today’s Indian cultural identity consists of contributions from the Aryans, the Tibeto-Burman speaking Mongoloid groups, the Kushans, the Sakas, the Greeks, the Huns, the Arabs, the Persians, the Turks, and the Mongols, all of whom arrived and settled in the land at different points in time in India’s long history. Momin writes, “The composite fabric of Indian civilisation has been woven with strands and shades of varying textures and colours. It is no exaggeration to say that since ancient times India has represented a melting-pot of races and cultures” (1996, p. 1). Examples of musical hybrids abound in the postcolonial period and, as we see everywhere, both the colonized and the colonists have influenced and affected each other. In this study it will be a central theme of investigation in the context of identity and representation. MTV and Cultural Identity It could be argued that MTV is the battleground where the issues of cultural identity are being played out. This includes

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the appropriation and hybridization of cultures, shaping of identities and even ideologies, and the commercialization or the consumerization of popular culture. Kaplan (1988, p. 45) observes that MTV has abandoned the traditional narrative devices of most cultures; thus it could constitute a postmodernist anti-aesthetic. In the context of postmodernist discussion, she states that it is important to recognize the blurring of distinctions between a “subject” and an “image” and that MTV has created a new narrative form which reflects the changed relationship between the subject and image. Frith (in Hall and du Gay 1996) notes that the academic study of music has been limited by the assumption that the sounds must somehow “reflect” or “represent” the people. The analytic problem has been to trace the connection back from the work to the social groups who produce and consume it. The Paris-based Indonesian pop star Anggun provides such an example. While she was born and raised in Indonesia, her music reflects more a Bon Jovi style of rock music than the traditional Javanese gamelan music (Pouplain 2000). Her debut album Au nom de la lune was a phenomenal hit in 1997, selling a million copies in thirty-three countries and released in four different versions. One contained sixteen songs recorded in French, another had nineteen tracks — sixteen in English and three in French — and yet another was a special Indonesian version with fifteen bonus songs. In none of the Anggun albums can a trace of anything she recorded during her Indonesian child-star days be found. For this reason her identity has been questioned in many quarters. Anggun, who is a French citizen now, has been described in France as a “French” pop star. But during her

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concert stop in Singapore in 2000, Anggun revealed in an interview that she feels “Indonesian first” and was at pains to point out that her musical influences are “generally Asian, not just Indonesian”. Filipino journalist Lionel Valdellon reported during a 1999 Anggun tour of the Philippines that the singer received a good reception there, not because she is Asian but because MTV Asia continuously plays her songs, a policy that local radio later emulated. During an interview with Valdellon, Anggun informed him that she wants to “introduce Indonesia to the world in a progressive way”, but at the same time does not want “arrows shot at her saying ‘Indonesian, Indonesian’ ”. This is the reason why she opts not to wear batiks (Pouplain 2000). When Anggun visited Indonesia for a concert tour the greatest concern of the Indonesian press was about her losing her “Indonesian identity” since moving to Paris. They criticized her for not visiting her parents during her three-day tour of Jakarta and for not settling down and having a family (Pouplain 2000). Pouplain, pondering the dilemma the artist confronts, stated that, Straddling two radically different cultures, Anggun is faced with the dilemma of being seen as a quaint “folk pop star” or throwing off her country’s traditional culture and becoming a stateless artist. In short, the singer is faced with the difficult task of conquering the world’s pop charts and hanging on to her identity in the process. (2000)

In contrast, there are no such questions raised regarding the identity of Siti Nurhaliza in Malaysia and Inul Daratista

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in Indonesia, both pop divas — in their own countries — providing avenues of cultural expression and identity to local youth. Their cultural productions, production formulae, and their reception in the national context as a form of cultural identity for local youth will be examined in this study, in the context of the cultural imperialism, postmodernism, and post-colonialism theories. Hybridity and Cultural Identity Hybridity is one of the emblematic notions of our era. It captures the spirit of the times with its obligatory celebration of cultural difference and fusion, and resonates with a globalization mantra of unfettered economic exchanges and the supposedly inevitable transformation of all cultures (Kraidy 2005, p. 1). Bignell (2000) contends that by broadcasting a wide variety of discourses, global television provides resources for the construction of cultural identities, which borrow from or resist those made available through television. Hybrid identities may be formed through or against global or local cultural forms, with global broadcasting as the dominant one against which these alternatives are measured. This also can lead to the breakdown of the “notion of society as a geographically and temporally coherent object” (2000, p. 170) so that the society is no longer equated with a national territory. Kraidy (2005) argues that hybridity involves the fusion of two hitherto relatively distinct forms, styles, identities, or cross-cultural contacts, which often occur across national

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borders as well as across cultural boundaries. These contacts often involve movement of some sort, and, in the international communication context, involve the movement of cultural communities, such as media programmes. This leads to exchanges of people, ideas, and practices. Homi Bhabha (1994) maintains that the very concepts of homogenous national cultures, the consensual or contiguous transmission of historical traditions, or “organic” ethnic communities — as grounds of cultural comparativism — are in a profound process of redefinition. He states that there is overwhelming evidence of a more transnational and translational sense of the hybridity of imagined communities. Hybridity’s ability to be many things at any one given time makes it an ideal tool for what Kraidy (2005) calls “corporate transculturalism”, where it fits in well with the global capitalism ideology of consumer choice, individual freedom, free market and free trade. He further suggests that transnational corporations use hybridity strategically to highlight certain aspects of the global order and privileges that fit in well with their ideology while at the same time discarding elements that do not fit their strategic vision. Kraidy points out that MTV’s localization strategy — which includes featuring the work of selected local artists, hiring local VJs (presenters) to host programmes, evincing sensitivity to the cultural norms of the country/ region in which it operates — is really part and parcel of its transcultural strategy of internationalization. “Becoming more local is, for CNN and MTV, the surest way to become more international” (2005, p. 100).

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Relevance and Meaning of Identity The role of music or popular culture in creating contemporary cultural identities for youth is at the very roots of this study. In analysing the collected data, the establishment of theoretical perspectives in understanding the creation of cultural identities and the tools employed for it, underpins this research. Indrajit Banerjee (2006) argues that rather than globalization drowning out indigenous Asian cultures, exciting new forms of postcolonial cultural identifies are being formed through cultural hybridization. These have given rise to new forms of cultural creativity and expression, where Asians are playing a greater role in its creativity. He points out that the cultural imperialism perspective found a following in most Asian nations because of the latter’s shared concerns regarding the core values of this theory that grew out of their historical experience with imperialism and colonization. These concerns were further reified when in the immediate postcolonial era, state-owned broadcasters were forced to import foreign (Western) content to fill up their airtime, especially on television. This occurred because local production capacity was either non-existent or the state in its enthusiasm to protect their political dominance allowed the import of foreign content rather than encourage the growth of local production capacity. However, with the dismantling of these state broadcasting monopolies beginning in the 1980s and the commercialization of broadcasting providing excess airtime, local creative talent was provided with a new opportunity. Today across Asia most of the popular television shows, which are locally made or produced in other Asian

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countries, are beginning to make an impact on the global scene. These shows include Indian and Chinese cinema, Korean drama, and Bhangra, nasyid, and Cantopop music. In the words of Banerjee (2006), “This new Asian cultural paradigm or renaissance forces us to revisit the media and cultural identity debate. The challenge now is to find new theoretical perspectives to understand the reality of Asian media and cultural industries and its implications.” This is precisely the objective of my research project; that is, to study the impact of globalization in the form of the MTV onslaught on the airwaves in Indonesia and Malaysia, and to determine what theoretical basis could explain the new cultural products which have risen in response to this process. This perception or theory will be tested both through FGDs (focus group discussions; to judge audience perceptions) and in-depth interviews with producers of popular culture programmes — as well as with music industry executives — in an attempt to explore how the popular culture industry recasts itself as a resource for individual use in everyday life. Cross-referencing these data to FGD responses, the process that creates these linkages will be studied. In order to understand the role that mediaoriented cultural products play in shaping youth identities, it is also important that the media landscape in both Malaysia and Indonesia be taken into account. With this in mind, my analysis of data will be preceded by a survey of the media landscape in the countries under scrutiny. I will now pose the following questions: Are nasyid and irama Malaysia musical genres in Malaysia and dangdut in Indonesia part of this process? And how is this process

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achieved? These questions will be discussed in more detail in Chapters 7 and 8 in which the data analysis and findings are addressed. Notes   1.   2.   3.   4.   5.   6.   7.

  8.   9.

In this study, reference to MTV means the music channels. . This is based on the author’s own observations. Informal conversation with the author in Singapore, December 2003. United Nations Development Programme, 2003. Bollywood is the name usually used to refer to the Mumbai (formerly Bombay) based Indian Hindi film industry. Gamelan generally refers to the traditional form of Indonesian music involving an orchestra comprising various percussion instruments. The gamelan orchestra has a large variety of instruments. Within the category of gongs there are suspended gongs, of which there are multiple varieties of bass gongs, middle voice gongs, and treble gongs. The other category of gongs is the horizontal gongs, of which there are various gong racks and handheld gongs. There are many varieties of metal, wood, and bamboo bar instruments (“xylophones”). There are also cymbals, drums, flutes, and stringed instruments (the latter being both bowed and plucked). Gamelan orchestras, which are common to the Indonesian islands of Java, Madura, Bali, and Lombok (and other Sunda Islands), come in a wide variety of ensemble sizes and formations . See the P. Ramlee cybermuseum . A lusophone is someone who speaks the Portuguese language natively or by adoption. As an adjective, it means “Portuguese-

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10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

43

speaking”, but in Indonesia most speak Bahasa Indonesia today . According to Muslim tradition, the Qur’an was revealed to Prophet Muhammad in separate pieces over some twenty years. On such occasions, Muhammad, it is said, was in a kind of trance or ecstasy, during which the revelation was brought to him by the angel Gabriel. On his return to normal consciousness he recited the words of revelation to those present (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1981, vol. 15, p. 343). The Hadith are revered by Muslims as a major source of religious law and moral guidance. In Islam, they are the tradition or collection of traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad that include his sayings, acts, and approval or disapproval of things (Encyclopedia Britannica online). Sufism is a mystical movement within Islam that seeks to find divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience with God or “oneness” with God. It consists of a variety of mystical paths and arose as an organized movement after the death of the Holy Prophet Muhammad among different groups, who found orthodox Islam to be spiritually stifling (Encyclopedia Britannica online). (accessed 12 August 2007). “South” is a term commonly used in international political economic discourses to describe the poor developing countries to the south of the Equator — countries sometimes lumped together as the “Third World”.

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2 Malay Cultural Landscape and Identity: Malaysia and Indonesia

This chapter explores the cultural landscape of Malaysia and Indonesia, including the media landscape which has influenced cultural identities in the region. Both countries can be categorized as classic examples of postcolonial societies trying to build a common cultural identity. Malaysia Creating a Developed Nation Malaysia is a country that has embarked upon an ambitious path to create a modern developed nation by 2020. The way the Malay identity is defined in this context is an important element in the development of this vision. Since this study is looking predominantly at the question of cultural identities of Malay youth, the main focus will be upon the Malay community. Vision 2020 — known as Wawasan 2020 — was launched in February 1991 at the height of Malaysia’s economic boom by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad in a speech titled “Malaysia: The Way Forward”. This vision, which expects

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Malaysia to achieve the status of a fully-developed country by 2020 by accelerating industrialization and modernization, includes an explicit commitment to the forging of a Bangsa Malaysia (Malaysian Nation) that would transcend ethnic identities and loyalties. Malaysian scholar M.K. Anuar (2000) claims that inherent in this “Mahathirist vision” “is the acceptance of the so-called modernising values replacing the ‘traditional’ ones that are regarded as stubborn hindrance to progress and prosperity”. He argues that in this modernizing mission there will occasionally be tension between the traditional and modern values arising mainly as a result of images and texts flowing into Malaysia rather freely from the outside world. In his book titled The Malay Dilemma, Mahathir Mohamad (1970) argues that a vast majority of the Malays are too feudalist and wish to remain so. But the author claims that that mindset needs to be changed by a revolution. Two decades before launching Wawasan 2020, and even a decade before he became Prime Minister, Mahathir stated, Essentially because of environmental and hereditary factors, the Malays have become a rural race with only a minute portion of them in the towns. Rural people everywhere are less sophisticated and progressive than urban people. Our solution to this problem must be to attempt a reversal of this state of affairs. In other words, we must seek to urbanise the Malays. (1970, p. 105)

However, Mahathir did not call for the destruction of the Malay ruling system and the overthrow of the sultans.1

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Rather, he warned, “It is the rulers who … in the past furnished and continued to present the Malay character of Malaya. Remove them, and the last vestiges of traditional Malaya would disappear” (Mohamad 1970, p. 104). He insisted that while urbanizing the Malays, the monarchs (sultans) and their religion Islam should not disappear. “Religion is another established force with the Malays. No change, no plans and no ideology, which runs counter to the religion of the Malays, can succeed. Islam must therefore be left alone in the quest for Malay progress” (1970, p. 104). Mahathir, who became Prime Minister in 1981, led Malaysia in a modernizing mission for over twenty years before he stepped down in October 2003. During his time Malaysia became a rapidly urbanizing society and one of the tiger economies2 of Asia. Modernization and Developing a Post-Independence Malay Identity Goh (2002, p. 184) argues that the modern experience is often equated with the “history or trajectory of capitalist modernity and technical rationality in the West, along with a culturally and socially accomplished form of life that goes with industrial society”. This Euro-American narrative of modernity as the norm leads to the “mis-recognition” of the new meaning of “modern” in the non-Western world. Goh claims that Malaysia offers a model which challenges these notions of modernity. The process of changing the notion of the nation to fit into Malaysia’s own version of modernity — the Wawasan 2020 concept — includes redefining both “Malayness” and class as the central sites for rethinking the very notion

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of modernity and ideas of the modern. These contests are played out in the cities, where various cultural visions of modernity are actively reconstituting urban space. During the European colonial era, from the seventeenth century onwards, the notion of Malayness shifted depending on competing ideals over Islam, Malay royal authority, and Malay ethnicity. When Malaysia became independent in 1957 the Malaysian nation state constitutionally defined what it is to be a Malay. In the post-independence Constitution, the term “Malayness” was defined in Article 160(2) as applicable to “one who professes the religion of Islam, habitually speaks the Malay language, (and) conform to Malay custom” (Goh 2002, p. 187). In addition Malays constitute the largest of three officially designated bumiputra,3 whose rights and special privileges are inscribed in the Constitution. In Articles 152 and 153 of the Constitution, their privileges are listed: they include quota protections in the fields of education, scholarship, training, trade, and business permits. Malaysia’s modernization path has been largely influenced by the race riots of 1969, when the government recognized the need to empower the majority Malay community to overcome a deep-rooted resentment of being left behind in the modernization race. This led to the introduction of the New Economic Policy4 (NEP) with its stress on “fair and equal distribution of the wealth of the nation” (Manan 2000, p. 5). This government-led policy was a deliberate attempt — spread over a period of twenty years beginning in 1971 — to (a) make the Malay community less dependent on the traditional peasant economy and (b) make them entrepreneurs who would create a Malay business community. The ideology of the NEP was to

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legitimize Malay empowerment by differentiating Malays from non-Malays through an ethnic discourse using Islam, language, and culture as markers of Malay distinctiveness. The stated aim of the policy was to increase the Malay share of corporate capital from 2.4 per cent in 1970 to 30 per cent by 1990 (Goh 2002). Malaysia’s modernization drive is not based on rejecting tradition (as has been suggested by Western theorists, including Giddens [1990] cited in Goh [2002] and Barker [2004]), but rather on redefining tradition to fit into an urban setting. It is not globalization that is pushing Malaysia into modernization; in effect the battles that are occurring in the cities where Malaysians are struggling to “derive power, class and cultural status from their positions within the state’s modernising discourse practices” are shaping the concept of a modern developed society. This, argues Goh (2002, p. 185), provides a very unsettling notion of modernity: Despite the state’s greater power, a top-down vision/ meaning of modernity cannot be implemented. Local identities, conceptions of place and ways of life can and do resist the state’s vision of marker development and its supposedly concomitant socio-cultural forms, causing the state to continuously redefine its vision of modernity through ethnicity, class and urban space. The formation of the local, as seen from the bottom up, thus is not an attempt to leave behind old identities or to overcome the past by carving out an empty space for new identities. Rather, it is an attempt to juxtapose “old” and “new” identities. (Goh 2002, p. 185)

Manan (2000) agrees and notes that Vision 2020 is a “strange mix” of the “old” and the “new”. He points out that by

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attempting to establish a society that is “secure and developed”, “liberal”, “scientific”, “progressive”, “innovative”, “forwardlooking”, “prosperous”, “competitive”, “robust”, “dynamic”, and “resilient”, the Vision is actually promoting values that are “contemporary Western modes of thought” on modernizing a nation. Yet, by juxtaposing words such as “moral”, “ethical”, “religious”, and “spiritual”, the Vision seems to run counter to what it deems to be “modern”. The NEP and other development policies over three decades have to a very large extent dislocated and transformed the Malay peasant community. Manan (2000) maintains that the Vision has to “reconstruct (a new) Malay identity for the newly emerging Malay middle class, who are a product of the NEP”. Politics of Identity For most multiethnic nations, forging a common culture with a nationalistic framework is crucial to forming a national identity among its people. However, this very process of forging a national identity has often become a heated political issue. Malaysia, with its experience of the race riots of 1969 still fresh in its psyche, has trodden carefully in this respect. The politics of identity and modernity is very much interwoven with Malay identity, and, in turn, with the worldwide Islamic resurgence that has gained momentum since the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979. Peletz (2002) observes that Malaysia’s success in building a modern society in a mere generation while at the same time keeping its Islamic identity intact has drawn

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the attention of scholars worldwide who are interested in discourses on “Muslim modernities”. Of further interest is the degree to which the diverse organizations involved in Malaysia’s Islamic resurgence movement (the dakwah movement) are embroiled in struggles with different groups of national elites vis-à-vis the role, scope, and force of Islam in Malaysia’s modernity project. Journalist and political scientist Farish Noor (ABC 2002) argues that when the state attempts to use religion for political purposes, what results is a “statist interpretation of Islam, which links Islam to things like authority, power, rule of law, etc”. He notes that this aspect of religious politics is now present in Malaysia, where the more spiritual or mystical dimensions of Islam are lacking in today’s public discourse. When Islamic groups have tried to raise these issues, they have been “banned by the government, on the grounds that these are deviant forms of teaching”. Noor (2004) observes that since independence in 1957, Malaysia has been searching for its own sense of identity and, like most postcolonial societies of the late twentieth century, is currently experiencing a collective identity crisis. He argues that the postcolonial Malaysian state and its elites have been less inclined to accept or celebrate the multicultural past of the country, owning to the nature of radicalized politics in the country. The rise of political Islam in Malaysia has created an environment which has contributed to the narrowing of Malaysian identity along religio-cultural lines. Noor warns that, Today Malaysian cultural identity is increasingly defined in terms of an understanding of Malay

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identity that is narrow, puritan, closed and exclusive. Should these trends continue, they will undermine and ultimately diminish the shared cultural heritage of Malaysia, and the Malaysian people, whose traditional arts and crafts reflect this shared history when Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism could accommodate each other. (2004)

Noor (2004) points out, for example, how a system of politics of identity has been played out in the northern state of Kelantan, which has been ruled by the opposition Islamic Party of Malaysia (Parti Islam SeMalaysia [PAS])5 since 1990. The latter implemented a sustained campaign to ban all forms of art, culture and entertainment deemed “un-Islamic” or “immoral”. This ban was imposed not only on modern forms of popular culture like Western pop music but also on the state’s traditional arts, which go back to the pre-Islamic era, art forms such as shadow-puppet theatre, the traditional Malay mak yong and Manora dances, and even traditional pastimes like kite flying. All of these have been restricted by the PAS. The evolving power struggle at the national level between the governing United Malays National Organisation (UMNO)6 party and the PAS for the hearts and minds of the Malays has resulted in a sort of “arms race”, with each side shoring up their “Islamic credentials”. As Peletz (2002) notes, In such a religious and political climate the ruling party has to work overtime to validate its Islamic credentials — relegitimise the party and the state — and thus co-opt, or at least undercut, both the Islamic resurgents and the opposition party. This means going

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forward with its own far reaching, but, ultimately rather moderate Islamisation programme, which is simultaneously a consequence of both the dakwah phenomenon, and a key factor in its promotion along certain lines. This programme to “out-Islamicise” the opposition, which does at times have those qualities of an arms race.

When the stocks of the PAS started rising in 1992, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad started to retool ethnic identities in response to the country’s aspirations for modernity (Goh 2002). He introduced and popularized the use of the term Melayu Baru (the “New Malay”). The term refers to a Malay who has experienced both mental and cultural reformation and now possesses “a culture suitable to the modern period, capable of meeting all the challenges, able to compete without assistance, learned and knowledgeable, sophisticated, honest, disciplined, trustworthy and competent” (Khor 1995 cited in Goh 2002, p. 191). This cultural revamp of Malayness received added incentive when the then Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, whose supporters saw themselves as the “New Malays”, put themselves forward as the Wawasan (Vision) team during the 1993 UMNO party elections. Goh (2002, p. 191) argues that this “reworking of tradition … can be read as [an] expression of anxiety over the loss of tradition in the face of modernity”. After taking over office in November 2003 the country’s new Prime Minister, Abdullah Badawi, promoted the concept “Islam Hadhari” as the centrepiece of his administration’s ideology. “We can’t promise heaven. It is up to God. We can only work to become good Muslims” (cited in Sim 2004);

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this is his central message, one which sets out to carve a path for Malaysia as a progressive and liberal Islamic society. The basic vision of Islam Hadhari is the central unifying focus that Islam is a religion for development, that it is progressive, developed, dynamic, and capable of handling contemporary challenges. Badawi argues that Islam preaches moderation in all aspects of life and is an all-embracing politico/religious doctrine that modern Malaysia needs. This is in sharp contrast to the message of the PAS, which wants an Islamic state based on hudud.7 Because Islam Hadhari promotes a middle path, with the individual given the responsibility to build a more comprehensive understanding of religion, it also appeals to non-Muslim voters (Sim 2004). However, the unprecedented gains made by opposition parties in the March 2008 general elections dented Badawi’s influence and ultimately led to him stepping down from the premiership a year later. The new Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, on 3 April 2009, unveiled a new concept — One Malaysia — as a guiding principle to build a united and progressive Malaysian nation in the twenty-first century. The two cardinal principles of the One Malaysia concept is to inculcate the sprit and values of togetherness and a sense of belonging among Malaysians, regardless of race, religion, or creed. Najib also reiterated that he will make sure that the future policies formulated by the government will be focused on being people centric with the people’s interest at heart. He urged Malaysians of all walks of life to admit and accept the reality that Malaysia is a plural society. Thus he called on all Malaysians to treat diversity in a

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plural Malaysian society as impetus to progress to greater heights in the future. Role of the Media in Constructing Identity Benedict Anderson (1991) defines a nation as an “imagined political community”. Though not artificially manufactured or false, it is an idea or a feeling that is born out of an ideological construction. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, will never meet them, or even hear of them. Yet in the minds of each live the image of their communion. Anderson argues that communities are to be distinguished not by their falsity or genuineness but by the style in which they are imagined. This image is built by the mass media, which uses the medium to bring people together in order to build an image of togetherness. Anuar (2002) observes that after 1991 the government made a concerted effort to utilize the media, particularly television, to build the image of a Malay community that is urban and sophisticated. For example, in Malay teledramas, Malay characters by and large occupy roles that reflect a modern-day and industrial set-up of high standing. Basically this aims to depict a Malay community that is responsive to the government’s desire to build a successful commercial and industrial Malaysian community by the year 2020. Thus, many Malay characters are portrayed as corporate leaders, business people, entrepreneurs, insurance agents, fashion designers, and so forth. Music is also beginning to play an important role in building a modern Malay identity. Islamic nasyid music and

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more recently irama Malaysia music are two genres which are not only popular among young Malaysians but are also heavily promoted by the government. The government first promoted nasyid in the late 1980s (Tan 1990) through the state-controlled broadcaster Radio Television Malaysia (RTM). This music, which is not only Islamic but also Malay, was promoted by the government, which encouraged the organizing of nasyid contests at the state and national levels and had the national broadcaster telecast these programmes. Since the 1990s major recording companies and independent labels in Malaysia have been producing their own music video clips. These have been incorporated into locally produced MTV programmes such as MTV Syok (TV2), Muzik TV (TV1), and Bintang (NTV7). In addition, TV stations use these clips as fillers in between programmes. They are also consumed in other settings such as dance clubs, karaoke bars, at home (via VCDs), in coffee shops, and sometimes on shopping centre video screens. S.B. Tan (2003) notes that music video clips are also produced by RTM to promote government policies, to stir feelings of patriotism, to instil feelings of loyalty towards Malaysia, and to create a public awareness of the government’s new ideas and objectives. S.B. Tan (2003) observes that video clips of nasyid pop contain almost no narrative. Images conducive to prayer and meditation are arbitrarily employed in the song but not connected to the lyrics. Black and white segments are juxtaposed with coloured clips of singers lip-synching in continually changing settings: the singers often play the Malay rebana or kompang. Nasyid music video clips receive frequent airplay on television because the government wants

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to disseminate Islamic values to the people, and this is an ideal tool with which to do it. One good example of this formula is the nasyid video music clip “Sukur”, which was produced by Raihan in the mid-1990s. The album featuring “Sukur” sold over 600,000 copies, thus becoming the biggest selling recording album in Malaysia’s history (Seneviratne 1998). The clip was produced in black and white: the five artists wore the traditional white Malay dress comprising a Nehru-style long white shirt and slacks and a white skull cap. They only played the rebana while singing. Images of the singers were interspersed with those of Malay families reading the Qur’an to their children, praying, people giving money to beggars, young children helping the old to walk, men and children washing their feet before prayer, and other images which convey the Islamic message of family life, e.g., helping the poor and the elderly, observing cleanliness, and piety (see Chapter 3 for further discussion of the role of nasyid music). Compared to the above, few dangdut music videos are shown on Malaysian television, even though this genre of music also has a strong Malay flavour. S.B. Tan (2003, p. 99) points out that “in general, dangdut is considered ‘kampong music’ (village music), catering to the ‘lower class’, and is usually performed live at funfairs and weddings. The gyrating movements of the hips and sexy costumes are not considered ‘classy’. However, it contains ingredients for great dance music and has a big following in dance clubs and discos”. Contemporary nasyid groups like Raihan have become trendsetters in developing a modern Islamic pop culture in Malaysia. At the same time the new rhythms that they

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have introduced have created an appetite in the society for nasyid singing, which was earlier confined to the mosques and considered non-attractive or “non-digestable” (Baharin and Jamaludin 2004). Othman (2002) notes that there is a common view among Malaysian masses that local music is not as appetizing as music from outside, especially from the Anglo-American popular music culture. He claims that one of the major factors contributing to this perception is the role of the media, which guides local music tastes so that music coming from the West is seen as more universal. The rise of the local musical genre irama Malaysia over recent years may seem to go against this trend. Othman writes, however, that the genre is not exempted from this phenomenon: Although the term Irama strictly refers to the rhythmic style of a music, it is now used freely to imply an overall music style. Musically, reference to an irama of the Malay would make more sense rather than reference to an irama of a Malaysian, which in a pure sense does not exist. Ironically, instead of strengthening the local centre as implied by the synthetic labelling of “irama Malaysia”, the significance of the act indicates otherwise. Furthermore, the reference to “irama Malaysia” is a reference made to an association that purely does not exist. (2002, p. 81)

Siti Nurhaliza, who is recognized as the richest performing artist in Malaysia, is credited with having introduced and popularized irama Malaysia music. Her clean girl-next-door image and her good looks, accompanied by the musical genius of leading composer Suhaimi Zain (better known as Pak Ngah), have together catapulted her to stardom,

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albeit with considerable assistance from the Malaysian media, both television and radio, which give ample airtime to her songs. As S.B. Tan (2003) notes, irama Malaysia is essentially a genre of Malay pop music which has absorbed the essence of the old into a new form. As Malay social dance music forms the core of this music (often in stage and television presentations), background dancers dressed in traditional Malay costumes performing stylized choreographed versions of the dances are featured. This has great appeal for young Malaysian audiences, “who have found the lively rhythms” exotic. Tan argues that irama Malaysia video clips enjoy airplay on primetime television because, They are in line with the government’s policy to encourage local music programmes and to promote Malay culture along the lines of the National Cultural Policy (1970). However, it should be stressed that interest in such folk-Malay music is still minimal especially among the younger generation, which seems to be more interested in mainstream Malay or AngloAmerican pop. (2003, p. 102)

Modernity and Cultural Identity The marriage of modern media technology, traditional culture, and modern marketing techniques with the selling of a cultural identity or idea — such as nasyid music (which I discuss in Chapter 3) — in Malaysia’s modernizing project, raises the question of whether or not the Euro-American pattern of modernity is universal after all.

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Goh (2002, p. 209) discusses the Malaysian experience of conceptualizing modernity in the following: The Malaysian experience of modernity indicates that the changing notions of the nation, ethnicity, and class can be central sites for the very rethinking of modernity, and the idea of the modern. … Malaysian experience not only unsettles the idea and the category of modern but also highlights conflicting principles of modernity, which force us to go beyond the logic of capitalist development and instrumental rationality in conceptualising modernity.

While on one hand some people may argue that Islamization of Malaysian society under the banner of Bangsa Malaysia has gone too far, others — like the PAS and its supporters — would say that Islamization has not gone nearly far enough. Mowlana contends that modernization movements in Islamic societies over the past one hundred years have failed in part because they have been unable to elaborate a coherent doctrine based on the unity of spiritual and temporal powers, the interconnection of what is known as civil society and the state. He further contends that “under the ‘ummah’,8 race is not accepted as a foundation of the state. Values follow piety: the social system is based on equity, justice and the ownership of the people. There is no individual or class of individuals to dominate, exploit, or corrupt the state” (1996, p. 123). Jamaluddin (2003) argues that although it is a Muslim nation, there is a lot of difference between Malaysia and the Muslim nations in the Arab world. Malaysia is embarking

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upon a journey to transform itself into a developed nation that is knowledge-based: “The success of modern Malaysia in building a vibrant economy and a cohesive national identity from a patchwork of cultures has shown that Islam guides its believers towards knowledge, progress, tolerance, good governance, the promotion of human dignity and global justice.” Jamaluddin writes that Malaysia has achieved all of these “not in spite of but because we are a Muslim nation”. He goes on to argue: We have eschewed a literalist and obscurantist understanding of Islam — which focuses exclusively on the prohibitive and punitive aspects — for a progressive orientation that does not merely give primacy to the black letter but also to the broader objectives [of the] Sharia’s9 laws that guide such fields as justice, welfare and equality…. It is this understanding of Islam — at once able to meet the demands of modernity as well as providing a spiritual bulwark against avarice, depravity and anomie — that has underpinned Malaysia’s success. (2003)

However, Jamaluddin (2003) suggests that there are reasons to be unnerved as well because there are signs that this progressive understanding of Islam in Malaysia is under threat. Political Islam is taking advantage of heightened religious consciousness to convince Muslims that the state of affairs in the country is anathema to the “authentic” vision of Islam. In the next chapter, how young people are responding to the appeal of liberal modern Islam through the medium of music will be discussed with a comprehensive analysis

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of the role of nasyid music in forming modern Islamic identities in Malaysia. Indonesia Developing Post-independence Identity Indonesia, the largest archipelago in the world, stretches across the equator between two oceans (Pacific and Indian) and two continents (Asia and Australia). It consists of five major islands (Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Papua) and thirty smaller islands (including Bali and Timor) and archipelagos. In total there are 17,508 islands, of which around 6,000 are uninhabited. Indonesia’s total area is 5,193,250 square kilometres, but more than half of this is water. Its land territory is 2,027,087 square kilometres. It is the world’s fourth largest nation, with a population of 203 million people.10 It is also fast becoming the world’s third largest democracy. Most importantly, despite the fact that Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country, it is not an officially declared Islamic state. Indonesia’s national ideology is the Pancasila, a word derived from the ancient Indian Pali language in which pancha means five and sila means (moral) principles. In Buddhist teachings Pancasila forms the very essence of Buddhist daily life: it describes the five moral principles (code of ethics) that Buddhists should practice in everyday life. However, the Indonesian version of Pancasila differs from this in that it refers to the ideology of a nation and not to the moral principles of the everyday lived reality of an individual.

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The Pancasila was adopted in 1945 by Indonesia’s first post-independence (from Dutch rule) government after much debate between the various communities that constitute the huge nation. Many Islamic clerics and proIslamic politicians argued for the adoption of the Islamic Sharia Law. But finally, Indonesia’s first President (Sukarno) decided to adopt a secular state ideology because the new nation needed an ideology that would unite the archipelago’s diverse ethnic peoples. The newly adopted ideology was announced in a speech known as “The Birth of the Pancasila”, which was delivered by President Sukarno to the Independence Preparatory Committee on 1 June 1945. The 1945 Constitution set forth the Pancasila as the embodiment of basic principles of an independent Indonesian state. Five Principles of the Pancasila11 (1) Belief in the one and only God (Ketuhanan yang Maha Esa) This principle reaffirms the Indonesian people’s belief that God does exist. It also implies that the Indonesian people believe in life after death. It emphasizes that the pursuit of sacred values will lead the people to a better life in the hereafter. The principle, which is embodied in the 1945 Constitution, reads: “The state shall be based on the belief in the one and only God”. (2) Just and civilized humanity (Kemanusiaan yang Adil dan Beradab) This principle requires that human beings be treated with due respect to their dignity as God’s creatures. It emphasizes that the Indonesian people do not tolerate

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physical or spiritual oppression of human beings by their own people or by any other nation. (3) The unity of Indonesia (Persatuan Indonesia) This principle embodies the concept of nationalism, of love for one’s nation and motherland. It envisages the need to always foster national unity and integrity. Pancasila nationalism demands that Indonesians avoid feelings of superiority on the grounds of ethnicity, for reasons of ancestry and skin colour. In 1928 Indonesian youth pledged to have one country, one nation and one language, while the Indonesian coat of arms enshrines the symbol of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, which means “unity in diversity”. (4) Democracy guided by the inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations amongst representatives (Kerakyatan yang Dipimpin oleh Hikmat Kebijaksanaan dalam Permusyawataran/ Perwakilan) Pancasila democracy calls for decision-making through deliberation (musyawarah) to reach a consensus (mufakat). It is democracy that lives up to the principles of Pancasila. This implies that democratic right must always be exercised with a deep sense of responsibility to God according to one’s own conviction and religious belief, with respect for humanitarian values of man’s dignity and integrity and with a view to preserving and strengthening national unity and the pursuit of social justice. (5) Social justice for the whole of the people of Indonesia (Keadilan Sosial bagi Seluruh Rakyat Indonesia) This principle calls for the equitable spread of welfare to the entire population, not in a static but in a dynamic and progressive way. This means that all of the country’s

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natural resources and national potentials should be utilized for the greatest possible good and happiness of the people. Social justice implies protection of the weak. But protection should not deny them work. On the contrary, they should work according to their abilities and fields of activity. Protection should prevent wilful treatment by the strong and ensure the rule of justice.

The move towards the adoption of Indonesia’s Pancasila ideology began in October 1908 during the Congress of Young Java held in Yogyakarta when a long list of development programmes were presented, designed to elevate the welfare of the common people. Soon a number of organizations across Java and Sumatra took advantage of the momentum to campaign for a collective identity transcending cultural and ethnic boundaries. This period leading up to independence in 1945 came to be known as the “national awakening” era. A second congress in 1928 adopted the slogan “One Race, One Language, One Nation”. This led to the choice of Bahasa Indonesia as the national language, a language derived from Malay, meant to enhance the homogeneity of the people by providing a medium of communication to facilitate the process of integration. The state sought to create a common “marketplace of ideas” by eliminating the language barrier (Sanyoto 2006). As mentioned in Chapter 1, before the arrival of Islam in Indonesia the archipelago was host to thriving Hindu and Buddhist civilizations, which left their mark on Indonesia’s

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cultural expressions, customs, and arts. These influences were strongest in Sumatra, Java, and Bali. The latter, which is still predominantly Hindu, is world famous for its colourful Hindu festivals and rituals. According to historical records many centuries passed before the first Muslim traders arrived in the thirteenth century to establish an Islamic kingdom. Brakel (2004) writes that the long period of time it took for Islam to establish itself in present-day Indonesia is related to developments in India, from where both the Hindu and Buddhist religions and cultural influences arrived. It was only after Islam established supremacy in Gujarat and Bengal (in India) over Hinduism, and the destruction of the great Buddhist University of Nalanda (in Bihar, India), that the important Sumatran state of Sriwijaya — a bastion of Buddhist civilization — succumbed to Islam. Brakel contends that competition with Portuguese spice traders in the sixteenth century played an essential role in the spread of Islam over a large part of the archipelago. The fall of the last great Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagaran in South India contributed to the establishment of Islam in Java. Brakel (2004, p. 9) further observes that the great Asian religions of Hinduism and Buddhism have shown “syncretising tendencies”. On the one hand both religions have had to come to terms with Indonesia’s indigenous religions, while on the other both have merged to a great extent or formed coalitions, mainly in Java and Bali. Thus, what has been maintained is not so much the belief systems of the ancient religions but rather the traditional systems of formalized social conduct and patterns of behaviour. Brakel has divided Indonesian Islam into three categories:

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• Islam was been able to assert itself more intensively in the ancient trade centres along the coast, where the ground had already been prepared by MahayanaBuddhist concepts. • In the ancient Shivaite centres of Central and East Java its reception was only partially successful, while in Bali it failed almost completely. • In the inaccessible regions of the interior, where the population lived in primitive conditions and remained largely out of contact with the great Indian religions, Islam was initially even less successful. It was not until the Dutch expanded their authority into these regions in the course of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century that Islam could make real progress there, albeit in strong competition with Christianity. In many parts of Indonesia today, especially in the main islands of Java and Sumatra, the contemporary indigenous arts and music culture are still dominated by ancient Indian cultural influences or the “indigenes” ancestral culture, which sometimes could be deemed contrary to Islamic values. As Brakel (2004, p. 10) notes, “there is a continual battle between Islamic rules (sharia) and hereditary customs. While the latter usually win in practice, the sharia, having an idealistic, theoretical orientation, does not give up its generally acknowledged superiority. Accordingly, the Islamic scholars (ulama) frequently disapprove of and attack the continuation of ancient cultural elements (including music, dance, etc.)” (see further discussion of this perceived clash of practices in Chapters 3, 4, and 6).

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Politics of Identity In the Indonesian context the politics of identity often takes a religious slant because of the historical factors discussed above, where Hindu and Buddhist cultural practices have been absorbed into Indonesian contemporary culture, which today is mainly divorced from its religious practices. This creates an interesting cultural phenomenon. It may be that Western cultural theories are not sufficiently appropriate to explore all of its complexities, a question I will address later in other chapters. In the reformasi12 era, which saw the spread of separatist movements in Aceh, West Papua, Kalimantan, and the Riau province, the sovereignty and unity of the Republic of Indonesia has come under threat, with a renewed attempt by the state to redefine the concept of Pancasila. But it is language, music, and arts that tend to bind this diverse country together, though not without tension and controversy. In early 2006 the battle to get an anti-pornographic bill passed by parliament clearly demonstrated this tension between liberal and religious/ethnic minority groups on the one hand and the conservative Muslims on the other (refer to Chapters 3 and 4 for further discussion). Anderson (2001b) argues that Indonesia has been extraordinarily lucky to have produced a person of the calibre of Sukarno who, “whatever his weaknesses (and there are indeed a great many), was in many ways the person most responsible, by his tireless rhetoric and by his commitment, in fact, to the national idea of solidarity of Indonesians as people: … (he) brought into being the reality

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of Indonesian nationalism, which remains a powerful force even till today”. Anderson (1999, p. 3) describes this Indonesian nationalism as a “common project” that arises “when in a certain physical territory, the inhabitants begin to feel that they share a common destiny, a common future”, which could arise suddenly in one generation. The form of nationalism that Sukarno rekindled, he suggests, was born in the preindependence era when various youth groups were formed with their orientations towards the future and not the past. Anderson gives a good example of how Indonesian nationalism became a project of the future rather than a project rooted in the past, stressing the fact that Bahasa Indonesia, which forms the main ingredient of Indonesian nationalism today, was a product of Dutch colonial miscalculation: In the Dutch East Indies, the colonial government, too uncertain of the world-value of [the] Dutch [language], and too miserly to spend the money needed to spread Dutch through the huge archipelago, worked through a standardised form of the islands’ old lingua franca, Malay. By [the] late 1920s, Indonesian nationalists had decided that this language, now to be called Indonesian, was the true national language; after that many big languages like Javanese, Sudanese, Madurese and Buginese were turned into mere regional languages, though they are mostly older than Malay, and some have literary traditions much more impressive than Malay’s. (2001a, p. 41)

Subono (2005), questioning the basis of Indonesia’s national identity, argues that it is based on multiple bases

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founded on the spirit of anti-colonialism and independence. With ethnic and sectarian conflicts popping up almost everywhere in the country, he further argues that citizens have multiple loyalties, e.g., to family, fraternity, political associations, religion, locality, ethnic or linguistic groups, and the nation as a whole. Thus, from the beginning it has not been a homogenous state but perhaps a “multinational state”. “Therefore, it isn’t wrong for some people to call the existing Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI) a quasi-state, a ‘common awareness’ kept alive by a centralised power. Without it, NKRI would have fallen apart” (Subono 2005, p. 29). Cultural Tools Employed in the Building of Identity With such a vast territory and its variety of islands, peoples, and cultural traditions, Indonesia is rich in artistic forms of expression. But the following question must be posed: Which among these cultural tools are universally accepted across Indonesia as forms of “Indonesian cultural expression”? Budhisantoso (1996) contends that the founding fathers of the Indonesian Republic were fully aware of the need for a national culture as a unifying force in the pluralistic society of Indonesia. This awareness is reflected in Paragraph 32 of the National Constitution, which declares that the national culture will be based on the “old and genuine” cultures, which are manifested in the paramount cultures of the region. These paramount cultures of the region, according to Budhisantoso, were “discovered and formulated” by

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the Founding Fathers of the Nation in the form of the Pancasila. Budhisantoso (1996) emphasizes that this formal acceptance by itself does not constitute a national culture. It has to be implemented and institutionalized in the daily life and socio-political and economic activities of the nation. It also needs to facilitate “intense inter-ethnic and regional social interactions”. He observes that while the plurality of the society and the heterogeneous cultures of Indonesia are formally considered a great national asset, in the implementation of a national culture this often creates problems, because local communities tend to interpret national culture in accordance with their ethnic and regional cultures. Sometimes in these ethnic and regional cultural communities the government’s promotion of a national culture may be seen as an attempt to Javanize or Islamize the national culture. The National Constitution, Budhisantoso (1996) points out, recognizes three categories of national culture: the ethnic culture, the local cultures of some regions and provinces known as pasar cultures, and the “National Culture”, which has been developed since independence. While these three categories of national culture have their own function and social arena, the government makes its own interpretation and acts to facilitate and direct the development of national culture. Writing before the fall of Soeharto in 1998, Budhisantoso insisted that promoting a strong cultural identity in a nation with a plural society “needs a responsive freedom to facilitate the people to interpret and implement the values into daily life activities”. Budianta (2000) argues that the economic crisis of 1997/98 led to a serious cultural identity crisis as the

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boundaries that separated the “imagined community” of a nation state from external global forces, along with the internal cohesion of the plural ethnic and regional communities that make the nation state, began to disintegrate. She argues further that during the New Order regime of Soeharto, the “politics of repression that were cloaked under the guise of harmony and tolerance” (2000, p. 112) with Pancasila, were thought to be the recipe for success in maintaining social cohesion and peace. They helped to maintain political stability, with the New Order cultural policy following the logic of capitalism by treating culture as a commodity or as unchanging token of traditional values, while at the same time masking or denying its ideological and political features. Anderson observes modern day cultural identity thus: What has happened in effect is that though there are countless traces of the past around us — monuments, temples, written records, tombs, artifacts, and so on — this past is increasingly inaccessible, external to us. At the same time, for all kinds of reasons, we feel we need it, if only as some sort of anchor. But this means that our relationship to the past is today far more political, ideological, contested, fragmentary, and even opportunistic than in ages gone by. (2001a, p. 38)

Anderson’s observation reflects very much the situation in Indonesia today. With much of its glorious cultural past rooted in both Hindu and Buddhist civilizations, problems arise when identifying it with the contemporary Islamic culture of the majority of the people. It is interesting to note that Indonesia’s contemporary artistic cultural tools are very much rooted in these (Hindu in particular) cultures, the

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arts which identify Indonesia with the international tourist market today. As Budianta (2000) suggests, in the Year of Arts and Culture, which was celebrated in 1998, one of the cultural tools used in a mass media campaign to promote Indonesian traditional arts was wayang shadow puppetry, an art form imported from India many centuries ago. In one of the television advertisements, the caption, which ran across the shadow puppets read: “He [Michael Jackson] is rich in style. We [wayang shadow puppet] are rich in culture”. The advertisement, which was designed to convey to youngsters that Indonesia is rich in culture and there is no need to ape Western culture, included a wayang puppet imitating Jackson’s famous “crotch covering” pose. During the year wayang puppetry and theatre from Java was used extensively to promote the following message: “One day our cultural heritage can save the dignity of our nation” (Budianta 2000, p. 115). The plot of a wayang orang play usually reflects a storyline where the protagonist inevitably triumphs over the giant. In the context of the arts and cultural year campaign, this was designed to spread the message that “our rich culture” could overcome the onslaught of Western globalized culture. As Budianta observes, this alludes to, The glorification of cultural heritage, based on an essentialist notion of culture as ideal values to be excavated from the archeological past and to be sanctified and preserved as a normative structure. Within the sanctification of ideal norms is the preservation of traditional art forms as the highest artistic expression of the nation. The second is the commodification of the

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arts and culture with an additional bonus. By reducing arts and culture to marketable goods, it represses the function of art to voice social criticism, to be the conscience of the nation, that is, its “subversive” potential. (2000, p. 116)

The Role of Media and Music in Constructing Identity Music, and its representation in the media, has played an important role in the construction of Indonesian cultural identity for the greater part of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. In the post-independence era this process has gone through three distinct stages, from (1) Sukarno’s banning of Western music in the media after independence, to (2) Soeharto’s covert encouragement of Western music as part of the modernization process, to (3) the mushrooming of commercial private broadcast media since 1989 creating a free-for-all environment wherein local and Western music competed for listeners/viewers. During the Old Order regime of Sukarno (1945–66), heavy restrictions were placed on the broadcasting of music, with most Western pop music forbidden. With the development of Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI)13 as the national radio network, the state recording company Lokananta was established, with both under the control of the Department of Information. The type of music Lokananta recorded and RRI broadcast was government sanctioned with the intention of creating a “respectable” cultural identity. For example, dangdut music, which has a lower-class image, was omitted from its programming (Lindsay 1997).

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When private radio stations arrived in the 1960s there was no regulation in place to control them. By the 1970s all radio stations were required to register as private businesses; their programme formats (news was not allowed to be broadcast by private radio) had to comply with the Pancasila ideology. Private radio from its very beginning had been locally focused because stations were not allowed to compete with RRI at the national level. This helped radio to become a tool in the promotion of local culture and identities. While legislation required the language of the broadcasts to be “good” Indonesian, if accompanied by local cultural programmes they were able to use the local (regional) language (Lindsay 1997). When FM radio arrived in the 1990s the private radio industry in Indonesia became a “rich resource for the study of social change and the changing images of regional identity” (Lindsay 1997, p. 123). Many of the urban FM stations, especially those in Jakarta aiming for an upper-class audience, concentrated more on Western music as an image building exercise in the concept of modernity. Stations that catered for the lower-middle and lower-class audiences opted for local music, especially dangdut, which is very popular with the aforementioned classes of people. Sen (2003) noted that the Broadcast Bill enacted in 1997 reiterated that radio broadcasts are always restricted to the vicinity of radio stations, thus ensuring its localization. It has thus helped to keep the commercial potential of radio relatively low, keeping it out of the hands of big business and radio has also become embedded more with the local communities.

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In July 2004, whilst listening to local radio in Jakarta over a five hour period, I noted that most of the FM stations, which are geared towards youth audiences, were playing Western music. The presentation was in Bahasa Indonesia with the occasional insertion of English words. Ade Armando,14 a member of the Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia (the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission [KPI]), stated that, “Radio stations in Indonesia are agents of westernization in urban areas”. He added that the winds of change that accompanied the overthrow of the Soeharto regime and the disbanding of the Department of Information15 have meant that the government now has a minimum role in “developing our culture”. Even though record sales of local musicians are higher than those imported from the West, he believes that Western pop icons such as Michael Jackson are gaining in popularity among the elites in Indonesia. Armando observed that the first task for the KPI is to draw up regulations to “clean up garbage from the air”, such as sexual content and violence. Later they could regulate and promote “healthy content on air” to protect and nurture the local culture and identity. Anton Wahyudi16 the music director of Prambors Radio, a popular youth-oriented FM radio station in Jakarta, stated that most youngsters in Jakarta have been Western-minded in their taste in music and fashion for almost thirty years. But now that is changing. With the growth of local pop bands and musicians, many young people from urban areas are now beginning to listen to local artists and to attend their concerts. Multinational recording companies and MTV are trying to promote Western musicians by getting air-play for their songs regularly on Indonesian radio. However,

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nowadays Wahyudi receives many good recordings from local artists to whom he gives air-time. The station has special programme slots for broadcasting Indie-Music (locally recorded music). “We are the local media, we have to stand up for something” Wahyudi insisted. “For the last five years, we put only one Indonesian song in one hour, now we have more Indonesian songs.” Jurriens (2002) argues that since the fall of Soeharto four major developments have taken place in the Indonesian radio scene. These are (1) the production of news by commercial stations, (2) the rise of community radio, (3) training and production activities of non-government radio news agencies, and (4) attempts to transform government radio into genuine public radio. These have resulted in the birth of community radio stations across the country, as well as more news-oriented programmes such as talk radio. Suryadi (2005, p. 132) says, In the era of Reformasi Indonesian radio has been flourishing, expanding and diversifying in terms of variety, technology, programming and ownership. This development is reflected in the variety of broadcasts that have arisen: radio komunitas (community radio), radio anak kampung (village peoples’ radio), radio satelit (satellite radio), radio wong cilik (common people’s radio), radio siaran (broadcast radio), radio pemda (the regional government radio), radio internet, radio digital, radio mahasiswa (student radio), etc.

Suryadi (2005) also observed that most of the new radio stations established in the provinces since the beginning of reformasi are broadcasting programmes with local nuances.

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In a study conducted in the Riau province he found that community groups have created various new genres using electronic media, “which evoke new feelings towards local culture” (2005, p. 151). When the era of private television dawned in Indonesia in 1990, the government set guidelines for the “domestic” and “foreign” content on air at seventy per cent domestic and thirty per cent foreign. From a legal standpoint, all shows produced (filmed) in Indonesia were deemed “domestic” and anything imported “foreign”. But the legislation did not distinguish between shows that presented indigenous expressive forms and those that presented imitations of foreign (Western) forms (Sutton 2002). Indonesia’s premier private channel RCTI initiated a regular programme series called Dua Warna (Two Colours) in 1996, where local musicians were presented representing a wide genre of Indonesian traditional and popular music. Sutton (2002, p. 21) observes that this programme was neither “international” nor “Western”; rather, it adopted a formula drawing on Indonesian regional musical elements to create a “hybrid that is self-consciously ‘less Western’ than most Indonesian popular music”. He argues that it was an attempt to use television to create an Indonesian musical identity in a new and fresh way as opposed to recycling tradition. While many Indonesians have said it was a successful attempt at creating a new Indonesian musical identity, Sutton argues that what was presented was a Western pop music style of presentation of Indonesian traditional music genres. Since the arrival of VCDs in the 1990s, as Barendregt and van Zanten (2002) observed, the impact of VCDs on the music industry has been expanding rapidly. Initially

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the images in the VCDs of popular regional songs had natural scenery such as rivers and mountains, traditional dancing girls, young men and women in jeans and skirts, predominantly catering to urban audiences. But, when the technology became more affordable for the masses, they found that VCD karaoke was becoming very popular among mass consumers and it became big business, where erotic images are a very important element in almost all of them, with the lyrics focusing on love. In most pop videos the erotic images are produced mainly by actors and not the singer. On almost all VCDs, regional or national, young women and men touch each other, though less closely and more briefly on regional ones. On some VCDs, the women are filmed very much in close-up, intimately, like on the VCD Cici Faramida (1999), where Cici Faramida’s mouth is often shown in close-up…. None of the VCDs we analysed showed a couple kissing although it is suggested a few times. (Barendregt and van Zanten 2002, p. 91)

Though music VCDs predated MTV, when MTV arrived in Indonesia in 1995 via an agreement with the private channel Anteve (ANTV) to broadcast five to six hours of MTV programmes on their terrestrial channel, it was feared that Western pop culture would take Indonesia by storm. By 1998 MTV was claiming that they were reaching fifty per cent of Indonesian “young adults” (Sutton 2002). Fears of a cultural onslaught on young Indonesians were further fuelled when MTV ditched the contract with Anteve in 2002 and launched MTV Indonesia, signing a new agreement

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with local private channel Global TV. This channel was launched in June 2002 as a twenty-four-hour terrestrial channel broadcasting to Jakarta, Bandung, and a number of other cities, with a potential audience of some thirteen million viewers. But as Santana (2003) observes of MTV Indonesia, One of the audience’s favourite shows is MTV Dangdut, which presents Indonesia’s most popular traditional music. MTV aired the show as a gesture of appreciation for local culture. Ironically, dangdut has long been unpopular in Indonesia’s music industry. It was only when MTV dared to air the programme that local audiences began to appreciate the music. Young people, who had never been interested in music like dangdut before, suddenly began seeing it as cool, thanks to MTV’s generation Y-friendly approach.

In a conversation with MTV Indonesia executives in Jakarta in August 1998, Sutton (2002) was told that MTV was simply not a suitable vehicle for dangdut. “Though frequently broadcast on other stations, particularly TPI and SCTV,17 dangdut’s lingering association with disenfranchised Indonesians, mostly lower class, and its sometimes overt Muslim messages were viewed by MTV decision makers as reason to avoid the genre altogether” (Sutton 2000, p. 11). Lesley Desker,18 the content manager of MTV Indonesia, said that they screen an hour-long programme of dangdut music each day on the channel. She insists that Indonesians see dangdut as their music; thus in order to be a part of the music industry in Indonesia, MTV has to play dangdut. She explained their reasons for this: “What we are trying

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to do is to make it as appealing as possible. There is this class consciousness that is placed on this type of music. I don’t know if we have been successful in trying to break it, but it has become part and parcel of who we are at MTV Indonesia” (Desker 2004). Herdi Hidayat,19 producer of the high-rating Digoda Dangdut show on TransTV in Jakarta, claims that dangdut has today become the most popular music in the country because of the boom in private television, which began in the early 1990s: “They were trying to find a strategy to get audiences, 75 per cent of whom are middle (class) downwards.… TransTV try to reach this audience by presenting dangdut in a creative way, where setting up of costumes, stages, dances, reflects a middle (class) upwards taste” (Hidayat 2005). S.K. Ishadi (2006), president director of TransTV observes that the Broadcasting Act No. 32 of 2004 obligates the development of local television to be implemented carefully, so that concrete steps may be taken to build local capacity for regional and national television with the intention that they may compete with global television coming into the country. “Local attraction based on traditional culture and regional fare demand the existence of local television. Local television must therefore try to produce good quality programmes to equal national and global television” (Ishadi 2006, p. 10). Modernity and Cultural Identity In promoting an indigenous form of cultural identity, especially for the modern urban youth, the packaging of

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the message is very important. With Indonesia opening up rapidly to global media penetration, and with limited funds at its disposal, the challenge to counter this globalized cultural onslaught appears formidable. Until the advent of the 2002 Broadcasting Act, the media industry in Indonesia was one of the most protected industries in the country. But, since the 1997 economic crisis, which basically bankrupted many local private stations, TV broadcasters have been pushing the government to allow foreign investors to enter the market to help resuscitate it. With a hundred million plus audience market, they believe that the TV industry will be very attractive to foreign investors (Asmara 2001). In accordance with the new act, foreign investors can own up to twenty per cent of shares in local television stations. In September 2005 Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought a twenty per cent share of ANTV. As Haryanto (2005) observes, the new act takes exactly the opposite view to that taken in 1994, when the then Minister of Information (Harmoko) refused foreign investment in the local TV industry, to protect “local and national culture”. Haryanto claims there are no guidelines in the current regulations on how foreign investments in the local television industry could be guided to protect local and national culture. A media regulatory body like the KPI may soon have to step in here. Murdoch and his empire are famous for their entertainment kingdom, together with its right-leaning TV Channel, Fox News. Many predict that more entertainment content will feature in ANTV rather than serious or informational content. For Murdoch,

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the important thing is to sell and for that we cannot hope that Murdoch will provide us with insightful and intelligent programmes. (Haryanto 2005)

In recent years fierce rivalries have been building up among television broadcasters concomitant with the rapid growth of the industry. This has also led to accusations of a lack of ethics in the media and a proliferation of cheap controversial talk shows and entertainment programmes featuring raunchy singers and sexy “erotic” dancers, designed to increase ratings. In June 2003 then Vice-President Hamzah Haz, addressing an Islamic gathering, lambasted local private television shows, describing them as “indecent programmes exploiting sexuality”. His comments were echoed by the State Minister for Communication and Information Syamsul Mu’arif, who criticized both print and television media, and TV in particular, for going overboard, i.e., showing “pornographic” programmes (Sasdi 2003). There has been growing debate about the impact of television on local cultural identities and whether modernization means erotic, sexy, and semi-pornographic entertainment on television. This led to the presentation of an anti-pornography bill to parliament in early 2006 (refer also to Chapters 3, 4, and 6). In the words of Armando, This bill is very important not only to stop real (hardcore) porn reaching the public, but also to enable regulation of elements of porn in the common media. Regulations should be directed at how it is distributed. The problem with the bill, in its present form, is that it wants to ban not only sexually arousing material

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in the media but also sexually arousing behaviour in public such as kissing and the dress (of women). (Ade Armando, cited in Seneviratne 2006)

While Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country, its traditional arts have a very strong element of liberal Hindu and Buddhist value components, since many parts of the archipelago supported thriving Hindu and later Buddhist civilizations before the arrival of Islam. For this reason artists have been at the forefront of opposition to the bill. They fear that the wealth of rich and colourful art forms will vanish from public view if the anti-pornography bill is passed in its present form. On 21 May 2006 over 100,000 people representing the country’s largest Muslim organizations — Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah20 — marched towards the national parliament to show their support for the anti-pornography bill. They handed over a petition to the Speaker of the House, calling for the bill to be passed without delay. However, many liberal Muslims want it watered down to protect some of the traditional arts and freedom of cultural expression. In October 2008 Indonesia’s parliament passed the anti-pornography law despite furious opposition to it. Islamic parties said the law was needed to protect women and children against exploitation and to curb increasing immorality in Indonesian society. The law would ban images, gestures, or talk deemed to be pornographic. Artists, women’s groups, and non-Muslim minorities said they could be victimized under the law and that traditional practices could be banned. Despite a lengthy and exhaustive revision

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process, which watered down the bill, more than a hundred legislators walked out of parliament before the vote. They said the bill’s definition of pornography was too broad and that it went against Indonesia’s tradition of diversity.21 The politics of culture and modernization that are being played out within the debate surrounding the antipornography bill is reflective of the changing social conditions in the country, wherein an urban middle class with liberal consumerist values is rapidly expanding. Gerke (2000) observes that before the 1997 economic crisis there was evidence of an emerging middle class striving for a consumption-oriented lifestyle, with modern leisure that included shopping, sports, travel, and watching Western movies. Consumerism was a cultural practice which impacted their lives, enticing them to surround themselves with all kinds of “discretionary” consumption goods that symbolize “modernity” and an urban lifestyle. Members of this class tended to judge each other by lifestyle indicators of collective identities, which included both their behaviour and the lifestyle goods they buy and wear. Typical in its formation, the culture of the “new middle class” is one marked by an ongoing attempt to demarcate itself against the lower strata of the society. Its formation is thus bounded in a complex process of distancing itself from the poor “Other”. In Indonesia, the “new middle class” was in the strategic social position to construct hierarchies via the creation and promotion of a “modern” lifestyle through consumption … as elsewhere in the contemporary world, lifestyle identification was engendered by the media industry that continued to boom … [up until] the end of the 1980s. (Gerke 2000, p. 145)

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Even before the 1997 economic crash, observed Gerke (2000), only a small proportion of the “new middle class” was able to afford a Western or urbanized lifestyle. They chose instead to spend hours with their families in upmarket shopping malls, eating in places like McDonalds or Pizza Hut, drinking Coke or milkshakes with a burger. The youth population was especially susceptible to media-induced dreams that inspired them to participate in this new lifestyle, part of which was the wearing of branded goods. Gerke (2000, p. 148) also observes that education was another element of lifestyling, where “knowledge was not adapted to local conditions but adopted from outside with English or ‘Indonenglish’ terminology used throughout”. This taste for an “Indonenglish” urban lifestyle is promoted in the main through radio (through “upmarket” stations in cities like Jakarta), mainly listened to by the urban upper middle class, according to a leading Jakarta publisher (personal interview, 2004). He claimed that MTV, along with these radio stations, has been able to build a huge following for Western music, that it is easy for a concert organizer to invite “a third-class Western musician and make sure they will get business”. He added that since the reformasi era began in 1998, people are allergic to any government intervention in controlling media content to protect local cultural identities or values. The president of a leading Islamic university in Indonesia (personal interview, 2005) said that he sees no problem with the playing of English songs on Indonesian radio. He further suggested that because learning English is very popular in Indonesia, many people listen to English songs to learn the language. And since Indonesian songs are very popular with most youth in the country, he does not think

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that their musical tastes could be changed to any great degree by listening to English language songs. But the head of a mass communication training institute (personal interview, 2004) argued that although it is good to listen to English songs on radio and to appreciate the English language, it is not an appropriate venue through which to learn more about Indonesia’s own culture. He would prefer English songs to be played on stations on which the DJs speak the English language and not Bahasa Indonesia. Two radio station executives to whom I spoke, one from Bandung (in Java) and the other from Batam (an island in Riau province close to Singapore), explained how they position their programming to cater for an uppermiddle-class audience by using the English language. In Bandung the programming manager (personal interview, 2004) said that the radio station uses Western jazz music to appeal to this “upmarket” audience. But the DJs speak on air in Bahasa Indonesia, and their news bulletins carry an Islamic perspective because the station is owned by a Muslim businessman. The music director of the Batam station (personal communication, 2004) stated that they chose Bahasa Indonesia (presentation) and English songs to reach a “middle up audience”. She said that even though they organize dangdut concerts for bands from Jakarta, because there is a large population of factory workers on the island who have come from the rural areas of Java and Sumatra and who love this music, they do not broadcast dangdut on air because “the rule from the station [owner] is [that] we play seventy per cent English songs”. She added that all advertisements are broadcast in Bahasa Indonesia. She admitted that if people ask her what form of music

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the station favours she is inclined to reply “dangdut”, because a vast majority of the people on the island prefer that music. However, the station does not play dangdut because of a management policy to brand the station to an upmarket audience. It is often argued that opening of the airwaves will open the floodgates for homogenization, with the media such as radio and television becoming the agents for flooding the country with “Western” culture, which destroys and endangers national culture and identity. The aforementioned examples may justify this argument. But Suryadi (2005) argues otherwise. He observes that Indonesian radio after liberalization has been able to broadcast more local and regional programmes, thus contributing to strengthening local cultural identities. While during the Soeharto era the expansion of the national network RRI contributed to developing a national language and a national culture, in the post-Soeharto era local commercial radio has become a vehicle for revitalizing as well as rearticulating ethnicities which often tend to resist the hegemony of the state and its ideologies. Thus Suryadi (2005, p. 138) observes that “almost all private radio stations in Indonesia unconsciously promote the language of the area where they operate”. Hence he argues that the explosive growth of private radio stations since the fall of the Soeharto government has resulted in decentralization and diversification, creating a contest between “national culture” and “local cultures”. This trend has been further accelerated by the explosive growth of community radio since 1998. Some estimates put the number of community radio stations in operation across the archipelago as much as 1,000, most of them still

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unlicensed. Many of these radio stations open the airwaves to different segments of the community, as well as playing local music to attract listeners. Radio Suara Persaudaraan Matraman in northern Jakarta’s slum areas, for example, has used dangdut music to draw two warring factions of the community together by introducing a request programme and training young volunteers from the community as DJs to broadcast the shows (Seneviratne 2003). In a study of teen magazines, Luvaas (2006) found that Indonesian teen magazines put forward a concept of identity where traditional social attributes are supplanted with individual ones, with “being cool” (the new measure of being important). Unlike the media of Indonesia’s past, they don’t actively support a government agenda; rather, they pursue a consumerist ideal. Also, unlike the nationalistic values presented in earlier Indonesian media forms, “coolness” is neither an easily articulated quality nor an easily achievable one. The range of lifestyles and fashions promoted by these magazines is largely that of the upper-middle-class urban youth in cities like Jakarta. Such perceived luxuries are out of the reach of the majority of the people who live in Indonesia’s rural areas. On the other end of the modernist urban youth culture is rap music, which is usually referred to as “underground” music in Indonesia because it has been discouraged by the authorities albeit it was tolerated in the reformasi era. In 1995 after hearing of plans to stage a rap music festival in Jakarta, B.J. Habibie (the then Minister for Research and Technology, later to become President) described rap music as a “genre without artistry”. But after 1998 local rappers built a following of their own within Indonesia, singing in

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the local language and addressing the everyday experiences of Indonesia’s lower-middle-class urban youth. Sometimes containing a smattering of English, these songs, which are usually sung in regional languages or Bahasa Indonesia, reflect the frustration experienced by many young people in society as the wealth gap widens (Bodden 2005). It is worthy of mention that this local rap music has not caught the attention of the commercial television industry, unlike dangdut (which will be discussed in Chapter 4), which is becoming “big” on television, as the channels target the lower-middle-class audiences. Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country, yet Islamic music is not big in the country. Qasidah is a form of popular Islamic music based on classical Arabic poetry, which is usually sung by groups of young women. Qasidah is often described as music “breathing Islam” and is sung in Bahasa Indonesia, propagates religious moral values, and directly addresses Indonesia’s youth (Barendregt and van Zanten 2002). Another genre of Islamic music, which is now widely known among Indonesian youth, is the Islamic pop music nasyid. But it is facing an uphill task in Indonesia to be accepted as mainstream pop by the broadcasting industry, both radio and television. A media analyst, who is a member of an Islamic think tank in Jakarta (personal interview, 2005), said that although nasyid is very popular in Malaysia, it has a tendency to be seen in Indonesia as the music of “fanatical” Muslims. This perception has seriously hindered its acceptance by the mainstream. But, he continued, nasyid is becoming popular now since one of Jakarta’s commercial TV channels ran the “Festival Nasyid Indonesia” and

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“Nasyid and Tilawah Quran” shows during the Ramadan period in 2004, that were modelled on the American Idol concept, which was very popular with viewers across the country. Enthusiasts voted for the singers via text messages. This analyst considered that these shows “entertained the viewers while at the same time giving a spiritual flavour to it”. Yet such shows are only broadcast during the Ramadan period “when everyone wants Islamic flavour”. In the next chapter I will discuss in more details the popularity of nasyid in Malaysia and the struggle of the proponents of this musical form for acceptance in Indonesia. Notes   1. Sultan is an Islamic title with several historical meanings. Originally it was an Arabic abstract noun meaning “strength”, “authority”, or “rulership”. Later it came to be used as the title of certain Muslim rulers, who claimed full sovereignty in practical terms (i.e., the lack of dependence on any higher ruler), without claiming the overall caliphate (successor) (Wikipedia).   2. A tiger economy is a name loosely given to a country which undergoes rapid economic growth and (usually) an accompanying increase in standard of living (Wikipedia).   3. Bumiputra derives from a Sanskrit word which basically means “sons of the soil” and it is used often in Malaysia to refer to Muslim Malay people.   4. The New Economic Policy of 1971 was to be implemented through a series of four five-year plans, from 1971 to 1990. The policy had two objectives: the elimination of

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  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

10. 11. 12.

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poverty, particularly rural poverty, and the elimination of the identification with race and economic function. This latter policy was understood to mean a decisive shift in economic power from the Chinese to the Malays. PAS is an Islamist political party in Malaysia that aims to establish Malaysia as an Islamic theocracy. The party enjoys strong support in northern rural and conservative areas such as Kelantan and Terengganu. UMNO is the largest political party in Malaysia and a founding member of the Barisan Nasional coalition, which has ruled the country uninterruptedly since its independence. It is known for being a major proponent of Malay nationalism and the ketuanan Melayu ideology, which holds that the Malay people are the “definitive” people of Malaysia and thus deserve special privileges as their birthright. Hudud is the word often used in Islamic social and legal literature for the bounds of acceptable social behaviour. In legal terms it is used to describe laws that define a level of crime classification. Umma, a word of Arabic etymology, means community or nation. In the context of Islam, umma (often spelled ummah) means community of believers (ummat al-mu’minin), by extension the whole Islamic world. Sharia is the Arabic word for Islamic law, also known as the Law of Allah. Islam classically draws no distinction between religious and secular life. Hence Sharia covers not only religious rituals but many aspects of day-to-day life, politics, economics, banking, business or contract law, and social issues. BPS Statistic Indonesia, 2000. Refer to . Reformasi is the term popularly used in Indonesia today to

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13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

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refer to the movement for political reform which was born with the overthrow of the long-serving dictator President Soeharto in May 1998. Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI), which was founded on 11 September 1945, is operated by the government and consists of a network of regional stations located in all twenty-seven provinces of the archipelago. Personal interview conducted in July 2004. The Department of Information was disbanded by the government of President Abdurrahman Wahid in 1999. Personal interview conducted in July 2004. TPI and SCTV target a lower-class and lower-middle-class mass audience with an entertainment slant. TPI in particular prides itself on being a folk TV station, well known for its dangdut and folk music programmes (Asmarani 2001). Personal interview conducted in July 2004. Personal interview conducted in December 2005. NU with a membership of forty million and Muhammadiyah with thirty million members are the country’s largest and most influential Muslim organizations. BBC News .

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3 Music, Islam, and Modern Cultural Identities

Very often when people talk about the impact of MTV in developing countries, the process is described as a form of “cultural imperialism”, which has the potential to destroy local music industries and traditional culture, and westernize the local youth. In this study one of the areas I focused on was the popularity of a genre of Islamic music in the region known as nasyid and its relationship to the MTV-generated music formats, formulas, or cultural trends. In the course of this research I interviewed many nasyid music groups in Malaysia and Indonesia, some of whom have gained pop star status in their country. One such group is Snada, an Indonesian nasyid group whose latest album Neo Shalawat (released in 2004) has sold over 400,000 copies.1 “We’re involved in Jihad” they replied to my first question during a group discussion with members of Snada (Jakarta, 2004), about the role of nasyid music. Perhaps I may have raised my eyebrows in response to their statement, because their leader quickly added, “I know what you are thinking about… No, we are not in the business of killing non-believers like you. We use music in dakwah, to spread the word of God.”

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He then went on to explain to me how they use music to convey the Islamic message and values to youth in their country, suggesting that traditionally in the course of propagating the religion, proselytizers would seek to persuade others — through speech — to “do something good”. Previously there were no alternative modes of delivering religious messages other than oral communication; thus, nasyid songs are an important vehicle for proselytizing. However, in the context of modern day Malaysia, nasyid songs are used more to promote Islamic values among the Muslim Malay youth, as you would note in the discussion in this chapter. The Role of Islam in Forming Postcolonial Cultural Identities in Indonesia and Malaysia As social scientists we accept that there are serious problems in traditional societies — not only Muslim, but also Hindu or Buddhist or indeed, even Christian — confronting or coping with the postmodern age. It promotes a culture based on youth, change and consumerism. It emphasizes noise, movement and speed. Traditional religions emphasize quiet, balance and discourage change. There are thus intrinsic points of conflict. … In Muslim societies one aspect of this is the so-called Islamic fundamentalist response: people concerned about the pace of change and what this will do to the next generation, people genuinely worried that their culture and traditions, which have held for a thousand years, will now be changed and even be in danger of being wiped out. (Ahmed and Hastings 1994, p. 13)

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While striving to be modern, liberal, developed Islamic societies, both Malaysia and Indonesia are faced with this dilemma. At one end of the social spectrum, greater numbers of young people are seen to be identifying with and adopting the fashions and habits promoted by the globalized “Western”2 pop culture; at the other end, increasing numbers of young people are seeking refuge in the Islamic religion and its traditions, looking for modern cultural icons to express their identity and beliefs (such as young women taking up the wearing of the hijab — the Islamic veil). The emergence of Islamic revivalist movements in Southeast Asia, especially in Malaysia, started long before the term globalization was coined. In the 1970s these movements were popularly known as dakwah. As Shamsul (1997, p. 210) observes, “one consequence of the dakwah movement’s development was that Islam came to be highlighted as the pillar of Malay identity”. He describes the dakwah movement as a revivalism of Islamic identity, with an attempt to “restructure the past in a form relevant to contemporary social interests”. Shamsul lists six intentions as the motivation for the dakwah movement in Malaysia, which has influenced other Islamic communities in the region: 1. To overcome the pressures of/or construct a reply to modernization. 2. To express anti-imperialist or anti-hegemonic sentiments. 3. To promote spiritual renewal from within a given religion, such as the move to “re-Islamize knowledge”. 4. To counter the influence of societal rationalization. 5. To resolve how to live in a world of radical doubt through

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the reformulation of traditional symbols and systems of meaning. 6. To reinvent and reconstruct tradition, thus allowing a redefinition or reassertion of ethno-religious identities in a plural society (Shamsul 1997, p. 211). A pivotal moment in the institutionalization of the dakwah movement was the setting up of a campus-based Islamic youth movement called Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM — the Malaysian Muslim Youth Movement). In December 1974 this movement caught the attention of the Malaysian public when members staged a demonstration in Kuala Lumpur to protest against peasant hunger and poverty. Shamsul (1997) claims that the government reaction was to arrest 1,200 of the protesters. ABIM, he suggests, did not see Islam as a religion to be imposed on others but as a vehicle to fight injustice and corruption. By the end of the 1970s the dakwah movement had begun to influence government policies on Islam by transforming Malay thinking and culture. The most obvious illustration of this was the widespread use of the hijab — a veil covering the head, neck, and upper parts of the chest — by women in both the rural and urban areas. In an attempt to defuse the threat the government started mainstreaming these cultural developments by trying to co-opt groups or offering its own version of dakwah. Part of their strategy was to co-opt ABIM leader Anwar Ibrahim into the ruling party. Anwar quickly moved through the ranks to become the Deputy Prime Minister by the mid-1990s. Thus, by the 1990s many of the ABIM policies had become government policies (Shamsul 1997).

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Political scientist and social activist Farish Noor (2004) states that Malaysia, like most post-colonial societies of the late twentieth century, is currently experiencing a collective identity crisis. Many Malaysians view the Malaysian cultural identity promoted by the dakwah movement and mainstreamed by the government as an attempt to erase the Hindu and Buddhist cultural heritage of the Malay people. In the words of Noor: The dominance of the Malay-Muslim community in the country means that Malaysian identity was modeled on and defined by a Malay-centric view of the world…. From the late 1970s onwards Malaysia was … swept by the wave of new currents of political Islam let loose by the Iranian revolution of 1979.… The rise of political Islam in Malaysia further contributed to the narrowing of Malaysian identity along religio-cultural lines. New, more conservative and vocal Islamist groups began to call for the Islamisation of Malaysian society and with that the rejection of the country’s preIslamic past. Thus today, Malaysian cultural identity is increasingly defined in terms of an understanding of Malay identity that is narrow, puritan, closed and exclusive. (2004, p. 3)

In neighbouring Indonesia, however, the country is too culturally diverse (even though it constitutes the world’s largest Muslim population of over 190 million) for political Islam to have widespread appeal. Professor Azyumardi Azra, President of the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta (personal interview, 2005) stated: In Indonesia, [the first point is that] Islam is much more plural in terms of religious views. The second

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is … [in] Malaysia Islam is more conservative. In Indonesia Islam is so liberal so that they could accept hard rock music. There’s no fatwa here which opposes hard rock music. In Malaysia Islamic matters are in the hands of the Department of Islamic Affairs in the Prime Minister’s office or in the hands of local kings [sultans]. But, in Indonesia, religious matters are mostly in the hands of the community or Islamic organizations, not in the hands of the government.

A comment commonly made by urban intellectuals in Indonesia who I encountered throughout my field research was that ninety-five per cent of Indonesians are “secular” (meaning liberal) Muslims, and only five per cent are “fanatics” (meaning conservative Islamists), and it is this five per cent the overseas media always talks about. But, since the events of 911 and the twin Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005, this five per cent of Islamists may be on the ascendancy. As the Muslim population at large see themselves as threatened by the seemingly unstoppable onslaught of Western culture through globalization, many Muslims are turning to Islam for both political and religious answers. During the New Order regime of President Soeharto, the President sometimes ruthlessly suppressed Islamist movements, fearing they may ultimately challenge him. Yet these repressions were dressed in the garb of protecting Indonesia’s secular ideology of Pancasila, which was designed to propel Indonesia towards development and modernity. Following Soeharto’s overthrow in 1998 and the dawn of a new democratic era (known as reformasi), Islamic political parties and organizations were able to come out into the public arena and involve themselves in the democratic process.

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They also became political kingmakers in the new reformasi era, initially blocking the election of Megawati Sukarnoputri as President in 1999 (as they were not prepared to endorse a woman for the presidency) and helping to elect one of the most liberal Islamist politicians in the country, i.e., Abdurrahman Wahid. Two years later, when the latter was seen to be ineffective, the “kingmakers” allowed Megawati to become President, but with a conservative Islamist VicePresident in the form of Hamzah Haz. In early 2006, when an Anti-Pornography Bill was tabled in parliament with strict guidelines pertaining to public displays of affection and artistic expression, this was seen by many Indonesians as proof of the ascendancy of political Islam. The bill was referred to a special parliamentary committee for a three-month review in March 2006 by national legislators, but it triggered intense public debate vis-à-vis artistic expression, Indonesian cultural identity, eroticism, and pornography. Known as the Anti-Pornography and Pornographic Acts Bill, it covered the public display and broadcast of both erotic and pornographic material as well as sexually suggestive material. It is the latter with which many artistic groups are concerned because it may make it illegal to perform many of the traditional dances of Indonesia, which have pre-Islamic origins. According to Javanese choreographer Mugiono Kasido (Baskoro et al. 2006), if the bill is passed, traditional dances like tayub, ledek, and lengger, which are still performed in Central Java, will be banned from public performances because the choreography may be categorized as sensual or inciting lust. Accordingly, there has been a wave of protests from artistes condemning the bill. But conservative Islamic groups have also shown their

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muscle, for example convening a massive demonstration in Jakarta in March 2006 (Ghani 2006). Assembling opposite Parliament House, the 100,000 demonstrators handed a petition to the parliamentary speaker calling for the bill to be passed immediately. Among the organizers were Indonesia’s largest Islamic organizations, the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah. An estimated seventy million Indonesians are believed to belong to either one or the other of these two organizations. Indonesian Ulema Council3 (MUI) chairman Amidhan (Siboro 2006) observed that the deliberations on the pornography bill reflect the negative impact of the spirit of reform. “Our people no longer consider pornography or pornographic acts as taboo.” He added that the bill should be seen as a “filter for globalisation, which in some cases has had negative impacts on our cultures and identities”. However, leading media reform activist and Indonesian Catholic, Ignatius Haryanto (email communication, 2006) insisted that this was not the way to cope with the globalization process. “Certain people are trying to legitimise their own beliefs by using law mechanisms to protect their interests, but at the same time it abuses other people’s rights.” Wahyutama, a member of the Say No To Pornography group, which is an Islamic NGO (non-governmental organization), said that although most anti-pornography activists are Muslims, it is not a problem for Muslims only but rather one for the whole community. “It’s a moral and social problem, and we should not look at it merely from the religious perspective, but as a social problem” (personal interview, 2006).

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One of the major issues of contention vis-à-vis the Anti-Pornography Bill was the popular dangdut singer Inul Daratista, whose hip-gyrating dance style based on a traditional Javanese social dance known as goyang ngebor, performed often on TV and on stage, risked being deemed “pornographic” and banned from television. Her immense popularity across the country has pitted liberal Muslims against conservatives in the debate over the AntiPornography Bill. This issue will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. Music and Propagation of Islam: Jihad and Dakwah According to the Qur’an and the Hadith, “Jihad” is a duty that may be fulfilled in four ways: by the heart, the tongue, the hand, or the sword. The first duty (known in Sufism as the “greater jihad”) involves struggling against evil desires. The ways of the tongue and hand call for verbal defence and right actions. The jihad of the sword involves waging war against the enemies of Islam. Believers contend that those who die in combat become martyrs and are guaranteed a place in Paradise (Encyclopedia Britannica 1981). Napoleoni (2003) argues that the term “jihad” has often been translated as “Holy War”, which is a concept that was coined in Europe in the eleventh century in reference to the crusades and has no equivalent in Islam. Thus, she notes, “In the Middle East the term harb and not jihad is used to describe wars. Jihad derives from the Arabic root of “striving”; therefore a better translation would be ‘striving in the cause of God’ ” (2003, p. 66).

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Hassan and Ali (2007) also agree that the Arabic meaning of Jihad is “to strive” or “to struggle” to carry out God’s commands to perform righteous deeds or to refrain from evil deeds with the overall objective of safeguarding the well-being of all creatures. While arguing that the meaning of jihad is broad, they list five areas where it could be targeted, such as: • Subjugation of Self-Desires: To develop moral and spiritual strength, in order to overcome the challenges in life with confidence. Thus jihad is a way to fight and control your self-desires. • Uplifting Intellect: Performing jihad to continuously upgrade one’s intellectual capacities towards the benefit of all. • Discouraging Evil Deeds: Muslims should perform jihad to guide and engage those who commit evil deeds, with wisdom and good preaching, to bring them back to the correct path. • Confronting Those Who Are Destructive: Muslims need to perform jihad, by means of pursuing appropriate legal means to prevent those who cause destruction to lives, property and the world, from continuing on this path. • Self-Defence: When a country in which Muslims reside is unjustly attacked or illegally occupied, it is obligatory for them to defend it, even if it means taking up arms. Heck (2004, p. 98) argues that, The qur’anic description of jihad was developed early on by the ascetically and mystically minded who saw jihad — against the backdrop of an increasingly

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affluent and comfortable Islamic order — as a struggle not to preserve the Islamic message against nonMuslim hostility but to direct one’s own soul away from worldly attachments. Jihad was thus conceived as a spiritual exercise, including the ascetical discipline of the body, and references to it abounds in early and classical Islamic literature.

When Islam began to spread across the Arab world and beyond, Heck (2004) observed that the philosophical definition of jihad began to undergo a review, with the new Islamic states needing to establish their political and administrative authority over their subjects and combating their enemies. Thus, during the first Islamic dynasty of Umayyads (660–750 bc) the idea of jihad as conquest in the service of expanding the abode of Islam began to take shape. Observes Heck (2004, p. 106): The scriptural demand to submit to the rule of God, eventually understood as a commitment to the law of God, was reconstructed into a world geography divided into two mutually hostile camps: the abode of Islam (daral-islam) under the jurisdiction of the Islamic empire and the abode of war (dar al–harb) beyond its reach. The conception of the Islamic world in territorial and political terms — rather than communal — was, then, an imperial construct. There is no quar’anic basis for such a division.

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the concept of jihad has sometimes been used as an ideological weapon in an effort to combat Western influences and secular governments and to establish an ideal Islamic society. Yet,

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the tradition identifying interior struggle as “greater” jihad appears to have been profoundly influenced by Sufism, an ancient and diverse mystical movement within Islam, practitioners of which use music and poetry quite extensively in the practice and propagation of Islam. Views of Islamic Scholars on the Role of Music in an Islamic Society As discussed in Chapter 1, there is much debate nowadays as to whether music is forbidden in Islam or not. As I pointed out, many Muslim societies have developed a very diverse variety of musical cultures, albeit they are not necessarily related to Islamic practices or rituals. For generations Sufis have used music and poetry to “loosen [the] bonds of the lower self, enabling the soul to experience higher reality towards which it naturally aspires”. Their practices have often put them at odds with the mainstream of Islamic theology and law (Encyclopedia Britannica 1981). One of the most recognizable forms of Islamic sacred music is the Sufi qawwali,4 known worldwide through the recordings of the late renowned Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who performed regularly in major concert halls around the world and on television. An Islamic scholar at the Ritualistic Division of an Islamic centre (personal interview, 2004) in Bandung said that for music to be acceptable in Islam it is very important that the lyrics convey Islamic values and morality. Lyrics which inspire Muslims to struggle for jihad (he did not mean holy war here) and those that praise the Holy Prophet are encouraged.

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A well-known Islamic scholar in Penang (personal interview, 2004) observed that there is no issue more controversial in Islam than the arts, especially music. People take various verses of the Qur’an and interpret them to support the argument that music is not permitted in Islam. One such example, he pointed out, is verse 6, surah 31 where it says: “But, there are among men, those who purchase idle tales, without knowledge”. Some take this literally to argue against music, when what is prohibited here is the use of idle tales to misinterpret the words of Allah. Then, in verse 55, surah 28, there is a reference to “vain talk”: this is misinterpreted to argue that music is prohibited in Islam. This is not true, my informant insisted. Islam does not prohibit singing. But it does prohibit improper speech, the saying of bad things, or insulting people. He listed four conditions that need to be satisfied for music to be acceptable to Islam: • Lyrics should not convey immoral messages. • Music (or singing) should not be extreme (the function of entertainment is to relieve tension and not to keep one awake until 3 a.m.). • It must not distract you from your duty to family or religion. • Not only should the lyrics be moral in character, but the performance of the artist should also be in accordance with Islamic moral values. Malaysian musicologist and Islamic scholar, Fakharia Lokman (personal interview, 2004), maintained that in the Islamic music world there is the “great” tradition and the “little” tradition. The great tradition is influenced by the

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Qur’an and the Hadith, which are “divine and have a lot of beautiful sound arts”. The little tradition refers to a time when Islam arrived in a new country and absorbed some of its traditional music into the Islamic musical culture, while at the same time preserving the great tradition. The Islamic scholar in Penang pointed out that Hindu and Buddhist traditions were observed in Malaysia before the arrival of Islam. Malaysia still follows some of these musical traditions; but, to be accepted in the great tradition of Islam, the “five articles of faith”5 have to be observed. Music has become controversial because it is often linked to forbidden acts such as drinking alcohol or dancing, both of which hinder one’s duty towards God. Azra (personal interview, 2005) claimed that in Indonesia, music has been “part and parcel” of Muslim life and that this is one of the most distinctive characteristics of Indonesian Islam. Music is not forbidden in Indonesia. The experience of Rhoma Irama, who is known as the “King of Dangdut” in Indonesia for having brought this popular Indonesian pop music genre into the mainstream, reflects the fine line between Islamic music and pure entertainment. After making the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) in 1975, he came back deeply affected by the experience. He changed his hairstyle (to shorter, neatly combed hair), his appearance on stage (wearing more Islamic Arabic type costumes), and his messages contained more Qur’anic lyrics. In order to convey his Islamic message he also changed the instruments he played, from hard rock instruments to the bamboo flute, in ways reminiscent of Sundanese (Java) and Minangkabau (Sumatra) music (Frederick 1982).

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By 1980 many of Rhoma’s songs contained an Islamic message with a strong social commentary; his music was popular mainly with the lower classes. The songs defended Islamic moral prohibitions (widely ignored in Indonesia) and blamed the problems of the world on people who did not take their religion seriously. Many of his songs contain angry social criticism (Lockard 1998). His “Al Qur’an Dan Koran” (The Qur’an and the Newspapers) featured the following lyrics (Lockard 1998, p. 98): Moving with the wheels of development People are increasingly busy So far as to ignore their (religious) duties. Getting drunk with development So that computers become God. If you talk about religion They act as if they’re allergic.

Another song titled “Rupiah”,6 in which he criticizes those who sacrifice their morals in the mad scramble for wealth, was banned from television and the distribution of its cassettes restricted by the government (Lockard 1998). While the lyrics of Rhoma’s songs may address Islamic values, his genre of music, which is identified more with the so-called lower classes, drinking, dancing, and other perceived vices (see next chapter) proved an inappropriate vehicle to spread the message. As Azra (personal interview, 2005) explained: “If you use religious doctrines in your dangdut songs like quoting from the Qur’an, there will be conflict in the way the singers sing the song. It’s not the dangdut music they oppose, but its presentation. It you recite

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Qur’anic verses you have to do it in a very respectful way. Not while you are dancing.” Rhoma Irama (personal interview, 2004), who is now an Islamic cleric, insisted that he had an obligation to Allah “to promote Islam through my music”. Because he has been singing dangdut for a long time and made it contemporary, he thought it is a good vehicle to take the Islamic message to his audiences “who have a lower Islamic awareness”. Pure nasyid music is exclusive to those with an Islamic boarding school background, he claimed, and does not reach this particular community. If music makes people do sin then music becomes “haram” — forbidden. But if music makes people obey God, [makes them] practice responsibility towards other people, become good people, correct people then it becomes “sunna” — meaning getting rewards. It depends on the musician. If it is done just for fun, with drugs, drinks, free sex and things like that, it becomes haram. (Rhoma Irama, personal interview, 2004)

Herdi Hidayat (personal interview, 2005), the producer of Jakarta’s TransTV’s highly-rated weekly television programme, Digoda Dangdut, explained why “Nasyid Dangdut” failed: Two years ago we had Rhoma Irama singing nasyid during Ramadhan7 in our programme, but [the] rating was very low. Irama is known as a dangdut singer. Now he claims his dangdut is “dakwah” dangdut, but what he is performing is pure dangdut. In “Nada Ramadhan” two years ago we tried to mix dangdut with Arabian style music, every week for one month and Rhoma was the singer. Dangdut is for fun not for praying or

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promoting religion. So ratings were not good. Dangdut cannot be mixed with nasyid, because dangdut makes audiences dance but nasyid is about moral values. Dangdut’s image is sexy — the costumes and looks — and audiences come for dangdut to get drunk and dance. How can you listen to religious values while you are drunk?

The Peaceful Path of Jihad — The Nasyid Revolution in Malaysia The most important development in Malaysian pop music in the last decade was the establishment of nasyid Islamic pop music groups as part of the mainstream music industry. The nasyid movement reached unprecedented heights with the arrival of the four-member group Raihan in the late 1990s. Their first album Puji Pujian outsold every other music group (including Western) in the Malaysian market, making them the biggest selling recording artists in Malaysia’s history (Kamin 2003). Raihan’s singing of Islamic religious poetry accompanied by the Malay traditional percussion instrument, the rebana, has given rise to a large number of replications across Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, including a few allfemale groups, who sing dressed in the traditional Islamic garb (Harrison 1999). Over the last few years Raihan has toured many countries, including Indonesia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Brunei, and South Africa. They have also appeared on MTV’s worldwide channel. Raihan’s leader, Che Amaran bin Idris (personal interview, 2004), describes the group’s musical style as “taking a little bit of music and throwing in accapella or

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percussion” to convey the Islamic message through music. They prefer to leave it to the Islamic scholars to decide whether it is haram or not. Malaysian musicologist Sooi Beng Tan observes: Video clips of nasyid pop show almost no narrative. Images, which are conducive for prayer and meditation, are arbitrarily employed in the song and are usually not connected to the lyrics. Black and white segments are juxtaposed with coloured clips of singers lip-synching in continually changing settings. Backdrops include the mountain, river, sunset, mosque, paddy field and the desert (as though one were in the Middle East). Often, singers play the Malay rebana or kompang (frame drums) as well. Cinta yang Suci (Pure Love) shows the Raihan singers lip-synching in the paddy field and in the vicinity of the mosque. In Zapin Syuhur (Zaping of Thanksgiving), images of the Hijjaz singers lip-synching and playing kompang are superimposed on footage of gamelan instruments, clouds, coconut trees, the sea and mosque. (2003, p. 97)

Nasyid — which in Arabic means “raising the voice when reciting verse and making the voice sound beautiful and gentle” — is, according to some Islamic scholars, acceptable as long as it does not use forbidden musical instruments (Al-Munajjid 2002). Others argue that nasyid groups may use instrumental music as long as it is not associated with the negative image of pop music, such as drugs, sex, and dancing. The development of nasyid singing into a pop music phenomenon in Malaysia is in itself an interesting example

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of the interplay between globalization and localization. Matusky and Tan (2004) have traced this development from the period before World War II to the present. Nasyid songs, which took the form of sung poetry from the Middle East with Islamic themes, were enthusiastically embraced and developed in Malaysia prior to World War II by both male and female readers of the Qur’an, especially in Kedah and Penang. Originally nasyid were sung at home by individuals seated in a circle, after the studying of the Qur’an. The teachers taught while the students sang nasyid without the use of any musical instruments. It was in the 1950s that nasyid began to emerge as entertainment for the masses. In the 1960s the birth of International Qur’an Reading Competitions as part of the celebration and atmosphere of the fasting month of Ramadan was accompanied by nasyid singing. In those early days the songs were performed by singers standing upright on stage, wearing serious facial expressions, with both men and women dressed modestly in line with Islamic custom. No musical instruments were used at that time. Gradually nasyid singers were exposed to songs from the Middle East, which carried instrumental accompaniment. In this way melody entered Malaysian nasyid singing. In the 1990s, state, international, and local school nasyid competitions paved the way for new developments in nasyid singing in Malaysia. Today nasyid is sung mainly in the Malay language and with Malaysian instrumental accompaniment. As Matusky and Tan observe, “Malaysia began to lead the way for what some have called the Nasyid Era Baru [New Era of Nasyid]. Today Muslim artistes in Malaysia are encouraged to be creative [when] composing nasyid, to

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launch a new phenomenon, that is, [the] nasyid POP music industry” (2004, p. 267). But not everyone is happy with this development. According to Lokman (personal interview, 2004), If you sing in pop style, it is borrowed culture, not associated with the Muslim way of life. Nasyid groups have lyrics, which have religious connotations, but sound is more known to youth, so that attracts them. Islamic sound has to be closer to Qur’anic sound, which means its Arabic sound … nasyid songs should have not only Islamic lyrics, but as purveyors of Islamic messages, they should have a Qur’anic sound.

But, should nasyid maintain its “Arabic sound” in order to convey the religious message? Nasyid’s role, both in the struggle to promote Islam (jihad) and as a missionary (dakwah) activity among Muslim youth in the region, has been its ability to package these songs as part of a contemporary cultural reawakening. Recalling Raihan’s beginnings in the mid-1990s, Idris (personal interview, 2004) insisted that they did not intentionally start out to become pop stars. It was a time when Muslim youth were facing a number of social problems in Malaysia. So the group set out to give them “an alternative way of thinking”, using music “to give them advice”. In order to get the attention and trust of the youthful cohort, Raihan packaged themselves in the form of a contemporary pop group, adopting the MTV production formula to produce their first video clip of the song “Sukur”, which was broadcast worldwide on the MTV network. It took the form of a black and white video clip featuring the

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singers and images of Muslims as family-oriented, respecting their elders and helping the poor. Since the phenomenal commercial success of Raihan’s first album, replications have spread fast and wide in Malaysia. Initially, Raihan group members admit, the Muslim clerics were not very supportive of nasyid groups. However, nowadays, some mosques and mainstream Islamic organizations sponsor nasyid concerts because they see the genre as clean Islamic entertainment for Muslim youth. For example, when the Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS)-led state government in Kelantan declared its state capital of Kota Bharu an Islamic City on 1 October 2005, the PAS sponsored a pop music concert at the local sports stadium at which many nasyid groups performed (Lau 2005). Idris (personal interview, 2004) stated further that in “Islam also we can have entertainment, not only go to [the] mosque and listen to sermons, we can have knowledge through entertainment”. At least two nasyid groups confirmed during personal interviews (2004) that in Malaysia the lyrics of any nasyid song, in order to be recorded or sung in public, need first to be approved by a council of Islamic clerics known as Jabatan Kemajaan (Islam Malaysia). The council has to issue a licence approving the lyrics as being Islamic. There is no such requirement in Indonesia. Prior to the emergence of Raihan in Malaysia there were earlier nasyid groups, including Rabbani and Hijjaz. But it was Raihan’s commercial success which gave this music genre a new lease of life. This was mainly due to the fact that Raihan’s music label was Warner Music, a multinational company with wide experience in marketing music.

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An executive of Warner Music Malaysia (personal interview, 2004) stated: Before Raihan, there were many nasyid groups, but they did not promote themselves by going to radio for radio play, so this time we tried. We treated it like a normal pop album. We used normal marketing tools like TV, radio, then magazines. Before that, popular magazines didn’t have pictures or write about artists of “underground” nasyid groups. They were the first ones, and when they hit big, everyone wanted to invest in it.

This same executive said that before this, nasyid songs were marketed on cassettes, which were sold as underground music in stalls at mosques on Fridays. For this reason, the wider public was not aware of nasyid’s existence. Once Warner Music started promoting it and the radio stations played it “ten to twenty times a day”, not as nasyid songs but as pop songs, “it was like a phenomenon, everybody, everywhere was playing” (personal interview, 2004). When Raihan started selling their albums in the hundreds of thousands, other multinational recording companies operating in Malaysia, such as EMI and BMG, started signing up groups such as Rabbani and Hijjaz (personal interview with Hijjaz member Rahim, 2004). The station manager of IKIM Radio, Malaysia’s first Islamic Radio station, set up in 2001, said in an interview (2005) that initially nasyid was considered as alternative music. But now it is part of the mainstream. This is proven by the fact that a two-hour programme that IKIM broadcasts on Friday nights is so popular that the station receives a

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great number of calls for requests every week. When they held the first nasyid awards night in December 2004, their 1,000-capacity hall could not accommodate the 5,000 fans that turned up for the event. The station manager noted that there was a broad diversity in the age groups varying from children to senior citizens. Lately, nasyid groups have started producing karaoke videos and VCDs, with which young people can sing along. One of the first nasyid karaoke videos, produced by Raihan, focused on Qur’anic readings via singing for small children, similar to the old nursery rhymes. Raihan has also caught the attention of the Islamic cultural foundation, Mountain of Light, an establishment run by Yusuf Islam (the former British pop star Cat Stevens). The group was invited to sing at the Edinburgh Music Festival, which, on this particular occasion, was attended by Prince Charles, who was greatly impressed by their performance. In 1998 they performed at the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, and this gave them worldwide exposure. Their performance, however, was marred by an incident which reflected the sensitivity of performing religious songs at an event where the audience may neither understand nor appreciate its religious context. When Raihan was performing on stage, a group of Australian athletes — who may have been intoxicated because the occasion was a celebratory final farewell for all of the athletes — climbed onto the stage and started dancing to the rhythmic music, only to be quietly led away by security guards. Idris (personal interview, 2004) explained that they performed at the Commonwealth Games because they

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wanted to create a new understanding of Islam through music. They also wanted to convey the message to the youthful cohort that nasyid is not just for old people. He feels that what is special about Raihan is that they have been able to achieve commercial exposure while at the same time promoting religion to the country’s youth. A leading Malaysian social scientist and Islamic scholar, who is in his 80s, was very critical of the approach taken by Raihan and other nasyid groups in Malaysia. He lambasted them as follows (personal interview, 2005): Nasyid revolution is not a positive impact on the young people here. Their type of music has no intellectual content. It’s just expressing common-place sentiments people already know, such as praising God. It is commercializing spiritual music. If you are talking about mainstreaming this music, what about their dress? The dress they wear [during performances] is [the same as] that worn to the mosque. Why don’t they wear everyday clothing? Raihan has a very strong mosque label. Only thing is, they are not singing in a mosque.

The veteran scholar argued that what is needed is not labelling and commercializing nasyid music but for nasyid groups to sing songs with lyrics that reflect the social problems that youth face today, to which there are Islamic solutions. He said that rather than sing in praise of God all the time, one could perform songs that could promote Islamic values, songs that would tackle problems like alcohol and drug addiction, and other social ills. While he acknowledged that the new youth group Saujana sing such songs, because of their age he questions their ability to play the role of

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Islamic social commentators. The group was made up of university students. Saujana’s group leader Suffian Amrin (personal interview, 2004) contends that they do, in fact, influence young people with their songs and may even have changed the latter’s lives. “I have a number of friends that now listen to nasyid”, he said. “Before that they were very unpredictable, they were very troubled people. When they listened to nasyid, their hearts became better; from time to time they get the message and improve themselves towards positive thoughts.” Amrin explained that the love they sing about is not between couples, i.e., boys and girls. Rather, it is the love between the Creator and “we the servants of God”. They also sing about love between families, love towards parents, and love of one’s friends. “Our main targets are students and teenagers, and our message is something motivational and inspirational”, he said. Youth Perspectives on Nasyid and Contemporary Identities During focus group discussions involving young people, Amdan (FGD, Kuala Lumpur, 2004), an eighteen-year-old female undergraduate, said that “nasyid gives me moral support; sometimes it helps us to praise our God, sometimes it reminds us of our mission, it reminds us that if we have done sins, go back to our teachings”. She also added that the popularity of nasyid among the young shows that “our musical culture is not like the West”. Else, another eighteen-year-old student quipped: “You can’t really enjoy listening to nasyid, because it’s mostly about singing love to God, pretty slow.” And Joey, a twenty-

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one-year-old male student in the same group declared that nasyid artistes were “stereotypical Muslims”: one becomes associated with nasyid because it is “religious propaganda”. Another member of the group, twenty-year-old male student Yusof, said that before Raihan “came on board, nasyid was underground music; Raihan promoted it using MTV, putting their face on the cover. Before that, nasyid groups never put their faces on the cover. They put a lot of money into promoting it. Now nasyid songs and groups have grown. It has now become popular music. Lots of people love to hear it. We think it’s contemporary music.” For Irfan, a nasyid group member and undergraduate, nasyid gives him an identity: For me music that reflects the real identity is nasyid. It is not easy to become a nasyid singer because nasyid indicates the good things. In Islam before we deliver the good things to others, we have to look at ourselves [to see] whether we are capable or not. Before becoming a nasyid singer, the individual should change to be a better person and then they can present the message to others. In other words, they should be role models. (FGD, Penang, 2004)

Fellow FGD member and fine arts student Yusri added: Nasyid reflects what we have. Our person, our habits. So it’s our identity. If no good we do crimes, it is not identity of nasyid, but ourselves. So [before] one listens to nasyid we start to clean ourselves first, and we have a guide that Islam shows that is “akuan” and “sunnah” [identity with the Prophet’s traditions], these two are very important. If we can follow these our identity is

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like “akuan” and “sunna”. So if we get that in place nasyid is very cool to send our message, translated from the tongue, but it is from our heart to praise the God. (FGD, Penang, 2004)

S.B. Tan (2003) observed that nasyid songs are allocated considerable airplay in Malaysia because the genre fits in well with the government’s attempts to disseminate Islamic values to the people. To this end, many live performances of nasyid are telecast. As discussed in Chapter 3, after September 2003 the country’s new Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi started promoting his vision for Malaysia, i.e., Islam Hadhari, an Islam that embraces modernization and globalization, at the same time encouraging the people to become honest and hardworking Muslims by inculcating Islamic values and knowledge in them. The nasyid revolution in Malaysia seems to fit very well into this vision of a moderate and progressive Islamic society. Today, in campuses across Malaysia, nasyid festivals take place regularly, especially around Ramadan and the Holy Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. Hijjaz and a number of other groups in Malaysia are also taking the nasyid dakwah movement one notch forward. In addition to setting up their own music entertainment companies, they are also setting up nasyid singing training programmes in universities and schools, aiming to produce at least one new national nasyid artiste per year. When that is achieved these artistes will approach EMI to market their albums. Rahim (personal interview, 2004) explained that they want to make nasyid into a recreational activity for young people. “We want them

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to get involved in nasyid, the same way they get involved in football or dancing.” The Slow Progress of the Nasyid Revolution in Indonesia While a large nasyid movement has developed in Malaysia, in neighbouring Indonesia, which is host to the world’s largest Muslim population (of over 190 million), this religious music fervour has not caught on at the same level. Snada members divulged during a personal discussion in 2004 that, “development of nasyid in Malaysia came from the grassroots and grew up. Malaysian culture is very conducive to nasyid. In Indonesia it is seen as ideology.” During this discussion (2004), Snada’s leader Erwin Yahya explained that they try to sing nasyid at as many events as possible, for example during Ramadan and on the Holy Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, so that people know what nasyid is. But sometimes when they start to sing, members of the audience start looking at their watches, or at times the electricity that lights the stage is switched off. Akeu (FGD, Bundung 2004), an eighteen-year-old student and female nasyid singer from Bandung, said that nasyid is not popular in Indonesia because “any music attached to religion is regarded as backward ‘kampong’ (village) music. So they think it is not representing modernity”. Her classmate and fellow nasyid singer Netty added that some young people associate nasyid with dakwah, “not to do this and that”, so while they are aware of the message, they are afraid to join nasyid groups if they feel they can’t practise the teachings.

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Yahya (personal interview, 2004) explained that because nasyid music came to Indonesia from the Middle East with a clear political message (such as songs in support of the Palestinian cause), in Indonesia the music is identified with political ideology. So they are now trying to change this image by organizing workshops in schools and universities, which include singing nasyid as well as teaching how to manage and promote nasyid groups. Barendregt and van Zanten (2002, p. 78) observed that nasyid has only recently been taken up by the Indonesian recording industry and is still in the process of being shaped for mass mediation and “many young people are attracted to the genre, because nasyid does not just discuss religious dogmas, but also touch on social issues”. Izatul Islam (2004) also agrees that nasyid is not as popular in Indonesia as it is in neighbouring Malaysia: it is restricted to religious festivals and is not featured on evening television. Yet, during my field research in Jakarta in November 2004 during the Ramadan period, I found a nasyid competition on evening peak hour television: both male and female groups sang nasyid songs. The show, modelled on the American Idol formula, had a three-member judging panel and SMS voting. At the end of the four-week season the show produced a winner. While the programme is believed to have rated well, and perhaps helped to bring nasyid more into the mainstream, when I put this question to the eighty-year-old veteran Malaysian Islamic scholar (personal interview, 2004), he told me that it would rate as a haram (forbidden) programme. “This type of show will discredit Islam. How can you judge who is the best at communicating the will of God?” he asked.

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Snada (2004) members said that after the success of their album the music industry’s scepticism about nasyid has been waning. The industry now thinks that this music has commercial appeal and that it is not restricted to devout Muslims. To make sure the popularity of the genre grows, Snada performs everywhere and anywhere they are invited to, without charge. They claim that “producers are now competing to get our new album”. Snada’s recording company Blackboard Music’s Director Inge Soerjono (personal interview, 2005) said that Neo Shalawat was the first nasyid album they undertook to promote and that the venture proved that there was commercial potential in Indonesia for nasyid music. While the market potential in the country with the world’s largest Muslim population is big, Inga nonetheless has to overcome many barriers. One is that people only buy nasyid music during the Ramadan period because “society still thinks nasyid is only good for Ramadan”. So for about ten months of the year there is little market for the genre. The problem is that most nasyid musicians are found in the kampongs, they need professional equipment and training to record music of a standard that could be sold in the commercial market. The other problem is that very few stations play nasyid music outside of the Ramadan period. Wahyutama (personal interview, 2006), who is a media analyst, thinks that with the rise of the Islamist movement the demand for nasyid music will also increase because Islamists would see this as “giving support to the building of an Islamic culture”. But Munis (personal interview, 2004), a leading Jakarta-based musicologist suggests that outside of this community, nasyid will still face formidable barriers

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because “in Indonesian culture every music is dance music”. This is why Rhoma Irama failed in his mission to promote “nasyid dangdut”. With many private radio stations now expressing interest, some of which are owned by Muslim businessmen (such as Batam island’s Radio Hang FM), the popularity of nasyid music in Indonesia may be about to increase. When I visited the station in March 2005, Daniel, who is Radio Hang FM’s music director, explained that they play seventy per cent nasyid music from Indonesia and Malaysia because they cater to a young middle-class Muslim professional audience, who request Islamic songs. “Even our talk shows are mixed with nasyid songs”, he said (personal communication). Nasyid’s Social Impact Initially, most nasyid songs were about God or in praise of God. Lately, however, as I have noted earlier, many new groups in Malaysia comprising young university students — such as Saujana — have started singing about social issues. There has been a migration from theosophical to humanistic content, resonating with the European experience of modernization. Saujana, an all male group, is made up of five university students, two of whom study medicine, one studies law, while the remaining two are studying computer science. Their songs are accompanied by a variety of beats, including R & B, pop, Malay-traditional and ballads, all aimed at suiting the musical tastes of teenagers and students. Malaysian Islamic scholar Zulkiple Abdul Ghani (cited in Baharin and Jamaludin 2004) argues that those who want to develop an Islamic popular culture need to experiment.

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He suggests that Muslims are far too inclined towards taking a defensive approach rather than a proactive path in developing popular culture. He notes, “We’re far too defensive ourselves from the attacks of popular culture from outside. But, we’re not seriously putting an effort into building our own popular culture. We need to think of this problem seriously and find alternatives” (2004, p. 22). Saujana members say that they are trying to create this alternative; but, to date, people are not yet ready for nasyid rock or Islamic rock, although they are hungry for new sounds. So when the group produce a new album they use MTV to promote it. “We are exposing positive messages via MTV to people who are viewing us” (Amrin, personal interview, 2004). Zulkiple (Baharin and Jamaludin 2004) argues that one of the major drawbacks to developing an Islamic popular culture is the lack of exposure of students in arts institutions in the country to the Islamic view of arts and culture (whereas they are constantly exposed to the Western view). In the case of Islamic studies, he notes that the approach taken towards music, singing, dancing, and film takes the form of fiqiyah (punishment). If Islamists pursue this approach, Muslims will always “live in a vacuum”, he warns. Zulkiple states that the development of the nasyid movement in Malaysia is a good example of the careful nurturing of an Islamic pop culture. In the early days no one dared to move one’s body rhythmically on stage. But it is different now. Also, the involvement of recording companies has made it possible for many nasyid groups to survive longer, as well as providing avenues of distribution for quality products.

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The success of the nasyid revolution has been its ability to make this genre of music acceptable not only because of its lyrics but also because of its wider role in the community. As Zulkiple observes, the pop culture nasyid has created is not only restricted to its lyrics but also represents a behavioural pattern reflected by the individuals and groups who present it. As pointed out earlier, members of the group Saujana claim that they were able to develop positive thoughts in youngsters. Sociology student Banu (focus group, Jakarta, 2004) listens to nasyid when his “soul needs it” and when he thinks “he needs to repent for his sins”, because the songs help him to understand Islam better. Many focus group participants in both Malaysia and Indonesia expressed similar sentiments; conversely, an equal number said that they do not listen to nasyid because it is too religious. But at the same time people said that if the music were modern they would listen to it. Today the nasyid revolution is at the crossroads. In Malaysia, during the peak period, Raihan were able to sell between 200,000 and 600,000 copies of their latest album. This phase is more or less over because there are many groups now marketing to the same audience. Today the market share has diversified. Industry sources say (personal communication, 2004–5) that if an artiste records a new album, anything between 20,000 and 60,000 copies could be sold in Malaysia. The styles of both the presentation and the message are also changing. Raihan mainly sang in praise of God; but today newly emerging groups like Saujana are singing about social issues from an Islamic perspective. Some young

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people commented in focus group discussions that the time could be ripe for Islamic rap or hip hop. As Tia, a senior high school student (focus group, Bandung, 2004) put it, “I’m very impressed with Black hip hop music which has messages. It can be very inspirational for us. I’ve heard that there are Muslim songs in hip hop, like TooFat from Malaysia sings a hip hop song with Muslim messages. It’s very good.” Raihan, who have been trendsetters in developing Islamic pop culture in the region, are now trying to push the boundaries further. Initially they introduced rhythms to nasyid singing, which made it possible for nasyid to graduate from a “not very attractive” label towards pop music. In their new album, Allahau, Raihan perform a duet with Malaysian rock singer Awie titled “Dari Tuhan” (From God). Raihan member Abu Bakar Yatim (cited in Baharin and Jamaludin 2004) said that whereas in the early stages their focus was on small children, now they are focusing on those who follow rock music, i.e., teenagers and youth. In another song, they have also included a Bollywood (Indian film music) rhythm, because Indian movies are very popular among the Malay adult population in the region. However, the commercialism of nasyid is of some concern to Islamic scholars, who fear that the message may be lost to the beat and the image. Law student Shazeera (FGD, Kuala Lumpur, 2004), who has strong Islamic values, complained, “I object to the fact that you can dance to nasyid music. I have been to a concert and everybody was moving to it.” Here I will pose the question: Does nasyid have to satisfy all of the Muslim elements, which are considered to

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represent the Islamic culture, in order to qualify as Islamic pop culture? Abu Bakar (cited in Baharin and Jamaludin 2004, p. 21) maintains that society has a very narrow perception of what popular Islamic music is exactly. “Many people think that if a song is sung with some other cultural music it is not Islamic anymore. And when they hear songs in Arabic they think it is an Islamic song and it has messages. When a song is in [the] Arabic language it is not always a song with Islamic messages. It may have love concepts among humans and the video clip may have seductive dancing.” The above comments (of Abu Bakar) raise the question of whether the definition of “Islamic Music” is influenced by a process of cultural imperialism, in this case Arab cultural imperialism, on the non-Arab Islamic countries. Barker (2004, p. 38) describes cultural imperialism as “the loss of cultural autonomy for the ‘dominated’ nation and the worldwide growth of cultural homogeneity or sameness”. This seems to have some resonance with the aforementioned comments of Abu Bakar. Cultural Imperialism and Dakwah There is no doubt that nasyid has had an impact on the youth culture in Malaysia, and to a lesser extent in Indonesia. In the process of appropriating production and marketing techniques from Western pop music industry outlets such as MTV, has the nasyid music industry succumbed to Western cultural imperialism or turned it on its head? The answer to this will depend very much on how one perceives cultural imperialism.

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As discussed in Chapter 1, Petras (1993, p. 30) describes the effect of cultural imperialism as “dissociating people from their cultural roots and traditions of solidarity, and replacing them with media-created needs”. He was referring to the impact of Western cultural products on the cultures and peoples of the developing world. In the process of the development of contemporary nasyid music in Southeast Asia, have MTV and its associated pop music culture “dissociated people from their cultural roots and traditions of solidarity” as argued by Petras? If so, what has it been replaced with? In answer to this question it must be pointed out that Petras’s argument is based on the belief that modernization is intrinsically Western and could not have happened in any other part of the world. When he talks about a people (or community of people) who dissociate themselves from their cultural roots in order to be modernized, this implies that they exchange their own cultural expression for that of Western cultural expression in order to become modern. In fact the local music groups have made use of MTV and its associated pop music formula to repackage and brand nasyid as “contemporary Islamic pop music”. They have not dissociated themselves from their Malaysian/ Indonesian Islamic cultural roots and embraced Western culture. Perhaps they have embraced a form of cultural expression (music video) that may be Western in origin, but they have been able to replace its Western cultural content (i.e., music, language, image, dress) with their own. The political effect has been to strengthen community bonds rather than separate people from their roots or traditions of

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solidarity. Today nasyid festivals bring young people together and help them to identify more closely with their Islamic culture. As indicated during focus group discussions, nasyid has helped them to feel that this culture is a modernizing influence, not a backward one. But this modernization is not westernization. According to the Marxist-influenced cultural theory, popular culture is largely produced by capitalist corporations. Cultural industries employ mass advertising to create demand for consumer products that may be characterized as forms of popular culture. Barker (2003, pp. 68–69) argues that while popular culture is primarily commercially produced, “popular audiences make their own meanings with the texts of popular culture”. Thus, “popular culture can be regarded as the meanings and practices produced by popular audiences at the moment of consumption”. Nasyid groups in Southeast Asia have adopted an Arabic brand of traditional Islamic poems into their own culture by translating them into Malay and giving them an undeniably local flavour by using traditional instruments like the rebana. Although this music has not yet been produced by capitalist corporations, their advertising methods have been adopted to transform nasyid into a popular cultural product. As mentioned earlier, it has also played a role in national politics in Malaysia, albeit an indirect one, by providing a form of cultural expression to the Islam Hadhari campaign. Many young people suggested in the focus group discussions that nasyid represents their culture and their identity because it sings about their religious values in their

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own language. In other words, it has become a symbol of how they might represent themselves. It seems that pop groups like Raihan and Snada are navigating a fine line between a religio-cultural movement and a commercialized popular cultural product. Their popularity depends very much on the sales of their CDs and VCDs, and their appearances on TV, airplay on radio, and public performances. These are the hallmarks of popular culture; their fans see themselves and their music as expressions of their Islamic identity. By using these products of popular culture in their everyday lives they are expressing an identity. It was revealed in interviews that this music was only available in mosques on Fridays (before the arrival of Raihan) and played only at religious events/festivals. People were not exposed to it in their daily lives. On the other hand, critics may argue that the Western pop culture invading the region via MTV and other sources has required local popular culture to adapt to its cultural platforms, such as watching it on television. As Al Islam (Baharin and Jamaludin 2004) observes, Muslims are now accepting this culture; for example, Muslim women wear body-hugging tops and tight pants along with the tudung (Islamic veil). While the latter emphasizes their Muslim identity, this process may be what cultural theorists call the “hybridization” or “creolization” (Barker 2003, p. 174) of popular culture. By appropriating segments of the global cultural industry — such as adopting the MTV video-clip production and packaging formula — the nasyid music industry/movement has successfully negotiated globalization of mass culture by a process Stuart Hall (Chen and Morley 1996) describes as

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“margins coming into representation”. The margins in this context are not the local but the global. Yet, in the context of Malaysia and Indonesia, this theory could be rewritten as the centre (majority Islamic culture) resisting attempts by cultural imperialist forces to push it into the margins. Thus the centre becomes the representation of modernity. In the process, however, is the nasyid industry forming what Benedict Anderson (1991) calls “imagined communities”. What the nasyid musical movement in Malaysia has been able to achieve is exactly that type of identity among the majority Malay-Muslim community. In Indonesia the slow progress in the acceptance of nasyid music as the collective identity of the Muslim majority is due in no small measure to the great diversity of musical cultures across the vast archipelago. The challenge facing the nasyid music industry in Indonesia is to create an “imagined community” of Muslims, who would be able to exist above the surface of the great diversity of musical (and linguistic) cultures by adopting nasyid as their religio-cultural common identity. This is yet to happen in Indonesia. When Raihan embark upon overseas tours they represent a Malay Islamic culture to the outside world. However, they may not, in fact, be representing what is considered “traditional Malay culture” but a contemporary Malay-Muslim culture. On the other hand, they may be globalizing the dakwah movement, which emerged in Malaysia via nasyid music. As language could be a barrier in this respect, Raihan have recently recorded songs in both English and Urdu (the latter being ostensibly the official language of Pakistan); they are also planning to record songs in Mandarin to enable them to take the message

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to the Muslim community in China (Amarin, personal interview, 2004). In this chapter I have looked at how the nasyid music industry has mounted a successful resistance movement to the global popular culture disseminated by MTV to the region. I have also raised the question of whether this resistance has been a result of hybridization or creolization of the local popular culture. These questions and relevant theoretical perspectives will be explored further in the next chapter in which I examine the non-religious pop music industry in the two countries, and especially the influence of MTV on the popularization of dangdut music. Notes 1. 2.

3.

4.

Figure given during a discussion with Snada group members in Jakarta in 2004. Although the word “Western” is used here as it is the term usually used in media discourses, a more appropriate word would be “urbanized” or “industrialized” pop culture, because the tools of dissemination of this pop culture, such as karaoke, household audiovisual consumer items, IT, could no longer be called “Western” cultural products. MUI is a council of Islamic community representatives to which most Islamic organizations with any standing in the community are allowed to nominate a representative. While during the Soeharto era this may have been described as a government appointed council, in the reformasi era it has become more democratic. MUI has the power to issue fatwas and is regarded as the voice (or authority) of the Islamic community of Indonesia. Qawwali is a form of Sufi music, in which the singer recites devotional poetry or improvises using lines from the Qur’an

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6. 7.

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or religious texts. The goal of qawwali is to transport the listener to a state of union with God. Its vehicles are the drum beats of the tabla and dholak, the drone of the harmonium, and the sound and meaning of poetry. The “Five articles of faith” in Islam include the belief in Allah (one God), in Angels (the two angels who record one’s good and bad deeds), in the Scriptures (Qur’an), the Prophets (Muhammad as the last and the greatest of the six great prophets), and Judgement Day (the first day after death when the deceased will be sent either to heaven or to hell) . The Rupiah is Indonesia’s national currency. Ramadan is the Muslim holy month of fasting which is usually the ninth month of the Muslim year. One of the “five pillars” or absolute requirements of Islam. During this period Muslims are expected to refrain from eating, drinking, and engaging in sexual intercourse between the hours of dawn and dusk.

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4 Pop Music, Cultural Imperialism, and Localization

In the previous chapter I examined and discussed how nasyid music, with its Islamic flavour, has become both a religious movement as well as part of Malaysia’s pop music industry. In this chapter, which includes discussion of the results of observations, contents analysis, focus group discussion, and personal interviews, I explore other more secular Malaysian and Indonesian genres of pop music, and examine how they are responding to the globalized music industry, which is now very much part of the pop music industry in the region. I will also discuss how local musical identities have developed as a result, especially with regard to dangdut music, in the context of the theoretical perspectives examined in Chapter 1. Pop Music Industry in the Age of Globalization To the outsider Malaysia and Indonesia appear to share a common Malay or Melayu cultural heritage. Yet within this seemingly uniform culture there is a diversity of regional and ethnic cultural expressions and musical forms, which continue to interact with each other as well as with the

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globalized musical culture coming from the West and other areas such as India and the Arab world. There is an attempt to provide some form of fusion of musical culture with which the nation can identify. Over the past four decades the governments of both of these countries have been trying to guide or develop just such a contemporary cultural expression, with Malaysia seemingly more successful than its larger neighbour Indonesia. In the case of Malaysia, for the purposes of this study, the focus will be on the musical culture of the dominant Malay community. As I suggest in Chapter 1, the history of Malay pop music goes back to the early twentieth century when in the 1920s and 1930s bangsawan1 troupes developed a form of popular Malay music from traditional asli (pure) music. It was performed live in bangsawan theatres, amusement parks, and in dance halls in urban centres. The 1930s saw the arrival of the gramophone. At the time, half of the recorded music was derived from traditional Malay folk social dance and entertainment music; the other half was influenced by Anglo-American and Latin American dance music. Western dance bands, known as orkes Melayu (Malay Orchestras), were introduced into the music scene around this time. Following the end of World War II, a Malay film industry began to take shape, produced by Chinese-owned companies which employed Indian directors who relied upon local actors and actresses (Matusky and Tan 2004). The Malay film industry was subject to a strong Indian influence resulting in playback2 singing becoming a major component of the industry. P. Ramlee, the legendary Malay singer and actor of the 1950s and 1960s, appeared in 63 films and sang more than 200 songs (Baharudin Latif

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1989, p. 63 cited in Matusky and Tan 2004) mainly derived from traditional Malay music such as asli, inang, joget, masri, zapin, and keroncong. Included in the repertoire were elements of Western Latin American dance music. With the emergence of the Beatles in the West taking the world by storm, the Malaysian pop music of the 1960s became greatly dominated by Western influences, with only a few singers recording hits based on Malay rhythms. In the 1970s and 1980s transnational recording companies began marketing their products in Malaysia, products that became available even to the rural masses via cheap transistor radios and cassette players. By the end of the 1980s local musicians began to fight back with the Hindustani-influenced pop music genre known as dangdut, which first became popular in Indonesia in the 1960s. With Indian Bollywood movies very popular in both Indonesia and Malaysia, dangdut music, which used local rhythms, became fused with the tabla and the Indian film industry vocal style, which was accompanied by the electric guitar, a synthesizer, and drums. The popularity of dangdut peaked in the mid-1990s with the phenomenal success of local star Amalina. But her mysterious disappearance from the music scene saw dangdut’s popularity plummet (I elaborate upon this later in the chapter). The 1990s also saw the worldbeat3 music bandwagon enter Malaysia. Tan (2002) notes that exposure to worldbeat helped to stimulate music production in Malaysia, creating a resurgent interest in the use of indigenous elements in contemporary Malaysian pop music. Zainal Abidin and M. Nasir were two musicians who readily took up the challenge. Zainal blended Malaysian

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social dance rhythms with Western sounds, mixing traditional instruments, e.g., the yang qin, sitar, gendang, and gambus with the saxophone, keyboard, drum, and guitar. He was dubbed the “social conscience of new Malay music” for addressing issues of drug abuse, poverty, and environmental protection in his songs (Tan 2002). M. Nasir, who predicted that traditional Malay music would “die out” in twenty years due to the westernization of Asia, maintained that Malay music is a combination of other cultures’ music, mainly that of India, China, and the Arab world. To keep it alive would require developing a kind of “fusion” music where the song’s soul is “what I want to express according to my feelings and thoughts at that moment” (Begum, citing Nasir 2005). The late 1990s saw the development of irama Malaysia, a form of music movement wherein the musicians sought to revive traditional Malay music through pop music while projecting the authenticity in their songs. Composer Pak Ngah (personal interview, 2004), who is credited with having created the irama Malaysia sound, describes this music as “not a new form but an old form of music which has been played for thirty to forty years but not well presented”. He suggested that young people don’t like to hear too authentic a type of music; they need to hear a modern sound. So he took all of the traditional Malay instruments, e.g., the accordion, violin, and rebana, and played them incorporating a modern rhythm. Now, Ngah claims, they “listen to a modern sound with an element of traditional within it. That way, youngsters listen to this music as part of their popular genre.” Musicologist Ghouse (personal interview, 2004) stated that young Malays’ ears are now tuned to the “Western tempo

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scale” as a result of their exposure to foreign television and music. The presentation of traditional music has to change with the times to reflect the “development of technology which depicts the rhythm of life of the society”. So rather than listening to traditional music played on a pair of gongs, a rebana, a violin, and an accordion, Malay youth can now listen to orchestral music featuring a fusion of instruments that appeal to their new tastes. Popular singers, for example Siti Nurhaliza, Noraniza Idris, and Jamal Abdillah, are associated with this music. Pak Ngah (personal interview, 2004) admitted that it was Siti Nurhaliza’s association with irama Malaysia which gave it a much needed fillip because by that time the artiste had a huge following in the country, including fans ranging from as young as 7 years of age to 70 year olds (see Chapter 5 for a detailed discussion of Siti Nurhaliza’s music). Irama Malaysia’s popularity is also due in no small measure to how the music is packaged via VCDs and for television. The government encourages this form of music as it is seen as “in line with the government’s policy to encourage local music programmes and to promote Malaysian culture” (Tan 2002, p. 14). Most video clips of irama Malaysia musicians feature Malay social dance elements. Dancers dressed in colourful traditional Malay costumes perform stylized choreographed versions of these dances in the background while the singer performs in front of the camera. While the lyrics of many of these songs are customarily written in Malay verse form, often the dances and music reflect elements of Arabic and Indian pop culture rather than Western culture. The worldbeat music influence in Malaysia has shown that globalization is not a one-way process. In fact, Tan

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suggests, it has actually helped to expand rather than contract the musical horizon in Malaysia, with local musicians encouraged to experiment using local and foreign rhythms. “By mixing elements (language, musical instruments, vocal style, form and video images) from different cultural flows, Malaysian pop musicians transform the ‘global’ and reconstruct the ‘local’. They actively engage in recreating new modern identities that are both ‘global’ and ‘local’ ” (2002, p. 17). On 17 August 1959, during a National Day address, President Sukarno called upon the youth of Indonesia to stand up against the “neo-colonialist and imperialistic” nations of the West and oppose economic, political, and cultural imperialism. He asked the youth to “reject the crazy mixed-up noise (ngakngik-ngek) called music”. This critique became the stimulus for a more nationalistic “Indonesian pop music” and a search for indigenous music forms that could be transformed into vehicles for contemporary youth music, with bands reviving old songs in contemporary styles, including the famous keroncong music, in a rock style (Sen and Hill 2000). After the Sukarno government fell in the mid-1960s and was succeeded by Soeharto’s New Order regime, the earlier ban on Western pop music was lifted, resulting in an influx of Anglo-American music into the country that threatened the local music industry. Responding to this threat, Indonesian musicians attempted to synthesize an identifiably modern Indonesian pop music genre. It was around this time that Rhoma Irama came on the scene and recast dangdut as the national pop music genre. Along with his Soneta Group and fellow dangdut musicians including Elvy Sukaesih, Rhoma Irama

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transformed the old-style Malay orchestral music into uptempo dangdut borrowing the rhythmic style of Indian film songs popular with the lower-class urban Indonesians. The genre, as a result of Rhoma’s artistry, soon became a national treasure. By the mid-1980s dangdut had become an established vehicle for populist politicking. Rhoma Irama even tried to use it for Islamic evangelization (as discussed in Chapter 3). The armed forces monthly music programme on TVRI frequently featured dangdut music played by military bands. By the 1990s approximately 35 per cent of total record sales in Indonesia were dangdut (Hill and Sen 1997). Sen and Hill (2000) maintain that dangdut is the musical genre clearly associated with the New Order, because from a minor genre before 1965 it skyrocketed to become the most identifiable national, modern, Indonesian popular music by the mid-1970s, with many hours of television exposure, innumerable films featuring dangdut music, and radio giving it ample airtime. Sen and Hill credit Rhoma Irama for giving dangdut music the uptempo beat, which made it easier for a cross section of Indonesians to identify with it as contemporary music. Dangdut was adopted into the repertoire of established pop singers and played by military bands. University students saw it as a way of playfully adopting lowerclass tastes, as a gesture against commercial pop. State functions began to include dangdut entertainment. By the mid-1980s dangdut had become an established vehicle for populist politicking, endorsed by the highest level of government. In 1995, at the opening

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of a nationally televised dangdut concert celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Indonesian independence, Secretary of State Moerdiono declared that dangdut was “very, very Indonesian”: “This country [is] of the people, by the people, for the people. And so is dangdut of the people, by the people, for the people”. (Sen and Hill 2000, p. 175)

Parallel to the dangdut pop music phenomenon was another musical movement, which closely followed global trends in youth music and was known as “underground” or “alternative” music. Proponents produced their own “indie” rock music albums independent of the mainstream commercial recording companies. Associated often with male high school and university student audiences, these underground bands played loud, rebellious rock music that often contained explicit political messages. While their music closely resembled that of Western groups, their methods of producing, performing, and distributing were defiantly local and grass-roots based, operating outside the channels of the commercial music industry (Wallach, 2002). Observes Sen and Hill (2000, p. 180): “[Indonesian] underground music is intensely conscious of its identification with the young and obsessed with the generation gap. The concept of a generational identity as political ideology goes back to the pre-independence nationalist discourses, which gave the ‘permuda’ (youth) a revolutionary anti-Dutch role.… The anti-authority message, the invitation to disorderliness underlying Indonesia’s alternative, underground and rock music in general, may well be more important than the lyrics itself.”

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Dangdut Music: Is Class the Barrier, Not the Sound? The rise and fall of dangdut music in Malaysia in the 1990s and Indonesia’s continuing controversy over dangdut star Inul Daratista’s dancing style (see Chapter 5 for a detailed analysis of this) is a hallmark of the image problem dangdut has had to battle for decades. The development of dangdut music, particularly in Indonesia, is a good example of how foreign musical influences have been successfully localized over a long period of time to create a local brand of pop music that is accepted by a vast majority of the people as “their” music. Both Indonesia and Malaysia have absorbed Indian and Arabic cultural influences for centuries, and this is reflected in the sound and presentation of today’s dangdut pop music. For anyone familiar with the Indian Bollywood film industry, listening to dangdut music often reminds one of Hindustani Bollywood beats before the bhangra wave arrived in the 1990s. It is especially reminiscent of the songs performed by legendary duo Latha Mangeskar and Asha Bhosle4 in the 1970s and 1980s. It is no surprise that Rhoma Irama and Latha Mangeskar co-produced a dangdut album in the 1990s titled Gulali, with many of the songs sung in both Bahasa Indonesia and Hindi. Today it is not uncommon to find discos, particularly in Indonesia, in which dangdut and Hindustani film hits are played back to back; the locals continue to dance seemingly unperturbed, a phenomenon I observed in Jakarta, Batam, and Bintan during my field research. During one of these visits I bought a VCD from a pavement hawker’s stall in Jakarta, volume three of a series

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called “Dangdut Bollywood”. The VCD features local artist Lenny Asitha singing dangdut songs with a heavy tabla beat accompanied by the Indonesian bamboo flute. The visuals very much represent the Bollywood formula of the singer (and partner) dancing across changing scenery. Karaoke singing is a popular pastime in Indonesia, where there is a large market for karaoke VCDs of dangdut music. In record bars in the major cities, one can find an abundance of locally produced dangdut VCDs. I picked up many such VCDs during my field research with different themes (as reflected on the covers). In one such karaoke VCD titled Rock Dangdut, that I purchased from a record bar in Jakarta, the sound of the songs do not reflect anything close to Western rock music, albeit the orchestra visually looks like a rock band. However, the four guitarists are accompanied by a bamboo flautist, drummers, and a dholak5 player. It is the bamboo flute and the dholak beat which dominate the sound of all of the songs; the singer shifts from one scene to another, mainly representing Indonesian rural scenes and provincial towns, showing bus stations and markets. Two of the song clips had Javanese dancers in traditional dress performing in the background, in gardens or beach scenes. The beat of the songs is mainly slow-beat dance music. In one song clip, “Randa Ta’lowan”, the dance steps of the singer — who is dancing on stage with the “rock” orchestra in the background — are simultaneously mirrored by Javanese dancers in traditional dress in a rural paddy field setting. These images interchange throughout the song. The singer is dressed in a long, ankle-length “Western style” light blue dress.

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In another karaoke VCD titled Disco Joget Dangdut, most of the tracks have a very strong Western R & B beat blended with the “dangdut sound” of the bamboo flute. The images are exclusively urban and Westernized, with a number of clips showing aerobic-style dancing being performed on the beach by women dressed in shorts and tank-tops or spaghetti tops and men wearing tracksuits. There are also a couple of tracks filmed around a swimming pool, seemingly at a resort: the women are dressed in shorts and bikini-style tops, often covered with an unbuttoned blouse/shirt; there are also two clips in which the female dancers — including the singer — are dressed in tight blue jeans, with the camera often focusing on their buttocks. It is obvious that this clip was meant to convey urban, upper-middle-class lifestyle/tastes. Another VCD that I acquired was Disco Dangdut volume 2, produced in 2005, and featuring two clips by Inul Daratista, showing her famous hip-gyrating dance style. This VCD consisted of songs by a variety of dangdut singers with the images used in the clips showing a clear upper-middleclass focus. One clip depicts a young girl in her bedroom in a typical urban, upper-middle-class setting, then shows images of the lounge where she dances Latin ballroom style with a boyfriend to the dangdut beat. Another song starts with a girl trying on some dresses in the lounge of a very upmarket home. It then goes on to show images of young adult women in Western-style dresses and a wedding in a garden setting with guests dressed in Western-style long gowns and suits. Another song has a night club setting, while yet another has three upper-class young women in jeans meeting three young men in an urban beach-park setting,

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romancing late into the darkness of the night. None of the song clips feature any rural or lower-middle-class settings or people. This VCD is clearly designed to package dangdut music for upper-middle-class tastes and to promote dangdut via such an image. On the two occasions when traditionally dressed dancers appeared in the clip, they were positioned as part of the entertainment for the “guests” in the party setting. The music in all of the clips was clearly composed for dancing (to be played in a disco): it had a real dangdut beat to it and lacked the R & B influence of the previous VCD. The blending of the beat by the synthesizer, along with the flute and the drums, played a major role in all of the music clips. Lockard (1998) observes that dangdut emerged from the cultural melting pot of Jakarta because of its assimilation and intermingling of people and ideas coming from outside. Seeing the great variety of dangdut VCDs available in the market in Jakarta, it becomes apparent that this music is trying to cross geographic and class barriers. Dangdut for a long time was very popular in the villages across Indonesia, attracting the “kampong music” (village music) tag, from which dangdut is still trying to recover. However, as Kartomi (2002) observes, major multinational companies are now recognizing dangdut’s potential. McDonalds uses dangdut music to sell its hamburgers, while Sony uses dangdut to advertise its musical and technological wares. Sony launched its own dangdut label in 2001, perhaps in a bid to have people accept that it is not only the music of the poor lower classes. Warner Music has also produced dangdut labels, but as one of its senior executives told me during an interview in Jakarta in August 2005, the very fact

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that it sells well across the class barriers makes it susceptible to piracy, in the event of which major record labels may shy away from the genre: Dangdut is really not kampong music anymore. Because some people buy dangdut (in cities) and if you can sell 400,000, 500,000 of an album it is crucial all over the place. Even the higher market buys it. But that is a niche: it’s not the core market for dangdut. It’s a crossover market. They listen to dangdut but not all. But you go to small cities in Java or go to the workers: they all listen to dangdut. But you look at the product — it may not be original. Dangdut is susceptible to disasters,… when the financial crisis hit, it was dangdut that suffered. Dangdut market is such [that] the prices cannot go up,… dangdut also suffers from piracy. They are very smart, they look and say we should pirate dangdut because we can sell so much. (Warner Music Indonesia executive, personal interview, 2005)

Tracing its origins, Frederick (1982) says that although the word dangdut came into being as recently as 1972 or 1973, the musical tradition may have had its origins back in the early European colonial period “when a potpourri of Indonesian, Arab and western instruments were played together in the ‘tanjidor’ small, wandering orchestras typical of Batavia” (1982, p. 105). In the course of the nineteenth century, other musical influences — such as Chinese gambang kromong ensemble music, Sundanese, Muluku, and Portuguese instrumental music — were absorbed; later, elements of the well-known keroncong music were added.

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In the early twentieth century the keroncong musicians wandering around Java became very popular with the common masses. However, the Indonesian upper classes, the Eurasians, and the colonial Dutch masters viewed them with disdain as musicians of the villagers and lower classes. These musicians were afforded derogatory terms such as buaya keroncong (keroncong “crocodiles” or “toughs”), werklozen (unemployed “bums”), and klootzaken (“jerks”). In the 1930s, with the advent of radio, the phonograph, and moving pictures, keroncong music made an important transition: it started to feature prominently in the new Indonesian film industry. Indonesian nationalists, for example Dr A.K. Gani of the Partai Serikat Islam Indonesia, saw a role for this music: it could carry the independence message to the uneducated masses of Indonesia via the film and music industries. By the 1940s keroncong groups had become strongly identified with the Malay character, as opposed to the Western or Chinese. It became known by the generic term orkes Melayu. During the Japanese occupation and the revolutionary period leading up to independence, this music held its own, “sometimes blended with the nationalist marches and fighting songs appropriate to those times” (Frederick 1982, p. 106). In the 1950s the keroncong sound was modernized, incorporating Western orchestration and samba and rhumba beats. But in the 1960s, concomitant with Sukarno’s campaign against westernization, musicians began to look for more indigenous flavours, and they found them in the orkes Melayu tradition, which developed far from Jakarta in the Sumatran islands’ Medan and Padang regions. The genre made its way to the Malay film industry, especially the songs sung by the legendary P. Ramlee. With

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Indian films flooding the market, Hindustani film music started to influence the orkes Melayu music. The indigenous sound of the music appealed to those who were looking for an alternative to Western pop. Meanwhile, members of the upper class remained tuned to the international sound. With the political upheavals of 1965 and the subsequent opening up of the Indonesian market to Western music by the New Order regime of Soeharto, Western hit songs flooded the market, as a result of which the popularity of local music began to suffer. It was around this time that a young musician named Oma Irama (he later changed his name to Rhoma) came on the scene. In the 1970s Rhoma Irama, with his Soneta group, was able not only to revive the fortunes of orkes melayu music but was also able to bring it out of the kampongs and into the cities, gradually changing its folk music style for a more danceable beat to suit the urban youth. At a time when Indonesian pop music was greatly influenced by Western rock, he mixed the instruments of Western rock music, e.g., the synthesizer, electric guitars, the saxophone, and the drums with the more traditional Indonesian drums and the bamboo flute, creating an alternative to Western rock, which he himself had abandoned. During an interview I conducted with the artiste at his luxurious Jakarta home, Rhoma Irama explained how he was able to raise the profile of dangdut in Indonesia: Dangdut, before it was called orkes melayu, meaning coming from Sumatra with Melayu orchestra. Then came the influence from India and Arabic music. Before that orkes melayu was very primitive music.

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Lyrics were pessimistic, sad lyrics. Music wasn’t attractive for dancing. They just sit and sing. At that time, 1970s, came rock music, underground music [from the West]. And rock became the flavour. I brought a revolution in music here by changing the lyrics from pessimistic to optimistic. I also changed the beat from acoustic simple music to more sophisticated electronic music. I changed the stage act from just sitting to presenting like rock music. I changed the beats, the rhythms, from slow to more modern. Now dangdut is the style of Rhoma Irama. The name dangdut is a mocking term used by people who don’t like dangdut. It is taken from the drumbeat dan-dut-dan-dut. So I wrote songs with the title dangdut, but with orchestral influence from India. (personal interview, 2004)

Irama was Indonesia’s premier entertainer for almost two decades, during which time he recorded over a hundred albums, of which several dozen achieved gold6 status in sales figures (Lockard 1998). Frederick (1982) observes that the success of his music was due to his ability to vary the instrumentation and phrasing of the numbers, which enabled him to produce more variety in tone and texture than ordinary orkes Melayu could produce. If Melayu music was customary foot-tapping stuff, then this dangdut (as it was now being called) practically shook young listeners, compelling them to toss off their footgear and rock (bergoyang) to the music. Indeed, dancing in this particular manner, a cross between the traditional kampong-style “joget” and “vaguelu” rock-and-roll motions, became a hallmark of Soneta performances. (Frederick 1982, p. 110)

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As discussed in Chapter 6, Irama also tried his hand at using dangdut music to propagate the Islamic message, with a certain amount of success. But he was more successful in making dangdut a vehicle to convey a political message. Lockard (1998) observes that many of Rhoma’s songs reveal a subtle form of indirect protest or criticism. For example, his 1978 song “Dangdut Rock”, in which he gently commiserates with the many working poor who have to work all night in order to make a decent living, or his popular hit “Rupiah”, in which he criticizes those who sacrifice their morals in their mad scramble for wealth. While Rhoma’s songs — both the music and the lyrics — appealed to Indonesia’s lower-class masses, Indonesia’s political and social elite have over the years condemned dangdut in general, and Rhoma’s music in particular, as “loud, vulgar, déclassé, and inherently corrupting of public morals” (Lockard 1998, p. 97). Rhoma Irama’s attempt to use music as a medium of Islamic evangelism also made dangdut a point of party-political contention. His lyrics, rhythms and performances tapped the early 1980s Muslim resentment against the New Order. He campaigned for the Islamic opposition political party, the PPP, and sang at its election rallies. For this, TVRI blocked his television appearances for most of the 1980s and strict security conditions applied to his public performances. But in the 1990s Rhoma was back on television, as his party-political shift to Golkar7 linked dangdut to the New Order’s “rapprochement” with Muslims. (Sen and Hill 2000, p. 175)

Kafil Yamin (personal interview, 2004), a Bandung-based journalist and social critic, noted that Rhoma Irama was

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able to take dangdut out of the kampongs into hotels and other elite places in the city. While most locally educated youth see dangdut as their music, the foreign-educated youth of Indonesia’s elite, upon returning to Indonesia, object to being called “dangdut fans”. But, Yamin maintained, the fan group is very big and for this reason dangdut has a huge following among the youth in the country. In the focus group discussions (FGD) I organized in Jakarta and Bandung, that included students of urban middle-class and upper-middle-class backgrounds, when the question of dangdut was posed, most said that they “did not like it”. Although they were willing to acknowledge that it was Indonesian music, a typical reaction was “we don’t like it”. Alia (FGD, Bandung, 2004), a male law student from Bandung said: “Youngsters don’t like dangdut because they have different taste of music. They like Western music; I don’t know why”. Tia, an 18-year-old female high school student stated: “Teenagers think dangdut is second-class music in Indonesia.” Nur, a female engineering student explained: “Here in Indonesia there is a tendency to relate dangdut to sensual dancing and that kind of thing.” But they all admitted that there are many youngsters in Indonesia who like dangdut. Sociology student Banu (FGD, Jakarta, 2004) said he doesn’t like the lyrics of dangdut songs because “they sound sad and it is also mostly known for erotic and sexual dancing”. Ika (FGD, Jakarta, 2004), an advertising student added somewhat critically, “Singers use flagrant dresses and the lights are overpowering … the couples run around trees in the garden.” Mass communication student Archie (FGD, Jakarta, 2004) said that he doesn’t like dangdut at

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all and that if he goes to a dangdut dance club he is unable to dance to it. And in the view of another advertising student named Shendy (FGD, Jakarta, 2004), “dangdut is just funny”. High school graduate Fina admitted that while she likes dangdut she only listens to it at home, especially Rhoma Irama’s music. Of the young people who took part in the FGDs, i.e., those who had a strong Islamic background — especially the women who had chosen to wear the hijab — almost all said that although they regard dangdut as the music of Indonesia, they don’t like it because of its sensual presentation. Akeu (FGD, Bandung, 2004), an 18-year-old student and member of a female nasyid group said, “Dangdut is often associated with sensuality. That is the reason I don’t like dangdut. It is commonly associated with erotic dancing and it is against Islamic values. Yes, dangdut is our music but I don’t like it.” Netty (FGD, Bandung, 2004), a student and a fellow member of the female nasyid group added, “I don’t like dangdut because it features erotic dancing, but I like the music itself because there are some songs which are good to hear and can be taken as dakwah music.” After I recorded the FGDs in Jakarta and Bandung, which comprised young people mainly from upper-middle-class backgrounds, some of whom could communicate in English fairly well, my interpreter, a local journalist, said that most of them were lying when they said to me that they don’t like dangdut music. He said that like Fina, who admitted to listening to dangdut at home, most do this; they don’t like to say they like it because dangdut is identified with lower-class people. To test this I arranged an FGD with a group of young girls (between 18 and 24 years) from north

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Jakarta’s working class suburbs. All of them were school leavers; they all work in factories and in food courts, and were all spontaneous and unanimous in admitting that they were fans of dangdut. Rini (FGD, Jakarta, 2005), a 22-year-old factory worker said, “Dangdut is our music because it is close to the peoples’ taste. Dangdut is more fun to dance to. We don’t like [Western] pop music, we can’t dance to it.” Ani, a 23-year-old food court assistant added, “In parties or weddings, if dangdut is not played it’s not a complete party. It’s good to dance [to].” Desti, a 19-year-old unemployed girl argued, “I don’t agree that dangdut is low-class music. Look at TV — dangdut is there every night. If dangdut is not accepted by all [of the] people they don’t show it there.” Rini added, “Because of that they [dangdut performers] dress up well. Their performance has improved.” To test these views further I arranged another series of interviews in Batam, an island close to Singapore where many electronic and garment factories are located. Thousands of young men and women from the rural areas of Java and Sumatra have migrated to the island to work. Ella (personal interview, Batam, 2005), a 20-year-old female computer shop assistant said, “Music dangdut is Indonesian identity because it comes from Malay music. Dangdut is my own music. I’m shy to dance, but I love to dance when [there are] no people around in [the] house.” Ronald (personal interview, Batam, 2005), a 21-year-old factory assistant from Padang (Sumatra) commented, “I like dangdut too. Makes me feel relaxed. Dangdut is Indonesian national identity, and I love when dangdut comes on MTV because it can be known to other cultures.” Devi (personal interview, Batam,

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2005), a 23-year-old factory worker, who wears the hijab, said, “I like dangdut, but not as much as nasyid, because dangdut performers expose too much of their bodies.” Another female factory worker, 22-year-old Atulia (personal interview, Batam, 2005) from Palembang (Sumatra), who wore blue jeans but no hijab said, “I love dangdut 99.9 per cent. I love to dance to dangdut music because the lyrics tell a story and it relates to my history, my culture and my lifestyle. Dangdut is my musical identity.” From the above comments it becomes clear that it is a class barrier that impedes the acceptance of dangdut as the pop music of Indonesia. This is reflected in the choice of music played on the local radio stations: those that target the lower middle classes play predominantly dangdut music to attract listeners, while those catering to the tastes of the urban, upper middle classes tend to programme Western music, not necessarily pop. The top-rated youth stations in Jakarta, such as HardRock FM for example, play predominantly AngloAmerican music presented in Bahasa Indonesia. I made a number of attempts to interview an executive of HardRock FM in Jakarta but my requests were declined. Arian Arifin (personal interview, 2004), who is editor of MTV Trax (which is closely affiliated with HardRock FM), explained that they don’t give exposure to dangdut because it is not seen as “cool” by its target audience. “Young [upper class] people tend to favour independent music because it has no [class] barriers”, he added. Anton Wahyudi (personal interview, 2004), the music director of Prambors Radio (another youth radio station in Jakarta), suggested that most youngsters in Jakarta are Western-minded in terms of their fashion and music tastes.

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But he thinks that their music tastes are now turning away from Western music to more independent Indonesian music labels, which his stations play frequently. When asked about dangdut, Wahyudi replied, “We are focusing on middle to upper class: mostly they don’t listen to dangdut because it has an image of lower class in Indonesia. So they don’t want to identify with the dangdut artistes, but they like [local] pop artistes like Dewa and Padi.”8 However, at the other end of the spectrum there are radio stations in Jakarta, for example Radio Suara FM, Muara FM and SPFM, also high-rating radio stations, which predominantly play dangdut music. Radio Suara FM’s music director Hendra Sentaun (personal interview, 2005) stated that their target audience includes the middle and upper middle classes of all ages and that they are a “full dangdut station”. He disagrees with the view that the youth see dangdut as kampong music. He added that all dangdut stations now work with each other to make this music popular among a large component of Jakarta’s population. He pointed out that large numbers of kampong people have now come to Jakarta to live, thus swelling the dangdut fan base. SPFM’s music director Nazar Amir (personal interview, 2005) said that a recent ratings survey undertaken by a leading international company has shown that even government bureaucrats and other upper-class people now listen to dangdut music, “but they don’t admit that”. He said that his station, which has over two million listeners, is very profitable because the “middle to lower class love consumption”. Though the station is owned by an Islamic organization, their number one music choice is dangdut; however, they do not play the

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songs of Inul Daratista due to concerns about her image (see Chapter 5). Annette (personal interview, 2005), a DJ employed by a high-rating radio station in Batam, said that although she considers dangdut the pop music of Indonesia, her station owner does not allow her to play dangdut on air because the station management fears that it could affect the image of the station. However, they do on occasion organize dangdut concerts in Batam for singers from Jakarta, who are very popular with the island’s people. But they neither broadcast their songs nor the concerts. She said that she likes dangdut; she and her friends sing and dance to it but she never plays it on air. Gita (personal interview, 2005), a 23-year-old DJ, who works at one of their competitor radio stations in Batam, said that they play about forty per cent dangdut on air and, based on the requests they receive, they know that some of the upper-class people in Batam also listen to dangdut. “We play dangdut in prime time because most adverts we get are for these programmes”, she added. Ahmed (personal interview, 2004), a local publisher in Jakarta, stressed that the whole issue of the image of dangdut is immersed in psychology and sociology. He described it as follows: “When people talk, there is always a reference to ‘if I have enough money’. Money puts you into a certain class, and that class also decides what music you like. It is not dangdut music, because it relegates you to middle/lower class. If you are living in an urban area that means you are in the middle-upper class. That means the kind of music you consume is not dangdut.” Meanwhile in Malaysia the boom and bust of the dangdut music industry had been attributed to the class-

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conscious image of music in that country as well. At the height of the dangdut boom in Malaysia in the mid-1990s, the (then) general manager of Warner Music (Southeast Asia), Tony Fernandez (now the owner of Air Asia budget airline) boasted, “Before, it was known as low-class music that was played in seedy clubs. We made dangdut pop. We glamorised it and legitimised it. We took traditional dangdut and added Ace of Base loops and a young pop image to it. We added what dangdut didn’t have before — artistes with star quality” (cited in Novich 1998). Among those artistes was Norazlina Amir Sharipuddin, who was popularly known as Amelina and whose album sales used to top 100,000 copies at their peak. She explained in an interview with Singapore’s Straits Times (11 September 1997) at the time: “What we’re doing is merely making it fit in with today’s trends. Children of the 80s and 90s will find ‘dangdut pop’ more appealing when compared with ‘traditional dangdut’. What we’re doing is just adding colour.” Her first three albums all achieved platinum (sold more than 100,000 copies) and Amelina herself expressed amazement at her success. But towards the end of the decade dangdut’s popularity plummeted, coincident with the disappearance of Amelina from the music scene after she became involved in an alleged sex scandal with fellow dangdut star Iwan, a relationship that was frowned upon by the conservative Muslim society. Iwan, along with other singers, has been trying to revive dangdut’s fortunes ever since by blending it with popular Arabic and Latin rhythms, albeit without success. In a bid to revive the dangdut music industry in Malaysia, Indonesian TV channel TPI, well known (in Indonesia) as the “dangdut channel”, brought a

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rare three-hour dangdut show to Genting Highlands’ Arena of Stars9 titled Semalam di Malaysia. The show, which included some of Indonesia’s top dangdut singers, along with Malaysian guest artistes, was broadcast live to Indonesia. But two local TV channels in Malaysia declined the offer to screen it live (Chuah 2003). Music critic Imran (personal interview, 2004) observed that the “popularity of dangdut among the less educated and older populace doesn’t quite give it [the] credibility [it] needs to be perceived as cool.” But, at the peak of its popularity in the mid-1990s, dangdut was perceived to have conquered that barrier. A leading musicologist at the University of Malaya (personal interview, 2004), revealed that in Malaysia the middle class still perceive dangdut as less than authentic. Many people in the rural areas, including his sister, who is a school teacher, associate dangdut songs with robust movement of the body (while dancing) and music played on loudspeakers at village weddings; conversely, in the cities it is associated with social deviates and unsophisticated dangdut clubs. Another musicologist (personal interview, 2004) said that unlike irama Malaysia and nasyid music, dangdut is not promoted by the government. Thus it lacks wider exposure to the public via regular air-play by mainstream television and radio. A popular DJ (personal interview, 2005) working for a government-owned radio station in Kuala Lumpur replied when asked about dangdut air-play (time) allocated by the station, “Dangdut music is not part of our format.… We do play a bit of it but not too much. We don’t have anything against it but it does not go with our formatting. I think it’s not so much the image of the kampong music, so to

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speak. Perhaps there are certain negative elements to it. Some people react negatively to it. In general, rather than the kampong tag, it is more the negative elements that come with it.” These so-called “negative elements”, which were not spelt out, restrict this youth-oriented station from playing dangdut music to its audience. So what do Malaysian youth think about dangdut? When this question was put to the FGD (Kuala Lumpur, 2004) with members of a young Islamic group (ABIM), they were of the opinion that dangdut music is not suitable for an Islamic society. Yusof, a 20-year-old male student, said, “Young people don’t like dangdut because they do a lot of cheeky movement. It doesn’t suit our culture here. Maybe in Indonesia it’s okay.” Fellow female student Amdan stated: “Dangdut is not Islamic: they show their body and seduce people, especially to attract men.” At another FDG session with a similar group in Penang, Yaakub (FGD, Penang, 2004), an industry technology student, said, “Dangdut uses a lot of dance, and percussion is dominant. They shake a lot, especially backside. Dangdut likes to entertain, not advise the people to do better. Dangdut contributes to social problems, because they play it in pubs and encourage people to drink.” In another FGD (Kuala Lumpur, 2004), comprised of secular-oriented young people, 20-year-old student Syed maintained, “We still have this colonial mentality, the way we perceive dangdut as kampong music, as a primitive type of music. [It is] because of the status quo, with the government promoting globalized culture; so we look to the Western world for an identity. So we think if we act

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like the western world we are equal.” Twenty-three-year old female law graduate Shazeera added, “Apart from our mentality it also goes to what sells. So even while saying dangdut is low class, we had disco dangdut in the 1990s, because it was played in discos exclusively for the upper classes … in this world your taste of music nowadays is for sale.” Fellow student Joey retorted sharply, “But youth don’t listen to it.” Farook, a 20-year-old male student insisted that “it is about marketing of cool. So youth now think that what is cool comes from the Western world, nothing local is cool. It’s all advertising that says you must listen to whatever you purchase and then you are cool. So if you listen to dangdut, there is a good chance that you may be ostracized because dangdut’s not cool.” Brian (personal interview, 2004), a DJ at one of the top upmarket dance clubs in Penang, when asked if he plays dangdut music at the club, responded, “If we try playing that, oh man, major disaster I’m telling you.” He estimated that only about 10 to 15 per cent of Malaysians are familiar with dangdut, adding “it is mostly my dad’s age group”. He also said that it is management policy to play only international hits and no local music, what he calls the “club concept”. Although they play Indian bhangra because “it’s saleable”, he suggested that if he played any dangdut songs they would be “unacceptable for the youngsters; they will walk away because they don’t like this kind of music concept”. In the words of Othman: It is quite a common view amongst the local masses that local music is not as appetising as music from outside; mainly products of the Anglo-American popular music

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industry. One of the main factors contributing to this behaviour is the role of the media. The media plays a great role in directing local trends so that musical styles and various attributes of imported western music seem to be more universal and therefore influence the musical aesthetics of most current local popular music. Popular music in the local sense means music acquiring the stylistic traits of western popular music. It is curiosity rather than suspicion that has been permitted to infiltrate the behaviour of the current public. This curiosity allows one to forgo the local center, in the context of identity, for that of other centers. Generally, new local music gravitates towards sounds invented by an OTHER from outside the local territory leading towards an effect of decentralisation of one’s association with the local center. In other words, a localised reassociation of the SELF. (2002, p. 81)

Othman, a musicologist from the University of Malaya (personal interview, 2004), agreed that any musical phenomenon could be created today by virtue of the way in which it is packaged. He pointed out that dangdut is used in political campaigns in Indonesia, but it would be “blasphemous” to do this in Malaysia, because use of dangdut is not encouraged by Malaysia’s politicians. Sammy10 (personal interview, 2004), a musicologist, dangdut drummer, and lecturer at a local tertiary institution, said that because the government does not encourage dangdut music, it has taken refuge in clubs, some of which have a shady reputation. This is the difference between the dangdut scene in Indonesia, where there are a lot of high profile public performances, and the scene in Malaysia,

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where dangdut is mostly played in clubs these days. He disagrees with the kampong tag for dangdut in Malaysia because the “sexy movements of dangdut are against the morals of rural people in Malaysia”. They don’t really like it, and if one goes to rural areas, he/she will not hear dangdut music. The irama Malaysia music one hears in the rural areas, Sammy insisted, is not dangdut (though it may sound similar). He explained that in Malaysia, at the peak of dangdut’s popularity in the 1990s, “they created a dangdut dance, which is something like a waltz where you dance with a partner, unlike in dangdut clubs in Indonesia where you dance in a line, sometimes girl with girl or boy with boy. But in Malaysia you need a partner to ‘swing together’.” Many dangdut clubs provide the patron with a partner for an hourly fee, someone to dance and drink with. But it has become very expensive to go to a dangdut club and young people can’t afford it. When Sammy used to play in dangdut clubs during Malaysia’s economic boom in the 1990s, he noted that people who frequented dangdut clubs spent between RM11500 to 1,000 a night. “They are the people who get easy money and have to spend it. Not even middle class; sometimes businessmen, constructors or corrupt officials. They spend on girls and drinks” (personal interview, 2004). “This scene is still not dead”, blogger “ok-lah” wrote after a visit to a dangdut club at Jalan Ipoh in Kuala Lumpur in a blog posted in April 2005: There was no cover charge for the guys but the girls were pretty mad with the fact that they had to pay a cover charge (for a change). After we got ourselves

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settled down nicely and had ordered the drinks, a lady came up to us and enquired whether we would like a Guest Relations Officer (GRO) to accompany us. We politely declined. They had a live band and I had fun with my friends.… There were several naughty old men dancing the night away, their drivers patiently waiting for them outside. In fact, we were the only ones with a Perodua among the BMWs, Mercs, Jags among others. (Ok-lah 2005)

During my field research I found the situation the same at a number of dangdut clubs I visited in Kuala Lumpur, where there was no cover charge for men but women had to pay a RM10 entry fee. One club on the rooftop of a seven-storey building in the centre of the city featured a live band, and after I ordered a drink a woman came and asked me if I needed a hostess. She took me into a backroom and showed me a room full of young women (seemingly just out of their teens), saying that most of them came from Indonesia and Myanmar, and they could provide me with company for a fee of around RM35–50 an hour. There were many men there; some, who looked to be as old as 50 or 60 years of age, were dancing and drinking with these young hostesses. Another club I visited was more upmarket. In addition to the dance floor and live music there were also Karaoke rooms where patrons could sing dangdut songs accompanied by female hostesses — for a fee, of course. Along with a local friend I visited another club in Jalan Ipoh, which was approximately a thirty-minute taxi ride from the city centre. This club did not open its doors until almost 11 p.m. and by midnight the dimly-lit club had quite a number of male guests, many of whom seemed on average to be younger than the males at

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the previous club. However, the hostesses who the patrons seemed to have “hired” from the club looked older than those at the previous club and were probably local. One couple in particular did a long dance routine to a dangdut piece which looked remarkably like a scene from the Hollywood film Dirty Dancing. My attempts to interview the club managers of the four dangdut clubs I visited proved unsuccessful. Commenting during the peak of the dangdut boom in the mid-1990s, Kean Wong, the editor of Men’s Review, a popular upmarket lifestyles magazine observed, “The cosmopolitan city person is not prepared to admit that he or she likes dangdut, though you will find the very same people in dangdut bars. They can’t resist the dangdut vibe, but would rather not talk about it, choosing to be associated with western music instead” (cited in Seneviratne 1997). Meanwhile in Jakarta dangdut music is played everywhere, i.e., in cafes, buses, record bars, on radio and television. But in many upmarket shopping malls one is more likely to hear Western music. American researcher Jeremy Wallach (2002) stated as follows: In Indonesia, where the tendency to romanticise “traditional culture” is strong among both national elites and Western observers, the techno-hybrid grooves of ethnic house music are a powerful antidote to the widespread notion that the “rakyat kecil”, the so called “little people”, are somewhat less “modern” than those in the dominant class. Rather, the listeners dancing to this music in discos like Bar Dangdut find themselves in a close, yet deeply troubled relationship with technology. In their day to day lives, these working class people encounter technology in a different context

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— in the machinery in the factories where they work and the buses they drive. The music of dangdut disco offers a pragmatic, temporary escape from the drudgery of daily life. Technology, freed from the bounds of workplace, returns as an intimate companion and source of sensual pleasure.

It was in the early 1990s that this “dangdut bar” concept developed, when the two music styles identified with Indonesia’s working class, i.e., dangdut and regional pop daerah, spawned a new subgenre, which combined these familiar musical melodies with the technology-driven sounds and production values of global electronic dance music. They became identified locally with such labels as “dangdut trendy”, “dangdut remix”, and “house jawa”, for example. This coincided with the Jakarta dance club culture becoming more defused; hitherto an exclusive domain of the trendy rich Westernized youth, it turned into a leisure activity for the lower-middle and working classes (Wallach, 2002). Wallach (2002) describes the scene at a dangdut bar he visited in Jakarta as follows: As you cross the crowded dance floor and approach the dimly lit DJ booth … the DJs, both young women, occasionally use a microphone to sing along with the music they play as they weave a seamless web of powerful sound. The male patrons on the dance floor dance in pairs, sometimes with one another, sometimes with one of the dance hall hostesses or [with] one of the “freelancers” (the local name for non-employee women, who befriend male patrons at dangdut clubs for money or for “kicks”), and who frequent the establishment. The dancers, mostly middle-aged and

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some obviously intoxicated, appear to enjoy themselves immensely as they “joget” (dance) to the latest dangdut hits.… Suddenly the soundtrack changes, and a strange, pulsating electronic rhythm takes over, a genre patrons would recognise as “house jaipong”, a recently-forged hybrid style that fuses electronic dance music with indigenous rhythms and melodies from West Java. It sounds like music from Mars.

This scene, which I was personally able to witness in Jakarta, Bintan, and Batam, is commonly played out in many dangdut dance clubs across Indonesia. In the latter two locations most of the patrons were local young men and women, perhaps due to the fact that many young people from the rural areas of Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi come to these two islands to work in factories set up in the free trade zones. In these dangdut bars — rather, they are discotheques — where both young and middle-aged people come to relax and enjoy themselves, guests mainly dance in lines with partners, not touching each other. Sometimes they will, however, execute “sexy” hip movements. At a popular dance club called Mega Dangdut in Jakarta, there was no cover charge, but immediately after I sat down both men and women came to greet me. A live orchestra of between six and seven musicians was playing and a team of singers seemed to drift in and out from the stage to mingle with and chat to the male patrons. Women (when not singing on stage) joined the male patrons, asking them to buy drinks for them and sometimes inviting them to dance. The men did not pay the girls for dancing with them; however, they were expected to “tip” the singers at the end of the song. I observed many men pushing a note into the singers’ palms

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as the latter came off stage at the end of the performance. I was also told by one of the waitresses that a group of young women seated together in a dark corner of the club were “freelancers”, who could be hired for a fee of 80,000 rupiah (approximately US$10) for the night to dance with the patrons. But patrons are also expected to buy them drinks, which cost approximately 25,000 rupiah each. Ahmad, a DJ who works at Mega Dangdut, said that this is the most popular dangdut club in Jakarta; at least three top dangdut singers are on contract with the club each month. Most of the patrons, who include top public servants, politicians, and successful business people, are men of middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds, usually aged in their 30s and over. It is very rare for a male patron to bring his wife or a female companion. “It’s rich men who come here. They pour out money for the singers” (personal interview, 2004). There are many dangdut bars dotted across the city. In Sudirman, in Central Jakarta, there is a row of dangdut bars. The dimly lit interiors and scantily clad women indicated a connection with prostitution, as was also the case with a club I visited in northern Jakarta, where the atmosphere inside was somewhat threatening. I left this particular place within ten minutes of arriving. Also there are a number of hotels (which are popular with Middle Eastern male tourists), which have discos that play mainly dangdut, Hindustani, and Arabic music. However, two five-star hotel discos I checked out, that are popular with rich Indonesian teenagers, did not play any dangdut at all. Dangdut’s close identification with shady night clubs and prostitution worries many of its fans, for example Jakarta-

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based journalist Ali Pangesto (personal interview, 2004), who pointed out that this identification is strongest in the cities and not outside. He stressed that most of the clubs in the city are connected with prostitution, so “why identify only dangdut bars with prostitution?” Emyth Mihardja (personal interview, 2004), a dangdut musician, who performs nightly at a dangdut bar in Bandung, claimed that it is not true to say that dangdut is low-class music, because many of the patrons who frequent the club are middle class. “I used to play dangdut at weddings, private parties and anywhere people celebrate before, but now I earn a living playing in this dangdut bar, because dangdut has changed in the last thirty years. We have rock dangdut, disco dangdut. It can compete at any level now — with local or Western music.” Sen and Hill (2000) argue that dangdut’s persistent popularity is attributable to its hybrid character, its constant incorporating and synthesizing of other musical genres that may compete with it: Many provincial popular music forms have spawned dangdut variants, like “dangdut Sunda” and “dangdut Jawa”. So have new imported musical genres. In the 1980s there was “disco dangdut”. In 1996 “Remix Dangdut House Mania” was all the rage, as dangdut adjusted to internationally trendy house music. The lyrics on the “House Mania” album point to the diverse sources of dangdut’s inspiration, and the hybrid character of the genre. The song titles are Indonesian but the refrains are all in American English.… This is not to argue that an Indonesian cultural form is being overwhelmed by foreign cultural imports. Rather,

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dangdut is an instance of a particular localisation of codes circulating in global cultural markets. The “House Mania” album is a hybrid, which would not make sense in either of the linguistic and cultural context (India and USA) from which it, and dangdut generally, draws its elements. On the other hand, we also need to understand that dangdut, one of Indonesia’s most successful national popular cultural forms, cannot be fully explored within the bounds of the nation alone. (Sen and Hill 2000, p. 176)

MTV and its Influence on Local Youth and their Tastes Music Television (MTV) has often been accused by its critics of having invented the “cool” label to promote Western music to youth audiences around the world as a lifestyle choice. MTV and its supporters claim that the global music channel is effectively raising the profile of local music and helping indigenous music genres to “go international”. As MTV Asia’s President Frank Brown (Long 2002) explains, “the whole connection between MTV and young people is that we see the world through their eyes. We listen very carefully to what they have to say and give them a voice to express their opinion.” In defining what is “cool” he said, “What we’re seeing recently is a sea change in what young people think cool is. It used to be all about external appearance, your clothes, make-up, hair, the brands that you wear and being hip in a slightly stand-offish way. Today it begins with who you are, what your attitude to life is, what you think, how you express yourself on issues.”

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MTV, which has had a mixed response in Malaysia and Indonesia, arrived in Malaysia in 1996 with the introduction of satellite/cable television by ASTRO12 (S.B. Tan 2003). MTV began broadcasting in Indonesia in 1995 under an agreement with terrestrial broadcaster Anteve, which gave the Indonesian channel access to five to six hours of airtime daily (Sutton 2000). In May 2002 MTV launched a twentyfour-hour terrestrial channel in collaboration with local broadcaster Global TV, a move which gave them access to free-to-air channels in five major cities in Indonesia, i.e., Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya, and Medan.13 In Malaysia MTV only had access to cable-connected households, located mainly in upper-middle-class urban homes. However, some locally produced MTV programmes, such as MTV Syok, Muzik TV and Bintang, were broadcast on free-to-air channels (S.B. Tan 2003). The role of MTV in influencing the tastes of the local youth, especially with respect to music, dress, and social behaviour, remains a hotly debated issue in both of the countries under scrutiny. The following comments reflect the gap in perception between young people with a strong Islamic identity and those with a more secular outlook. Mohamad Raimi, who is the president of ABIM, the leading Islamic youth group in Malaysia, stated, “MTV is mostly viewed by those rich kids and middle class, who can afford Astro. But if you go to [the] villages, Astro is not an influence. They are influenced by magazines, and songs, they hear in supermarket malls. Most foreign MTV video clips influence our youth negatively, mainly in respect of relationships between men and women, where we have very strict norms. Video clips are very influential in shaping

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the minds of young generations, sexual issues, dancing, and so on. In this world of information we need to have cultural interaction with [the] West and … [the] Eastern countries. With MTV we can view what is happening outside. We should view it with the purpose of looking at new things that are coming up, but accept only good things in information and technology, not negative effects” (personal interview, 2004). Razak, a 22-year-old IT diploma holder from Penang commented, “Maybe after watching MTV I have improved my way of dressing. Not too modern but a bit civilized. I like the way they dress [MTV stars]. That influences me, when we mix around with friends and how they dress, we look up and say ‘oh, we are not up to that’. MTV has helped me to dress better” (personal interview, 2004). A former senior executive of MTV Asia14 (personal interview, 2006) observed that MTV found it very easy to penetrate the Indonesian market. But the Malaysian market, although not restrictive, was “more sensitive” to their product. At the time the company became established in Indonesia the local television industry was targeting audiences within a broad age range, i.e., anything between 15 to 70 years. But advertisers were looking to target young audiences between 15 and 24 years, a range that suited the MTV product very well. Thus MTV was able to secure “a significant block of programming” with Anteve. When MTV set up in Indonesia, according to this former MTV Asia executive, they found that the local music industry did not produce music videos because “local music was not seen as ‘cool’ by Indonesian youth. For them”, he claimed, “only international music was ‘cool’ and MTV played a lot

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of international music.” But for every market that MTV aspires to, it aims to “develop local talent and take them out to international markets”. To this end MTV started generating videos of local artistes and broadcast them on the MTV Indonesia channel. Within a few years they were able to achieve 70 per cent local content, with programmes produced in Jakarta using local talent and local VJs.15 “In a short period of time we were able to make Indonesian music [be] seen to be ‘cool’ by Indonesian kids”, said the ex-senior executive, who claimed that a survey undertaken in 2001 showed MTV Indonesia to be the most recognizable brand name in the country. Sutton (2000) found that most of the VJs MTV Indonesia has hired since its inception in 1995 have been Indonesians, fluent in both English and Bahasa Indonesia, and who have lived overseas for many years. MTV Indonesia VJ Daniel, who I met at MTV Indonesia’s studios in Jakarta, seemed to fit this category. A ChineseIndonesian, Daniel spent most of his teenage years in the city of Perth, Western Australia. “We seem to be trendsetters for the kids out there”, Daniel commented (personal interview, 2004), admitting that he had to first learn to “understand dangdut” music before he started hosting the show (which included dangdut). Singaporean Lesley Desker (personal interview, 2004), content manager of MTV Indonesia, stated that MTV believes the “global perspective” is about ultimately making the “heart and soul [of the channel] local”, which means speaking the language of the people of the country one is in, and “once you are able to connect at that level, I think people will watch the channel because you speak the language.”

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So what do Indonesian and Malaysian youth think of MTV? This was a topic of animated discussion in all of the FGDs convened in both countries. Although the MTV channel as a whole is not accessible to many Malaysians, the product (MTV music video) is familiar to most because of their exposure to it via limited slots on free-to-air channels. Some of the most commonly made comments included: “it is fun to watch”, “VJs are good communicators”, “it influences teenage dressing habits”, “it could have a negative influence on Eastern cultural values”, and “it promotes Western culture”. Sociology undergraduate Banu (FGD, Jakarta, 2004) said, “MTV has pushed youngsters into a consumerist lifestyle. It has Westernised them.” Advertising student Ika (FGD, Jakarta, 2004) views MTV as “fun, entertaining, light and trivial”: MTV “stimulates local music”. Mass communication student Archie (FGD, Jakarta, 2004) stated, “I watch MTV Ampuh [the top ten Indonesian pop chart] to find out the hottest Indonesian songs.” High school graduate Rini (FGD, Jakarta, 2005) said, “Everyone watches MTV ‘Salam Dangdut’, MTV ‘Ampuh’: I prefer MTV Indonesia one hundred per cent.” But 18-year-old student Kadri (FGD, Jakarta, 2004) is worried that MTV will encourage her younger sisters to dress like “the stars” they see on TV, because “it is not the Islamic way to dress”. For 19-yearold student Adam (FGD, Jakarta, 2004), there are too many video clips on MTV, which teach children to “behave rudely to [their] parents”. However, 23-year-old office assistant Erna (FGD, Jakarta, 2004) pondered, “We thought MTV was American. Now I don’t think MTV is an American TV station. We think MTV belongs to Indonesia.” She also added

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that the friendliness of the VJs teaches young viewers how to be friendly to people. Industrial Engineering student Nur (FGD, Bandung, 2004) observed, “MTV has tremendously affected our pop culture in Indonesia. It has also affected our choice of music. Back then we didn’t care about music, people were not eager to play music. Now people are very keen to make music, set up bands. It has impacted positively on Indonesian youth creativity.” But Tia (FGD, Bandung 2004), a female high school student, was more critical: “MTV is good entertainment, good to watch, but not very good for us to copy.” Nur agreed, saying, “Yes, they are not ashamed of exposing their bodies. That is one aspect that could affect our moral degeneration.” Tia, who wears the hijab, added, “Their dress influences how our teenagers dress right now … I guess it’s not for us.” Dewi (FGD, Bandung, 2004), a 23-year-old arts graduate observed, “There are a lot of teenagers in my neighbourhood who dress and have hairstyles like the artistes they see on MTV; the way they behave and talk to their parents, it’s really Western. And the idea of unlimited freedom has now impacted on our teenagers. That’s a bad influence of MTV.” Akeu (FGD, Bandung, 2004), an 18-year-old female nasyid singer, argued that there are both good and bad sides to MTV. The good side, she commented, is that they get to know what is contemporary music; also, MTV has helped to make nasyid look “cool” to youngsters because they screen nasyid programmes during Ramadan. “Special nasyid performances on MTV make them more popular and broadens the audience”, she added. But the negative side is that “MTV mostly does not educate young people to respect their own indigenous values and teachings.”

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But, argued Nur, MTV also conveys good messages like “say no to drugs”, and “you can do anything as young people”. This approach helps to encourage creativity among the young. Harris (FGD, Jakarta, 2004), a 24-year-old member of an Islamic youth group stated, “I see MTV not just as a music programme. I think MTV offers an ideology that influences our lifestyles, the way we think and conduct [ourselves]. The proof is in the young generation hanging out in the malls or cafes. They eat McDonalds and they watch MTV.” During FGDs held in Malaysia, most members viewed MTV with sceptical eyes, those belonging to Islamic groups expressing very negative viewpoints vis-à-vis MTV. For example, nasyid singer Irfan (FGD, Penang, 2004) said, “Very popular artistes [on MTV] have a very big influence on Islamic minds. It can cause a lot of problems. The majority of them [artistes] are not Muslims. They wear very sexy clothes, [they perform] half naked and make Islamic society be like them.” Undergraduate Zawree (FGD, Penang, 2004) added, “Western singers in MTV clips show uncivilized behaviour. Their dressing is [scant] like those days [when people went] without clothes … when youth grow up with this type of fashion, social problems like rape increase … our government is busy thinking of ways to solve this problem. But MTV has already had its impact on current youth.” “However”, he added, “it is impossible to stop MTV coming to Malaysia. What could be done is to look at ways of getting more nasyid music on MTV like Raihan was able to achieve.” Farouke (FGD, Kuala Lumpur, 2004), a 20-yearold undergraduate disapproved of MTV’s way of selling lifestyles. He argued that it conveys a false impression of how

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to be accepted in society. Fellow student Syed (FGD, Kuala Lumpur, 2004) added, “They are not promoting lifestyles, they are dictating. They decide you have to go to this place, you have to do this, then you will be accepted by society; otherwise you will be ostracized.” He complained that “it creates an upper middle class who only pursue wealth and champion [whichever is] the oppressive nature of the status quo.” But Yusof (FGD, Kuala Lumpur, 2004), a member of the Islamic youth group ABIM, sees a silver lining in the way in which MTV promotes their product, which shows a good way to interact with their audience. He explained: “The way they promote influences me in the way I can do business or promote our brand or company.” Having analysed music video content in Malaysia, S.B. Tan (2003) concludes that many of the Malay music videos shown on Malaysian television follow the style of global easy-listening pop artistes on MTV, with its use of collage and the “cut’n’ mix” aesthetics of commercial pop music. They emulate this global sound and visual style of MTV in order to (a) be commercially viable and to (b) attract a wide audience. The added local music elements do not overwhelm the basic Anglo-American pop idiom. Yet, she acknowledges that while nasyid, dangdut, and irama Malaysia music videos “seem to incorporate more local music elements into their songs and music video”, these local elements are “ethnic flavours, which have been added to the already existing dominant Anglo-American pop genre” (S.B. Tan 2003, p. 103). One difference, however, is in the visual presentation, especially of the singers and dancers, which tend to be more in harmony with Malaysian values. But, as S.B. Tan (2003) points out, this is due mainly to the

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requirement that all music videos screened on Malaysian television must be approved by a censorship board under the aegis of the Ministry of Information, whereby displays of oppositional or subcultural messages or imagery, offensive language, violent content, or lyrics reflecting/not reflecting accepted norms of public speech will not be approved. A leading Malay Islamic scholar (personal interview, Penang, 2004) argues that MTV could prove harmful only if people misuse it. He sees artistic activities as very influential, suggesting that they could have a great impact on people. He continued, “Islamic clerics in Malaysia need to change their mindset and encourage people to use music creatively to propagate the Islamic message.” MTV, he maintained, has provided a model for propagating a message using music, which is more powerful than holding seminars where very few people attend compared to the numbers who watch music television or attend a pop concert. A Muslim Internet newspaper editor pointed out (personal interview, Kuala Lumpur, 2005) that even the Islamic political party PAS has realized the value of music in propagating a message. They organized an “Islamic” pop concert (on 1 October 2005) to mark the declaration of Kelantan state capital Kota Bharu as an Islamic city. “The concert included a lot of nasyid and also pop singers who sang songs [that were] very pro-people — not the rock music but the message, very Islamic. Music is not haram anymore. In the PAS, the majority is pro-music — how to use music to promote Islam.” The (PAS) pop concert held at the local football stadium was attended by some 40,000 (mainly young) people. It was preceded by a fashion show which included designers parading women dressed

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in conservative long dresses complete with headscarves (Vatikiotis 2005). The value of pop music and the video music clip in spreading a message has also caught the attention of government bureaucrats, who use music video clips on the government-owned television station RTM (which operates two channels, TV1 and TV2) to promote government policies. These clips have been devised to stir up patriotism, to instill feelings of loyalty to Malaysia, and to create public awareness of the government’s new ideas and objectives (S.B. Tan 2003). In Indonesia there is no censorship regime. But the AntiPornographic Bill that was passed by parliament in 2008 may be used to restrict public performances of singers and dancers or showing of videos which are seen to be promoting sexual conotations. This issue will be discussed in more detail in the case study of Inul Daratista in Chapter 5. Many local media analysts and broadcast industry sources consider that MTV has had a great impact on the music tastes of Indonesian youth, especially in Jakarta. Ade Armando (personal interview, 2004), a member of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI), maintains that MTV is one of the significant factors which influence youth in Indonesia today, especially in the urban areas. “They can have direct access not only to Western music but to … lifestyles in general, i.e., the values and norms. Because MTV is directed towards young people, MTV has a bigger influence than sources of culture.” But he insists that this influence is mainly restricted to the upper and middle classes. However, he regrets that the liberal winds of change that have engulfed Indonesia since the 1998 overthrow of

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Soeharto have resulted in the government playing a very minimal role in regulating media content. There has been some resistance to KPI’s attempts to introduce local content regulations for television and radio. Wahyudi (personal interview, 2004) explained how the MTV influence filters through to local radio stations like his. He claims that because MTV is the only television station that plays music twenty-four-hours a day, it exercises a very significant influence on the music tastes of the local youth. When MTV gives airtime to a particular music video, immediately Wahyudi receives requests from his listeners to play that music track on air. He feels that MTV is “very business driven to promote foreign music on air” in Indonesia. To this end the MTV channel keeps plugging a new artist they want to promote in Indonesia; then Wahyudi’s radio listeners want that particular music to be played on Prambors, thus giving them more exposure. “They are the foreign media and we are the local media; we have to stand up for something”, i.e., local music. To this end Radio Prambors has created more spots for independent local labels. Local publisher Ahmed (personal interview, 2004) pointed out that the impact of MTV extends to the local concert organizing industry, where it is now easy for a local concert organizer to invite “third-class Western musicians” to Jakarta and make sure they will get business. He said, “Almost every month they have Western musicians coming to Jakarta because they can be assured if they come here an audience will be guaranteed and they will get a good fee.” He too sees MTV as a threat to local music only in the urban areas, because in the islands

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people still go in large numbers to concerts where only local musicians perform. Arian Arifin (personal interview, 2004), music editor of MTV Trax, tends to endorse the above view. While he argues that MTV plays some very good music, at the same time he admits that they also play some “crap music” because they have a contract with the recording label. The trouble is that this latter type of music could brainwash the people into believing it to be good music and by extension create a trend. “However”, he quickly added, “fortunately MTV Indonesia plays some good quality independent underrated bands.” Mishal Varma (email interview, 2004), vice president of creative content of MTV Asia says that the winning factor in their network “is giving viewers what they want, through working a lot with young people and gathering feedback from our website and other channels — like fan mail, email comments — and being in touch with the latest music trends — through in-depth research — and broadcasting it to our viewers.” He added that they encounter certain barriers, such as culture and language, in making music cross borders. However, there are some countries in which language and culture do not constitute a barrier (however, he did not respond to my query as to whether Indonesia is one of them). Media analyst Wahyutama (personal interview, 2004) stated that many young Indonesians are currently “trying to make their own identity”: the club scene has a strong influence on them. MTV, by virtue of its influence on the club scene, could indirectly influence the shaping of this identity.

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The former MTV Asia senior executive explained that MTV has a very strong connection with “kids” in all of the “markets” they “tap” into. The recording labels acknowledge this and accordingly provide them with music videos for airplay. Since MTV as a company does not pay record labels and record labels don’t pay MTV for airplay, MTV’s production costs are very low; on the other hand, the music companies see MTV as a “very effective form of marketing CDs or artistes”. Local Response to MTV Influence: Fighting Back …With Dangdut In the last one year there has been a lot of development in dangdut. New programmes, Kontes Dangdut Indonesia (KDI) [on] TPI and Indostar TV’s Kondangin have become very popular with viewers. There are reality shows to choose dangdut singers, where people vote by SMS, and contestants come from all over the country — 20 or 15 contestants (per show). [The person] who gets the smallest number of votes gets eliminated each week. Format is like American Idol. All the contestants are young persons. These programmes are broadcast during … prime time. (Ishan, personal interview, 2005)

The above observations were made in March 2005 by Ishan, who is a media analyst and a member of a leading Jakarta think tank. TPI’s KDI programme is now (mid-2006) into its third season broadcasting on prime time television on Tuesday and Saturday nights. By the beginning of 2006 almost every private television channel in Jakarta broadcast dangdut

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programmes during peak hours. Dangdut has also become popular at political rallies; in the 2005 presidential election all of the front runners used dangdut performers to attract crowds to their rallies (Jakarta Post, 21 March 2004). Many analysts believe that this once shunned “lower class” music has today become a top entertainment genre because of television and more precisely the music video clip. It is gradually becoming popular with young people in urban areas, a phenomenon for which MTV is claiming credit. The channel introduced a half-hour programme called Salam Dangdut in 1999, which has today become one of the most popular shows on MTV Indonesia. It is beamed to Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand via their MTV Southeast Asia beam (MTV website). Sutton (2000, p. 11) observes, “MTV Salam Dangdut, the newest music show in Indonesia, remains somewhat controversial, not because it presents lewd or politically sensitive material but because it presents a low-brow genre that just two years ago was explicitly designated as ‘inappropriate’ for MTV by MTV executives.” He said that when he interviewed a number of MTV executives in Jakarta, “they all agreed that MTV was simply not a suitable vehicle for dangdut” (Sutton 2000, p. 11). But nowadays they seem to have changed their minds. Desker (personal interview, 2004) told me that they broadcast dangdut on MTV Indonesia for one hour each day sometimes mixing it with Indian (Hindi) film music. She claimed that dangdut defines Indonesian pop music identity, and “in order to be part of the music industry [in Indonesia], you need to address that.” The ex-MTV Asia senior executive stated that MTV Indonesia was instrumental in changing

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urban youth attitudes to dangdut music via Salam Dangdut. “Dangdut was not seen as ‘cool’ by young people, but MTV was largely responsible for changing that.” Herdi Hidayat (personal interview, 2005), producer of the top-rating Digoda Dangdut programme on TransTV, said that MTV has followed a trend, which was started by his programme and other private channels to take dangdut upmarket. He said that this trend began in the 1990s when private television came “on board” and needed to develop programmes that would appeal to seventy-five per cent of their audience, who were from both the middle class and the lower class. TransTV started producing dangdut programmes that would appeal to this audience, giving them a “middle up” touch, using stages, costumes, and dances which reflected a middle- and upper-class image. They even positioned the orchestra at a lower level to the performers on stage — singer and dancers — because the orchestra was the entity that was identified with lower-class taste. Hidayat declared, “This packaging can be accepted by all people. They can listen and watch dangdut without worrying about its image, because [the] packaging is sophisticated.” He claimed that after TransTV promoted Digoda Dangdut, dangdut singers’ ratings went up and the price to hire them also went up — to twice what is was before. Hidayat (personal interview, 2005) said that many young people today deny they like dangdut music because before the 1990s its image was very low class; it was seen as not representing modern, educated people. But now, because television has been able to package it to appeal to more modern and educated tastes, many young people watch dangdut programmes on television. Although he does not

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give MTV much credit for this change in attitude among the young people, Hidayat is willing to acknowledge that MTV’s exposure of dangdut has helped to build up its image. A contents survey of four sample Digoda Dangdut programmes (samples provided by Hidayat) clearly indicated that the programme is designed to reflect a glittering hightech variety entertainment show with a sophisticated stage set-up and lighting. The programmes were recorded outdoors in a concert setting, with hundreds of people in attendance, most of them dancing while the musicians were performing, similar to any pop concert televised in the West. The orchestra is basically out of the picture and the cameras rarely, if ever, focus on the musicians. However, it is obvious that they were performing with a live orchestra. Every item was accompanied by a troupe of colourful dancers on stage, dancing in the background and/or around the singer. Sometimes more attention was paid to the dancers than to the singer, with the cameras focusing on the dancers from different angles. Most of the items featured an all-female dance troupe, while a few included male dancers as well. Wherever the males were involved the dance was choreographed for the couples to execute a Latin-style sequence. The dancers were colourfully dressed, with the women usually dressed in body-hugging costumes, sometimes in short skirts often camouflaged by a length of cloth draped discreetly down one side. The style of dance performed seemed to be heavily influenced by either the Bollywood style or Latin dances such as the salsa and the lambada. There were a couple of dance routines that reflected a traditional Indonesian dance, modified for the stage. The

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camera work and the mixing of the images and music had been expertly managed, as was the stage lighting. Overall the show reflected a highly professional technical production that was both very colourful and attractive to watch. Hidayat (personal interview, 2005) explained that when they record programmes at the venue, the audience is usually “middle class down”; but people watching the telecast at home are somewhat different. He claimed that ratings surveys have shown that 60 per cent of the audience is middle and lower class while 40 per cent is middle to upper class. Reflecting on their production formula, he stated, “We are trying to bring dangdut image up to high class. We get good dangdut artistes, good setting lighting, good stage, full of dancers on stage. Good choreography. Digoda try to hide or cover the low taste in dangdut. Band musicians — if they don’t look good — we hide them by having them at a lower level to the stage. We show only the singers and the dancers.” In early 2006 I watched a number of KDI telecasts of the TPI channel, which were also produced in a similar style, even though the singers were as yet amateurs aiming to achieve success in the entertainment arena. During these programmes the camera often focused on the audience, a large proportion of whom seemed to be young people mainly in their early and late twenties. Some teenagers were present as well. The fact that SMS voting is popular indicated the involvement of young people in the programme. In Digoda Dangdut the audience was presented using wide angle shots. The fact that they were dancing to the music en masse indicated a predominantly young audience.

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MTV, Pop Music: Modernity, Appropriation, or Emulation? The Head of MTV Asia, Frank Brown (Long 2002), labels today’s Asian youth the “dual passport” generation. He notes that “just as they adore international artistes, they also love local music”. He suggests that for them it is not a trade-off in the sense that if one is “more of one, [he/she] … [is] less of the other.” The focus of much of the published work in the English language on cultural theory dealing with hybridity is upon the flow of cultural products into the West, particularly the United States, where they may be assimilated and/or negated by the dominant culture; for example, the “whitening” of hip-hop when it found its way into suburban white homes, or the case of the Algerian Rai music, when its message became diluted as it entered the French mainstream (Chowdhury 2002). Very often the same scholars, using the cultural imperialism research framework of the 1970s and 1980s, assume that local/indigenous cultures are vulnerable in their encounter with the Anglo-American cultural industries. “It seems to imply that the result of media flow is always substitutive rather than supplementary”, observed Wang (1997, p. 17), arguing further that “when absorbing foreign media technology and content, traditional cultural values and visions can also be sustained by being ‘re-embedded’ and ‘remoored’ in the new context”. This is what is happening with dangdut, irama Malaysia music, and nasyid (see my discussion in Chapter 5). The local music industry has appropriated or emulated some of the technological (as well as marketing) innovations

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of the Anglo-American cultural industry (i.e., MTV) and embedded their musical traditions/genres into these formats to re-moor elements of local traditional music as popular (pop) music in the context of “modernity” for the popular consumption of youth. Very often, cultural imperialism theorists, who are moored in the Marxist ideology, have seen the cultural flows from the rich countries to the poor countries as a one way “imperialist” flow. But in this age of cheap digital technology, both the production of content and its dissemination have become cheaper and more affordable for poor countries and communities, which are in a better position to localize the “global brands” and create their own to counter these “imperialistic” flows. Ironically, the latter may not be imperialistic after all. The case of dangdut in Indonesia is a good example. What the dangdut and irama Malaysia experience has shown is that hybridity has occurred more in terms of technological appropriations or emulations rather than in cultural/musical terms. In the case of dangdut, cultural hybridity took place over decades or centuries, with Indian, Arabic, and other musical influences gradually being absorbed by dangdut musicians. What has happened since the MTV invasion is that the dangdut music industry has absorbed some of MTV’s production techniques, branding, and marketing strategies, not the music itself. In the case of irama Malaysia, some composers, Pak Ngah for example, are not exactly providing musical hybridities between Western and Malay sounds; rather, they are adapting the Malay sounds to a technologically driven music industry. In the case of Inul, some form of cultural hybridity may be at play because her

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dance and dress style (but not her music) have been compared with those of Western pop artistes often seen on MTV. The case studies of Inul, Raihan, and Siti Nurhaliza, which I discuss in the next chapter, give rise to some interesting examples of how globalized cultural flows are at work at the local level, which may not be appropriately defined by theories of postmodernism and glocalization. Notes   1. Bangsawan is a type of traditional Malay opera developed from the influences of visiting Indian theatre performances in the nineteenth century.   2. Playback singing is a major component of India’s Bollywood film industry, where a singer records the songs in advance and the actor/actress mimes them on the set.   3. Worldbeat acknowledges the primacy of rhythm, particularly the African pop and Latin American beats. It promotes synthesis of a new kind that is characterized by the notion of collage and “cut” and “paste” and the loss of referentiality. It promotes the parody of numerous local older styles and the appropriation of other cultural forms that engage the listener through fascination. To the outside international audience, the appeal is in the “exotic”, “ethnic” and “strange” sounds of the beat (Tan 2002, p. 5).   4. Latha Mangeskar and Asha Bhosle are legendary Indian film industry playback singers, who between them have recorded over 30,000 songs in a career spanning four decades. According to the Guinness Book of Records, Bhosle is the most recorded artist in history having recorded over 20,000 documented songs .   5. The dholak is a very popular folk drum of northern India. It is barrel-shaped with membranes on either side and is

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  6.   7.   8.   9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

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usually played with the hands. It is a popular item in Indian film music orchestras. In Indonesia an album achieves gold status if it sells over 75,000 copies (Wikipedia). Golkar is the political party of President Soeharto. Dewa and Padi are not identified as dangdut singers. Located about two hours’ drive from Kuala Lumpur, this resort is well known as an entertainment hub for Kuala Lumpur’s middle- and upper-middle-class residents, as well as those from across Malaysia and even as far away as Singapore. Sammy is not his real name; the speaker requested anonymity. RM (Ringgit Malaysia) is Malaysia’s national currency. The exchange rate at the time was approximately RM3.8 to one U.S. dollar. ASTRO is a Malaysian-owned cable and satellite television company. Indiantelevision.com, 11 March 2002. Because of contractual obligations to MTV the ex-senior executive did not want to be identified. VJ stands for Video Jockey, a name commonly used to describe an on-air presenter employed by a music video channel who introduces video clips and acts as host of the show.

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5 Case Studies

The discussion of the results of the three case studies in this chapter is designed to provide further insights into the issues discussed in the previous two chapters. These case studies include interviews with high profile artistes and their managers, composers and art critics, and scholars, information that will support the premise that MTV’s influence has not necessarily been a cultural imperialistic intrusion into the popular musical cultures of Indonesian and Malaysian youth. At the same time I will propose that MTV has provided an impetus for cultural creativity. Local groups have incorporated some ideas or formats emanating from MTV into the packaging of their own music in an attempt to ensure that it will sound “hip and cool” to the ears of youth audiences. Inul Daratista: Pornography or Contemporary Pop Dangdut? The onomatopoeic name is most likely derived from the sound of [the] Indian tabla and other instruments going “dang, dang, dut dut, dang dut, dang dut”. But unlike its simple name, the music has taken a relatively complex evolutionary journey. [While] the bongo drums, flute and tambourine driving the beat may [have been] …

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drawn from the Indian subcontinent and other places, including Portugal, Spain and the Middle East,… it is now distinctly Indonesian. Throughout history local artistes concocted their fusions and cross-overs to make what we know now as dangdut or Malay rhythm. (Jakarta Post, 4 May 2003) To be honest, before the arrival of Inul-mania, I ignored dangdut music. Even when Inul first showed up on television rocking the country with her “drilling” gyrations, I couldn’t care less. Not until a colleague at work whispered to me: “Watch her hips! They’ll blow you away!” Well, I have to admit that her dance amazed me, but I’ve seen a lot of this kind of stuff on MTV. (Faye Belnis, Jakarta Post, 4 May 2003) Inul uses eroticism and sensuality instead of dangdut music. It’s “haram” music. It is haram because it is erotic and sensual. That popularity is negative popularity. Inul is popular here but the context is negative. Dangdut dancing has aesthetics, style, not eroticism. (Rhoma Irama, personal interview, July 2004) Inul made it big without a recording studio or investors, deriving little if any profit from the bootleg VCDs that spread her fame. Her power is based on sex and money, but she is not an outside force. She’s no “imperialist kafir Westerner” but a voice from deep within Indonesia. Her aggressive sexuality is challenging Indonesia’s increasingly strident conservative Muslim voices in a way more effective than liberal Muslim thinkers and writers can hope for, and providing a way for others to join in. (Jessica Champagne and Faiz Tajul Millah, Latitudes magazine, June 2003)

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The above quotes reflect the controversy which surrounds Inul Daratista’s hip-gyrating “pelvic-pumping” dance called goyang ngebor (“drilling” dance), which propelled the artiste to national stardom almost overnight after she performed it for the first time on national television in January 2003. Since then, while the dance has thrilled millions of fans across Indonesia — young and old alike — it has also upset conservative Muslims, for example Rhoma Irama, who is now a Muslim cleric. While the conservative Muslims describe this dance as a form of pornography and want it banned from national television and public performance, Inul’s fans hail it as an artistic expression of contemporary popular dangdut, which has helped to transport the so-called “low class” music into the mainstream of national television entertainment. This case study is an analysis of how international and national cultural currents or influences interact to create modern musical movements/identities, which may not fit the traditional cultural imperialist theories. As Indonesian journalist Faye Belnis suggests, much of what Inul does is seen on MTV. Her dance style, however, is not something copied from MTV: it is based on a traditional Javanese social dance called goyang pinggul that has been very popular in Javanese villages for generations, and in the village in which Inul herself grew up. Here I will pose the question: Is goyang ngebor, or what Inul’s recording company calls Goyang Inul, the result of an alien culture imposed from outside or is it part of a “postmodernist” development process of an indigenous culture? I will explore this further later in this chapter. Inul, as she is now popularly known across Indonesia (and much of Malaysia and Singapore as well), is a village girl, who has found success in the city. She was born in

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1979 in the village of Kejapanan in dangdut’s East Java heartland. Her birth name was Ainur Rokhimah; she changed it to the stage name Inul Daratista (woman with breasts) when she gained national stardom. Inul has been singing since she was twelve years of age, initially performing as a rock singer in villages for a fee as low as 3,500 rupiah (U.S. 40 cents) (Yamin 2003). She started to sing/perform dangdut in the mid-1990s, and owes her meteoric rise to stardom to a VCD of her stage performance made by an unnamed amateur videographer, which sold in the thousands on the streets in Jakarta and across Java. Her appearance on the national television programme Warung Tojedo in January 2003 resulted in her phenomenal rise to stardom. Before she could produce her own VCD, some three million pirated copies of her performances had been sold across Indonesia, commanding higher prices than the hardcore porn movies hawked on the pavements (Guerin 2003). From the time she first appeared on TV Inul has been continuously in the spotlight, both for her artistic talent and for the debate questioning the morality of her performing style in the world’s largest Muslim country. She is reportedly earning in excess of US$75,000 per month, more than any other Indonesian entertainer today (Champagne and Millah 2003). Writing prior to Indonesia experiencing the Inul phenomenon, Sen and Hill (2000) observe an alternative to the Rhoma Irama–inspired Islamic dangdut, which had been gathering momentum in the villages: The nationally celebrated, politically pliant, morally Islamic dangdut, however, also has a very secular and very sexual face, seen in mild forms on television

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but usually performed in humble venues by unnamed artistes. This dangdut is performed at local fairs, festivals like Yogya’s “Sekaten”, or in open-air entertainment centres like Yogya’s Purnawisata. Heavily made-up bespangled female singers in bodyhugging micro-minis, some as young as fourteen, perform to the backing of an all-male band. The singers are almost exclusively from the “kampongs”, their audience predominantly (90 per cent) young, lowerclass males. The singers’ stylised pelvic gyrations (goyang pinggul) are ritualised flirtation in a matterof-fact, even bored, manner. They periodically bend backwards, legs apart, pelvis thrust forward, as the audience crane [their heads] to view a sequinned gstring. The songs performed are mostly current hits. But, what Pioquinto calls the “genital focus” of these acts strips dangdut both of Irama’s religiosity and of the cute televisuality of singers who make it into the national media. On television, “goyang pinggul” is toned down and sequinned underwear is covered by calf-length glamorous dresses, modifying the implications of the love-lorn lyrics through a very different embodiment of the songs (2000, pp. 175–76).

Commenting on Inul’s dance style, Champagne and Millah (2003, p. 15) observe, “Her signature move, the goyang ngebor or ‘drill dance’ involves moving up and down while madly swinging her hips. Her ability to do this for long periods of time while singing, has made her possibly the most-talked-about person in the archipelago.” Guerin (2003) describes the dance as follows: “Shoehorned into tightfitting body suits, Inul swaggers on to stage cheered on by literally thousands of admirers, mostly young and mostly

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male. Bumping and grinding, small hips swinging low and hard, she packs them in everywhere.” Bakkalapulo (2003) notes, “It is her signature dance moves that have Indonesian women imitating her and men glued to their television screens. Beginning with a slow circular hip motion, she really gets the crowd excited as the music picks up tempo and her torso gyrates and rotates at an increasing speed, moving her whole body up and down and all over the stage.” Inul is believed to have conceived this dance while practicing the hula-hoop as a young girl. This action, which has been modified to develop her trademark hip-gyrating dance now dubbed Goyang Inul, is included as a regular part of her dance routine on stage. Unlike in the days of Soeharto’s New Order regime, since 1998 the government’s control of the media has virtually collapsed. Television in particular has been left to its own devices, to do whatever is possible to increase its ratings and profits. With the boom in private television channels in the 1990s, the media is wielding its power to impart to the people what they want to see and hear, and if the ratings are any indication, they want to see and hear Inul as much as possible (Bakkalapulo 2003). Today Inul has become a symbol of freedom of expression for the Indonesian people; at the same time she is seen by conservative Muslims as an example of the moral decay of a traditional society, which is trying to cope with the pressures of globalization and rapid sociocultural change. Mahmood (2003) observes that a decade ago, under the rule of Soeharto, the type of “suggestive” dance routines performed by Inul would never have been screened on television. She would have been restricted to performing

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in dangdut night clubs “where locals and foreigners would throw money at her for [her] daring performances”. He views this phenomenon as a backlash, a reaction by certain sectors of the society against the strict conservatism of the Soeharto era, with some seeing this as the “loosening of the moral canons” and Inul the product of this moral unravelling. When the artiste shot to fame in 2003, there was a rapid response from the conservative section of society. The local liberal media in Jakarta, along with their international counterparts, immediately publicized the story, seeing it as an example of the battle between religious conservatism and modernizing liberalism, within the Indonesian Islamic society. The BBC reported it as “Indonesians seizing the opportunity to champion free speech and free artistic expression” (Lipscomb 2003). Time magazine’s reporter Bryan Walsh (2003) accompanied Inul on her tour to Kalimantan and noted that she had “become the live wire connecting Indonesia’s still nascent freedom of expression with the country’s entrenched — and often hypocritical — moral majority”. The Washington Post (Nakashima 2003) observed that the Muslim clerics were “in a twist” over the dangdut dancer because she had revolutionized the Indonesian music genre and broadened its audience from the villagers to middle-class bank clerks and teachers. The chairman of the fatwa (legal advice) commission of the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) said that Inul’s “erotic stage act” could be categorized as “haram” (forbidden under Islamic teaching) because of her “suggestive moves”. However, he added that the MUI would not issue a fatwa against Inul because her dance was already covered by a

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July 2002 fatwa issued by the Council on Pornography, which stipulated that any person who promotes his/her body through pictures, electronic or print media, whether directly or indirectly, is committing an act that is haram. In addition, allowing one’s body to be viewed through open or transparent clothing, either through pictures or any other means of visualization, is also haram. The chairman stated that a dance such as Inul’s needed to be banned (Jakarta Post, 22 February 2003). Rhoma Irama, who in addition to being an Islamic cleric is head of the Association of Malay Music Artists, also entered into the controversy, declaring Inul’s dance “pornographic’ and prohibiting her from singing any of his songs. He further accused her of “throwing dangdut music into the mud, tearing apart the nation’s social fabric and encouraging illicit sex and rape” (cited in LaMoshi 2003). The MUI endorsed Irama’s comments and called upon Inul to cease performing the drilling dance.1 There was a swift backlash against Irama’s comments. Women’s rights activist groups expressed their outrage at the suggestion that her dance encouraged rape, seeing it as blaming women for rape. Human rights groups declared their support for Inul’s freedom of expression. Former President Abdurrahman Wahid rejected any suggestion that her performance contributed to the degradation of the nation’s morality saying, “The morality of the nation has been degraded long before [Inul] surfaced” (Antara, 30 April 2003). He threatened to mobilize the youth wing of his Nahdlatul Ulama organization (the country’s largest Islamic organization) if Irama continued with his threats, arguing that he would defend Inul’s right to freedom of expression.

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Antara newsagency (6 May 2003) reported that in a Tempo magazine poll, more than 78 per cent of the respondents were against banning Inul from the stage, even though they considered her drilling dance erotic. President Megawati’s brother, Guruh Sukarnaputra, also defended Inul’s right to perform, saying that her moves were no more sexy than the moves of those who performed the traditional jaipong dance, during which focus is again on the dancers’ posteriors (Champagne and Millah 2003). Many other young people pointed out (in FGDs) that Hindi movies (which are very popular in Indonesia) invariably include “dirty dancing” sequences — MTV music videos even more so. After Irama’s intervention Inul met with him. She later said that she considered him her mentor (personal interview, 2006), made a tearful public apology, and promised to change the way she dressed on stage, but not to stop dancing. She also stopped performing on television for a while, but continued to appear publicly. While some accused Irama of trying to sabotage the career of an up-and-coming dangdut star, perhaps out of fear that his own market share could decline as a result of her growing popularity, many industry analysts felt that Irama resented Inul using the respectable national stage that he had created for dangdut to perform in a manner he strongly disapproved of. Irama, when asked about Inul’s impact on the dangdut scene, replied, “Before Inul I took dangdut overseas, my songs were sung in Japan, America, Europe. She is the destroyer of dangdut. The image of dangdut has become bad” (personal interview, 2004). Inge Soerjono (personal interview, 2005), who is the director of Inul’s recording company, Blackboard Music, argued that Rhoma Irama had his own point of view about Inul’s music but she disagreed with it. “She is not wearing

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open clothes, her [body is] covered. So that depends on the perception of the person who sees the dancing. It’s part of the act that her [body is] always covered. There’s a lot of erotic dancing in the kampongs. In the last three years there have been a lot of new singers taking up this dancing [and some are erotic].” She admitted that Inul’s appeal is in her dancing and that they mainly produce VCDs of her performances. “In Indonesia we sell the song, not the singer. But when we make a recording of Inul we give preference to the video clip. For her the video clip sells better than the VCD.” But, Inge complained, piracy is a huge problem in Indonesia: it affects all of their incomes. I was given three karaoke videos of Inul that Blackboard had produced. I bought another titled Mau Dong at a market stall in Jakarta. The three Blackboard VCDs included Dangdut Ngebor (January 2003), Goyang Inul (May 2003), and Cemburu Inul (September 2004). All three VCDs featured Inul’s drilling dance sequence to maximum effect. There were three or four images of her wearing a tight bodyhugging dress similar to a diving suit (neck to ankle, with long sleeves). In the first VCD there were several background dancers cut into the clips from different locations; there was no audience shown in it. In Goyang Inul some of the clips seemed to have been drawn from the pirated VCDs made in her pre-stardom days: she looks very young and performs a number of “heavy drilling” hip-gyrating pelvic-pumping dances accompanied by other young women — and sometimes men — who mimick Inul’s dancing style. The camera focus for much of the time is on Inul’s buttocks. In one clip, “Perahu Layar” (Sail Boat), Inul sings dressed in blue jeans while three women dressed in traditional Javanese style (black slacks

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with a lungi wrapped around the waist) dance around Inul following her drilling dance steps. This video makes no secret of promoting Inul’s trademark drilling dance and does not try to isolate it from its kampong roots, as the outdoor audiences shown on the clips clearly indicate a rural or lower-class setting. In the Cemburu Inul VCD, a clear attempt is made to distance her from the kampong setting and to imbue her with a more upmarket image. She is dressed in a more sophisticated style. The sequences have been filmed in studio settings with no audience shown in the clips. Her hair has been dyed a shade of brownish blonde and in some clips she wears a brownish-coloured wig. Her costumes change within the same clip. As Inul performs her trademark drilling dance, young men and women dressed in gym-type clothing perform aerobic-style dance sequences in the background. In one song clip, “Penari”, in which Inul is accompanied by three “traditional” Balinese dancers, the set features a Balinese backdrop. As Inul performs her drilling dance her hand movements reflect those of the Balinese dancers. The latter move their hips in perfect harmony with the dangdut music, movements that simulate a mild version of Inul’s drilling dance. This fusion of style and movement results in an interesting hybridization of the two dance styles. Which even suggests that Goyang Inul after all is rooted in traditional dance styles of Indonesia. In the Mau Dong VCD, which was produced in 2005, most of the clips have a very sophisticated upmarket feel to them. They were recorded in a studio setting. Inul seemed to have used heavier make-up than in the earlier ones, with the camera often taking close-up shots of her face. In earlier clips the focus was very much on her buttocks and wide-

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angle shots. However, all the clips of this album featured her hip-gyrating sequences prominently, often in close-up shots. Between the 2003 and 2005 VCD clips it becomes clear that Blackboard Music is now trying to position her as a sophisticated upmarket artist, while at the same time maintaining her goyang ngebor dangdut image. Inge Soerjono (personal interview, 2005) stated: “There is a big market for dangdut today. [A] few years ago the image of dangdut was kampong, but [over the] last 1 or 2 years dangdut is on TV almost every day. The status of dangdut is going up, so much so that pop singers like Kris Dyanthi and Yuni Sari sometimes sing dangdut, especially at private parties.” In August 2005 I visited the Hailai Club at Ancol in north Jakarta, a popular entertainment venue for rich upperclass business people, that has a huge ballroom. A special dinner and entertainment package priced at 400,000 rupiah (approximately US$50), scheduled to be held in the ballroom on a Saturday night, was heavily advertised in the local newspapers as “A night with Inul”. The hall, which could accommodate over 1,000 people, was filled to capacity on the night. Inul performed during the evening along with well-known local pop star Rosa and boy band Peter Pan. The audience mainly comprised rich Chinese-Indonesian business people and their families. Inul, who was obviously the draw card of the evening, performed on stage for about an hour. She moved from table to table, singing with the guests, trying to persuade a few businessmen to join her on stage and dance the drilling dance with her. I was told by one of the guests that it was “extremely unusual” for a dangdut singer to perform at this club. It seemed that Inul had broken through this barrier, although it was not clear

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to me whether the audience liked the dangdut music or if they were just there to watch Inul’s dance routines. There is no doubt that dangdut today is a powerful cultural force, pushing the markers of creativity and freedom of expression on the one hand and the tolerance of Islam to secular music and cultural expression on the other. In recent years dangdut has been used by politicians to solicit votes. During Indonesia’s legislative elections in 1999 and 2004, and the first direct election for the presidency in 2004, dangdut singers were recruited by almost all of the major political parties to attract voters to their political rallies. Presidential election winner Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s election campaign used dangdut drilling dancers (not Inul) to attract crowds during the legislative election, which preceded the presidential election (Jakarta Post, 21 March 2004). During the presidential campaign, Yudhoyono attended one of the Kontes Dangdut Indonesia (KDI) shows on TPI television to drum up support for his candidature (Harsono 2004). Dangdut shows are also a regular feature at many government and national festivals, e.g., the annual Jakarta City anniversary celebrated in June (Abhiseka 2003). Herdi Hidayat (personal interview, 2005), producer of the programme Digoda Dangdut screened by TransTV claimed, “Inul has made dangdut become a phenomenon, but because of Inul, dangdut is now getting a bad image again. Singers are now concentrating on style [dance] not singing.” Hidayat’s main worry is that many of the new singers are adopting “erotic” dance styles, spoiling the good upmarket image of dangdut, which programmes like his have painstakingly built up over the last few years. “Many stations have stopped dangdut programmes because of the Inul phenomenon. Only

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TransTV and Indostar are [screening] dangdut programmes. TPI is changing to reality shows (Kontes Dangdut). Inul has [cheapened] the image of dangdut after TV stations tried to make it acceptable to [the] middle-up class. Now no TV station wants Inul [in their programmes]. First, the price is very high, and her phenomenon is going down. Why is Inul not a phenomenon any more? Because every dangdut singer dances like her now. So she is not special.” When the question of Inul was raised in FGDs, there was a mixed response. Most middle-class respondents tended to see her dancing as of low taste while lower-class respondents identified with her, seeing her as a role model. She could, they claimed, show them how to move up the social ladder. Rini (FGD, Jakarta, 2005), a 22-year-old female factory worker said, “I like Inul because she started her career from the village, I feel empathy with her because she comes from my own background. She is humble. I admire Inul because of her effort to succeed.” Senior high school student Tia (FGD, Bandung, 2004), a devout Muslim who wears the hijab, reflected upon the dilemma many face in accepting a person who is a local cultural icon: “I’m very proud of Inul because she promotes Indonesian music. People all over the world could know Indonesian music because of her. But, when I look at it from my religion, I don’t think I agree with that [Inul’s dance].” A 31-year-old radio announcer from Batam commented (personal interview, 2005): “Because Batam has a lot of young dangdut fans of Inul, they [the radio station] wanted to organize a concert by her to raise money for a local education project involving a secular school.” But the Governor of the

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island and other local leaders expressed their opposition to the artiste’s image. She was not considered a fit role model to use to raise money for education. There followed a three-day talkback discussion on the radio station vis-à-vis the Governor’s decision. The people were divided in their opinions, with many expressing the view that Inul should be invited to Batam to perform. Bandung-based journalist Yamin (personal interview, 2004) reasoned that Inul had spoilt the good image that Rhoma Irama had built up for dangdut. Thus, it was understandable that some people were unhappy with Inul, even though they like the dangdut music. The outcome could be that dangdut may once again come to be regarded as “low level” music. Professor Azyumardi Azra stated: [The] problem with Inul’s dance is that it [has] hurt public values, moral values. What is expected is it is not appropriate to play [it] in public. If Inul does it in nightclubs or restaurants, probably it doesn’t have any problem. Dancing can arouse male sexuality. I don’t mind if Inul’s dance is played in close places like discotheques, not for public consumption. It’s very similar to striptease — it’s erotic. (personal interview, 2005)

It is for these reasons that Inul is very much the centre of controversy over a new Anti-Pornography Bill. Islamic scholar Dedy Malik (personal interview, 2004) stated that many Muslims are opposed to Inul’s performances on television because they understand the impact of the television image on young minds. While some people in the country are not troubled by it and watch a programme

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simply for its music and dancing, there are many others “who have political and religious preferences, who reject these sensual arts”. While there is plurality in Indonesian values, Inul has become — to say the least — controversial. Those who are very sensitive to her material, especially if it is encouraged by foreign media giants like MTV, would point to a video clip of Inul that was screened regularly on MTV Indonesia in 2004 titled “Kocok-Kocok”, in which a group of young women are featured dancing with Inul wearing body-hugging “sexy” outfits. The clip is replete with close up views of the dancers’ buttocks and breasts, which are the focus of the clip throughout. Inul’s original VCD Mau Dong2 contains many similar images, e.g., close-ups of the artiste’s hip-gyrating pelvic-pumping routines. The new Anti-Pornography Bill presented to the parliament in late 2005 was referred to a review committee, which deliberated on it for three years. The draft bill was finally ratified by the House of Representatives on 30 October 2008. Compared with the original version, the law which was ratified has undergone many revisions. The original draft comprised 11 chapters and 93 articles, and the bill which was passed contained only 44 articles, with many of the controversial articles which would have restricted artistic freedoms and infringed on cultural diversity gradually dropped during the review process. However, Article 1 which defines “pornography” contains the words, among others, that “body movements” communicated via “media and/or public performance [which] contain obscenities or sexual exploitation that violates the moral norms of society” could be constituted as pornography. This could be used to stop dangdut singers performing the drilling dance in

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public (stage) or on television. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) has objected to the words “body movements” and “public performances” being included in the definition because this could restrict artistic freedom. The artistic community, a number of secular political parties, the Balinese Governor, and the Speaker of the Bali3 regional parliament have all vowed to challenge the law in courts (Baskoro et al. 2008). During an interview I conducted with Inul at her luxury villa in Jakarta in February 2006, the artiste expressed her resentment towards supporters of the Anti-Pornography Bill, those who were using her as a trigger for the debate to ban what they call “sexually arousing” material from public display or performance. “[The] government wanted someone to justify the [passing of the] bill and I was chosen to be the trigger, not any other model or singer. To be honest, this bill, eighty-five per cent of it will ban or interfere with the entertainment industry” (personal interview, 2006). But, argued Ade Armando (personal interview, 2006), a member of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI), “Inul’s dance style, Goyang Inul, is not something that could be consumed widely by the common people in Indonesia because this dance can be interpreted as containing some kind of sexually arousing material, and it should not go on national television. It needs to be regulated.” Wahyutama (personal interview, 2006), who is a member of the “Say No To Pornography Community”, an Islamic non-government organization, says that Inul has toned down her dance style: “At first she was wearing very tight trousers, looked like she was trying to seduce men, inviting them on to [the] stage and dancing like [she was] trying to perform sexual intercourse. But, once she became

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very popular she has made many considerations [to satisfy community standards]. She has changed her dance style quite fundamentally and is now trying to entertain people, not do obscene acts.” A content analysis of her latest VCD, produced by the Malaysian company IMS Prima titled Konsert Fenomena Dangdut Inul Daratista and based on her concert in Kuala Lumpur, provides some idea of what Wahyutama is referring to. Inul first appeared in very conservative dress (black jeans and a short-sleeved top); she later changed into her trademark body-hugging neck-to-ankle suit with long sleeves, camouflaging her buttocks with a striped-skirt worn over the top. There were no accompanying dancers on stage, only the orchestra. Inul did not perform her hip-gyrating dance until well into the fifth or sixth item, and then in a very restrained manner. There were two items towards the end during which she did perform her rigorous hip-gyrating routine, but she did not perform the pelvic-pumping “drilling”. Inul was permitted to perform in Malaysia, albeit under very strict conditions. Some of the local Muslim clerics were believed to have opposed her concert; members of the Islamic party PAS distributed leaflets outside the venue denigrating her art form. Inke Maris (personal interview, 2006), a former television presenter and spokesperson for the Muslim sisterhood, Salimah, stated that the television industry has a calculated interest in opposing the Anti-Pornography Bill because “they want to use ‘sexually suggestive’ material such as Inul’s dancing to attract audiences to their shows”. She insisted that such shows should be allowed in night clubs only; they should not be shown before midnight on television.

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Stressing that certain Western musical shows screened on local TV are more sensual or erotic than those featuring her personal form of dangdut, Inul (personal interview, 2006) said that she is sad because “people forget something beautiful from their own country and are proud of other country’s productions … they think it is professional and better quality”. She maintained that dangdut has the potential to become the dance music of the East, like the salsa or the lambada. “When I sang in Hong Kong people liked it, they danced like I did.” Reflecting on the Inul controversy before the advent of the Anti-Pornography Bill, Champagne and Millah state: Dangdut is a powerful force. It has been used by politicians to get votes, by nationalists to compete with rock’n roll, by TV stations to pull in viewers, by Rhoma to spread Islam, by Inul to get out of the village and into the national eye, and countless fans to have a little fun. Rhoma made dangdut fit for TV and [the] upper classes, but Inul is reminding the world what dangdut’s roots are and bringing those dark roots to the same national audience Rhoma coveted. The second dangdut revolution has begun, and it will be televised. (2003, p. 23)

Raihan: Appropriating MTV for Jihad? The term “Raihan” means “Fragrance of Heaven”. Formed in October 1996 by five members — Nazrey Johani, the late Azhari Ahmad as leader, Che Amran Idris, Abu Bakar Mohammad Yatim, and Amran Ibrahim — Raihan pioneered contemporary nasyid4 and went on to win many awards

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and considerable recognition. The group now travels the world spreading inspirational words of peace to all people, Muslims or otherwise. Raihan’s motto is “Pray Hard Work Smart” (Raihan website, raihan.com.my). Raihan took Malaysia by storm in 1997 with the release of their debut album Puji-Pujian (Praising God), which sold 200,000 copies within two months and was listed in the Malaysian Book of Records as the “fastest selling album” of all time.5 With sales of approximately 700,000 copies to date, it has become the biggest-selling album in Malaysia’s recording music history (raihan.com.my). The group’s inspirational songs quickly replaced the Westernstyle pop music at the top of the charts in Malaysia, and set up a process whereby replications of Raihan began to appear everywhere, not only in Malaysia but in neighbouring Indonesia and Singapore as well. The group is credited with having initiated a “nasyid revolution” in Southeast Asia, where young Muslim youth have begun to recognize Raihan’s brand of nasyid music as “cool” contemporary Islamic pop music (as discussed in Chapter 6). By 2005 Raihan had become the most highlyawarded popular music group in the Anugerah Industri Muzik (annual Musical Industry Awards) in Malaysia. The group has also achieved international acclaim. When making their second album they teamed up with the renowned British pop musician Cat Stevens6 (who converted to Islam in 1977 and took the name of Yusuf Islam), performing at both the Edinburgh Commonwealth Concert in 1997 and the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, 1998. Raihan has visited a number of countries, including Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei,

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Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and South Africa. As a writer for the New Straits Times (9 February 2003) observed, “Raihan’s long journey began with one small step in 1997. Without much ado they literally revolutionalized and confounded the music industry with their record breaking debut album..… They have created a genre of music that is unique — and it has managed to gain mass acceptance. Raihan’s nasyid blend cuts through the pop barrier to emerge as a marketable commodity. Raihan’s sensational success was so overpowering that it created a musical culture of its own.” Raihan’s trademark formula is their use of Arabic words in one verse and their translation in the next (Ramly 2004), set to a rhythm that is able to convey a message via an entertainment genre. Raihan sees itself not merely as a musical group; with their strong belief in God they see themselves as helping the Muslim community to “reengineer their moral values and bring elements of ‘edutainment’7 into the state of dynamic alignments at all times” (Raihan Corporate Mission). Raihan’s group leader Che Amaran bin Idris said in a personal interview in 2004: “In Islam we can have entertainment. [We] not only go to the mosque and listen to the sermon, but in Islam we can get knowledge by enjoying. That’s the way we convey the message and get accepted.” Mohamad Raimi (personal interview, 2004), the President of the Malaysian Islamic youth group (ABIM) agreed: Raihan has shown [us] how to use technology to good effect. Technology can be used to develop

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culture, sending good messages. Raihan made a good breakthrough with their first album and more nasyid groups entered the market. I think it meets the needs of [the] young and modern generations for Islamic arts and Islamic entertainment, which was not that fulfilling before Raihan came on. They came out as a contemporary nasyid group with a new branding, new image, new function for nasyid groups. It helped a lot. Raihan was the first in using technology.

Raimi also pointed out that Raihan — and other nasyid groups that followed — do not represent contemporary traditional Malay culture; rather, they represent “our religion”, albeit sometimes adopting elements of the traditional Malay music culture. Raihan do not hide the fact that they are not trying to redefine traditional Malay music. Group members insist that they are using music to gain commercial exposure to the young so that they can disseminate their religious message. As Raihan member Abu Bakar (cited in Seneviratne 1998) explained: “Entertainment and music are the closest thing to today’s youngsters. If we are going to influence them, it will have to be through music.” Malaysian musicologist Tan Sooi Beng (2002, p. 11) states that world music rhythms have influenced Raihan’s brand of nasyid music. Quoting their producer Farihin Abdul Fattah, she said that Raihan’s record-breaking first album Puji-Pujian (Praising God) was a result of Warner Music looking for a new sound to market and deciding to “enhance nasyid music” by adding percussion to the singing. Tan notes that the title track of this album was sung in two or three part harmony, accompanied by Malay

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percussion instruments — the kompang and the rebana — traditionally used to accompany specific Islamic genres of music. There is also the addition of cowbells and conga drums. The drums interlock with the basic masri8 rhythm that accompanies social dancing in Malaysia and which is similar to the rhythm used in beledi9 dancing in the Middle East. The video clip of this song has the characteristics of other worldbeat video clips, such as the juxtaposition of the colour and black and white sections. In their next album Yusuf Islam sings an English composition titled “God is Light” accompanied by the kompang and the rebana. This album was recorded in Yusuf Islam’s Mountain of Light studio in London. The album’s title song “Sukur” includes a video clip, produced entirely in black and white, which conveys images of Malay Muslims helping the poor and the elderly and living in harmony with the family. This video clip was broadcast on MTV Asia in 1998. After selling over 600,000 copies of their first album within the first year, Raihan’s second album Sukur (released in 1997) sold 300,000 copies, Senyun (1998) sold 150,000, Demi Masa (2001) 75,000 copies, and Gema Alam (2003) 20,000 copies. However the reduction in the number of albums sold does not mean that the popularity of nasyid music is waning. Anugerah Industri Muzik now have a separate nasyid category in which Raihan is facing stiff competition from new nasyid groups, whose entry into the music industry was inspired by Raihan’s success story. An executive of Warner Music Malaysia (personal interview, 2004) said that the period 1997 to 2000 saw the

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peak of Raihan’s commercial success. Since Raihan’s first two albums were released the group has faced commercial competition from newly-emerging nasyid groups. “There’s competition between nasyid groups: the portion they get is the same as other pop artistes. Now its like this group will sell 20,000 and the other group 10,000 but main groups like Raihan and Hijjazz still sell.” The executive said that the record companies treat nasyid groups like any other pop artist now and if the groups are younger and “have the looks” their album sales will soar. Before his death in 2001, Raihan’s leader Azhari Ahmad said that for many groups such as Rabbani, adapting to the worldbeat and “making nasyid more commercial and universal will help them realise their dream of spreading the message of Islam” (cited in Tan 2002, p. 12). Tan (2002) observes that while the nasyid pop songs promote a strong Islamic and pan-Arabic identity, at the same time the genre is essentially Malaysian. Raihan have also produced a karaoke video of their album Puji Pujian, a version of which has been modified with graphics of cartoon-like characters designed as an educational tool to teach children about Islam. “That came from the idea that when we were kids we were taught from a lot of things, formal or informal. When we listen to music we can remember everything. The song we listened to when we were five years old, we can still remember the music. So the power of lyrics is very strong” argues Idris (personal interview, 2004). “So that kind of method to apply to our kids, especially for children for them to remember [the] pillars of Islam, basic things of Islam, and also the good things belonging to society. We need children

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to grow with that kind of positive message they could take through their lives.” In 2001 Raihan attempted to enter the film production industry, producing a feature film titled Syukur 21, which ultimately failed at the box office. Idris (personal interview, 2004) said the project was done “to diversify our mission”. “We wanted to use the film to convey the message so that people can see by their eyes — not only listen” he added. “That was not a very excellent one, but that was our effort as a pioneer. We are still looking for any chances, not only movies and music, to convey the message.” In June 2006 Raihan undertook a five-city tour of France, their second visit to the country in the period 2004 to 2006. In November 2004 the group performed at a special Aidil Fitri (marking the end of Ramadan) concert in London along with nasyid groups from Britain and five Muslim musicians from the United States. This was followed by a tour to Saudi Arabia, France, Canada, and Indonesia. Nasyid has become an integral part of the music industry in Malaysia. The Malaysian Nasyid Industry Activists Association (PIN), which looks after the welfare of its singers, recently pooled twenty-six nasyid acts, both solo and group performers, to collaborate on a compilation of songs — Sirah Junjungan — documenting the journey of the Prophet Muhammad from his birth until his demise. Malaysian social critic and academic Chandra Muzaffar sees Raihan’s success in Malaysia due in no small measure to the desire of many middle-class Malaysians to identify with what they see as “another” expression of Islam. It is a manifestation of a search for an Islamic identity, he contends: “one could say that it is an attempt to move away

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from what you see as western identity — similar to Muslim women giving up western clothes for Islamic dress” (cited in Seneviratne 1998). Today Raihan’s and other nasyid groups’ video clips are widely available in the market and have become a daily feature on local TV. They have become a visible group in any major entertainment and music awards celebrations. The group’s association with the international scene has enhanced its local standing. Indeed, not only has Raihan “arrived”, but nasyid pop has also found an indisputable niche in the Malaysian entertainment world. Raihan set the trend that saw the emergence of numerous other “would-be” Raihans in the contemporary Malaysian music industry. Malaysian sociologist Zazawi Ibrahim (2003) argues that the genesis of nasyid pop may be found in conscious state engineering, specifically through the work of the religious bureaucratic arm of the state. In this “movement” this state arm is ideologically supported by other groups and associations who have a Malay/Muslim membership. Although these groups may not necessarily be aware of the social engineering that underpins their struggle against a “common enemy” (hedonistic entertainment), they are, in fact, common allies. The constant threat posed by these forms of entertainment always becomes a strong rallying point to contest and resist the Westernized/non-Islamic (such as Malay pop and rock music modelled on Western music groups) type of identity perceived by many conservative Muslims to be encroaching upon their Islamic and national cultural values. Ibrahim states, “In the final analysis, as far as the state is concerned, the birth of the new nasyid genre (Nasyid Era Baru) represents a strategic way of ensuring some

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form of hegemony, however prolonged and tedious the process has …[been] in the arena of popular culture, in their [government’s] own contestation with [opposition party] PAS Islam. And as far as global capital is concerned (the multinationals, which traditionally dominate the local music industry), such an alliance with the state and Islam is ideologically unproblematic as long as Nasyid Pop brings in the profits. For the Malay/Muslim fans of popular music, it makes them feel that contemporary Malaysian popular music has some element of Islamic identity” (Ibrahim 2003). Siti Nurhaliza: New Malay Pop Identity with a Global Sound I think [that] Siti Nurhaliza is a real Malaysian identity. In “MTV Boom”10 when they show video clips, Siti Nurhaliza is the closest thing to a Malaysian identity when it comes to music. She is a typical Malaysian. She has a typical Malaysian background. She is slow, mellow, sexy; most of our Malaysian music comes out of that genre. (18-year-old student Else, FGD, Kuala Lumpur, 2004)

Siti Nurhaliza Taruddin is another village girl who has climbed to the peak of the nation’s popular music industry and is on the threshold of taking her music to the global worldbeat11 music community. Siti was the fifth child in a family of eight siblings born in the town of Kuala Lipis in Pahang state on 11 January 1979 to a policeman father and a housewife mother. The mother, who was famous in the area as a traditional singer, used to sing at private and

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public functions. From the age of five she sang at wedding ceremonies and dinner parties in the town as part of her uncle’s band, and at the age of twelve she entered local singing contests (ChannelSiti.com). Recalling her early beginnings in the music industry, Siti Nurhaliza observed: “The first performance in front of an audience was when I got the kindergarten leaving certificate. It was an unplanned performance. [When I was small] every day I used to sing at home and at wedding ceremonies of relatives. I was often pulled on to stage and I was singing alone, sometimes very nervous, almost crying. While still at primary school, I sang at the village competition and won the championship. After that I was not afraid [to sing]” (interview on TV3, 14 April 2004). In 1995, while she was still at secondary school, at the age of sixteen she entered a competition in Malaysia called Juara Bintang Hiburan Minggu Ini (champion star entertainment this week), a competition in which talented singers from all over the country compete live on national RTM television. Siti won the competition ahead of a widely varied field. While at school she recalled that she used to “sing about my feelings and get the song out”. After winning the competition, when she first arrived in Kuala Lumpur to record an album, she was given the lyrics and then “I tried to make myself the actor of the song” (TV3, 2004). In 1996 she recorded her first album on the Suria Records label, and even though it sold only a few thousand copies it attracted considerable favourable attention. She subsequently won the “best new female artist” award at the Malaysian music industry’s AIM awards in 1997. As a result her second

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and third albums “went platinum”12 four times over and her popularity soared (Sze 2001). Siti Nurhaliza releases two albums each year, a pop album at the beginning of the year and a traditional one at the end of the year. In 2001, when she won her fifty-second award, her name was entered in the Malaysian Book of Records as the most awarded artist in Malaysia. By the middle of 2006 she had won over 100 awards, including the “best female vocal performance in an album” award, which she was awarded for a record eight consecutive years at the AIM awards. Siti has also won international awards. She was proclaimed the Grand Prix winner at the International Song and Music Festival in Kazakhstan in 2002, was awarded MTV Asia’s Best Vocalist award for Malaysia for three consecutive years, Planet Music Awards in Singapore, AMI Sharp Awards in Singapore, Asia Pacific Song Festival Award in Australia, and Shanghai Music Festival award in China (ChannelSiti.com). On 1 April 2005 Siti Nurhaliza became the first Malaysian and the third Asian artist13 to give a live solo performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London, where she was accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra, along with some of Malaysia’s top musicians. Siti is credited with having popularized the irama Malaysia genre of pop music in Malaysia. As composer Pak Ngah explained (see also Chapter 4), “This is a modern pop music genre comprising elements of the traditional so that it is attractive to young people.” The music tends to get to be second-class music because it was not very well done in the recording

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[before]. But when Siti Nurhaliza, as the number one singer in Malaysia, took an interest … [in] that form of music, to be commercialized, that’s when this form of music took off, to be received by … listeners all over Malaysia. So one of the reasons is because she’s [the] number one singer … she has her own followers from seven years old up to seventy years old. She has a vast amount of fans … number two is the way the recording was done. We have been doing a new treatment for the music. Before they only had one accordion, one Malay drum, and then one gong and then one violinist. The violinist is a very popular violinist.… It is very difficult for the youngsters to accept the music to be part of their life because it was done very, you can say, authentically. But for the youngsters, they need this modern kind of sound for them to accept. So what we did is, we took all the instruments, you know, let’s say the rebana, the playing of the accordion, violin, according to the Malay style, ornamentation. But with the modern rhythm section application to the music … when they [young people] listen to the music, they listen to the modern sound with the element of the traditional inside the music. So that’s how youngsters can easily take the music to be part of their popular genre now. (Pak Ngah, personal interview, 2004)

Pak Ngah, who has worked with the Ministry of Culture for fifteen years as a music director, stated that in the Malay music system there is a lot of variety when it comes to rhythm, unlike in Western pop where the rhythm is mainly achieved by the conga drum. For too long, he insisted, Malaysian pop musicians have been using this Western formula, with people listening to the same music over and

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over again. In 1997 Pak produced an album in which Malay musical instruments, including the rebana and kompang, played a dominant role in providing the rhythm, thus creating an “authentic Malay sound”. This album proved very popular. Around this time Siti Nurhaliza expressed an interest in this particular form. “She is the number one singer … Siti is the one who really got all the listeners, all the fans to make the music industry more receptive to irama Malaysia” (personal interview, 2004). Ibrahim (2003) agrees that the teaming up of Pak Ngah and Siti Nurhaliza helped to pave the way for a uniquely distinctive blending of the genre, “which synergises contemporary Malay music with traditional percussion instruments and strong collective chanting”. He regards Siti’s chart-topping hit “Cindai” as representative of the genre. While it has a catchy dance beat to it, at the same time it is rooted in the Malay folk music tradition. Alud (personal interview, 2006), who managed Siti Nurhaliza’s career from 2000 until the end of 2005, said that he was very surprised when she started singing irama Malaysia songs. Rock fans suddenly became interested in the music and started humming to her songs. But, he explained, Siti Nurhaliza’s fans are different from “rockers”: “You must understand the kind of audience that come for Siti concerts. If you go to one you will see how the crowd acts. They would be sitting down and enjoying the music. Sometime they stand up and clap, rarely you see them dance. [It’s] because they appreciate the voice, the personality of the performer. They focus on that. They sit down and just relax. They don’t come to the front and dance. That shows how disciplined Siti’s followers are.”

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Musicologist Tan Sooi Beng (2003, p. 101) states that irama Malaysia epitomizes a particular kind of musical exotica, wherein musicians “engage the listener through fascination and exotica by using folk instruments and sound. While aspects of the sound are familiar to some, young Malaysians, who have no knowledge of Malay music, have found the lively rhythms and scales, among other elements, exotic.” Siti’s live performances (on TV and stage) and the video clips produced by her recording companies reflect elaborate productions featuring scores of colourfully dressed dancers — both male and female — on stage along with Siti Nurhaliza, who usually wears colourful “ethnic” costumes, is covered from neck to ankle, and often wears dresses with long sleeves. The large orchestra is very visible on stage, although the cameras rarely focus on it. Rather, they take close-up shots of Siti’s face and wide-angled, close-up shots of the dancers, the producers employing cross-fades, often changing from one image to another. However, they do not emulate the fast cut-away style of MTV; the changes are more gradual (fade ins and outs). The stage lighting is often very striking and used to good effect in changing scenes. During my field research I noted that irama Malaysia karaoke VCDs of Siti Nurhaliza are widely available across Malaysia and get good airplay on television. Siti is also frequently seen in television commercials and on billboards across the country advertising mobile phones, Pepsi, handbags, etc. Siti’s appeal — apart from her voice — lies largely in her scandal-free, cute “girl next door” image that she has cultivated ever since entering the pop music industry. Although she does not wear the Muslim

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headscarf (hijab), her dress is always in harmony with the values of Malaysia’s largely conservative Muslim society, who frown upon sexy foreign artistes and their perceived “hot-blooded” performances on stage. The latter have no place in Siti’s repertoire. Siti Nurhaliza stresses: “I have to be a good example to my fans, especially my younger fans. Because they see what I do, what I wear, how I bring out myself in public … I’m happy to wear traditional dresses. It makes me proud of my roots and culture, and I think teenagers should preserve this and be proud of their traditional dress and customs” (cited in Zhen 2002). The executive at Warner Music Malaysia (personal interview, 2004) said that the best thing Siti Nurhaliza has done for Malaysian traditional music is to produce what he calls a “pop traditional” album each year. By doing this she has become a recognized pop music star, able to persuade a large number of young people, who would otherwise not listen to Malay traditional music, to listen to and appreciate it. He said that her songs are seen as pop music, but with a strong traditional Malay music content. Siti Nurhaliza has reached the top of the music industry in Malaysia and is also very popular in Indonesia, Singapore, and Brunei. Nowadays she has turned her attention to the international market. During the MTV Asia awards presentation in 2004 she sang a love duet in English with British singer Gareth Evans. Pak Ngah (personal interview, 2004) insists that although exposure on MTV is critical to her plans to go global, there is no need for her to sing in English to make this possible. “The most important thing is to sing well and if there are good marketing people, her Malay pop music could be globalised just as Lambada was

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… no one here understands what they sing but they like to listen to it.” Alud (personal interview, 2006) commented that it is not easy to break into the international market with a local product because there are many barriers. But “we need to make them understand what our music is, and world music is not much different”. According to Alud the formula for making the international market for Malay pop music is to blend the gendang14 with the electric guitar, the accordion with the keyboard, and the bamboo flute with the saxophone. “So [people] can say they can see this element is not that different. Music is universal.” He added that they tried this formula for Siti’s Royal Albert Hall concert in April 2005 and it proved successful. The CEO of the concert hall was very impressed and indicated that the artiste will be invited to perform there again. About thirty per cent of the capacity crowd were non-Malaysian; the CEO, according to Alud, saw this as “a start”. I watched the VCD of the Royal Albert Hall concert, which is widely available across Malaysia in record bars. It featured twenty-two items and all but one of the songs were sung in Malay. In the first six pieces and four later items, Siti was accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). During most of the items sung with the LSO backing Siti either wore a long gown or slacks and a Malay-style Kurta (a below-knee length light-weight coat). While the music in general had the Malay “touch” to it, one number sounded somewhat Arabic and another had a slow Western piano-style beat. The songs were mainly slow-tempo Malay pop. When the Malay orchestra joined her, Siti changed into a more traditional style of Malay dress and was accompanied

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by her trademark dance troupe on stage, who performed the traditional “hybrid” Malay dance routines Siti usually includes in her live performances in Malaysia. Many of the songs were of the irama Malaysia genre. This was very much a worldbeat style concert, which could be acceptable to world music fans around the world. But the former senior executive of MTV Asia emphasized that the main barriers that could impede the success of an artist like Siti Nurhaliza and her Malay repetoire are the world’s top five music markets, i.e., the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Japan, markets that by far exceed others vis-à-vis turnover for music companies. All of these markets, except for Japan, express a preference for English music, which makes them very hard for Asian musicians to break into. Alud (personal interview, 2006) is critical of other Asian countries that do not encourage fellow Asian artistes to collaborate and perform in each other’s countries. He is also critical of MTV, which, he claims, does not make any attempt to bring Asian artistes together, even at MTV Asia awards events. He feels that there has to be government-togovernment collaboration to render Asian pop music artistes visible to each other. Siti Nurhaliza, who has recorded ten solo albums and has expressed a desire to “go global” with her Malaysian brand of pop music, has recently shown some indication of modifying her costumes for formal occasions, e.g., awards nights. At both the 2005 and 2006 AIM awards she accepted the awards dressed in a Western-style costume. Also, an article published in Singapore’s Straits Times (28 July 2005) showed her wearing blue jeans and a whole range of

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designer-label Western apparel, which raises the question as to whether she feels that in order to “go global” she needs to emulate the “global pop star” look. When asked how she hopes to win over Western fans, Siti replied: “If we have talent, we don’t need to be sexy to be popular. I don’t have to be someone else to be the best in the industry. I’m confident in the music that I bring and in my singing” (cited in Ng 2005). In the next chapter these case studies, along with the research findings discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, will be explored and discussed through the theoretical perspectives explained in Chapter 1. Notes   1. Inul’s popular dance style was called the “drilling dance” because it is suggestive of sexual intercource.   2. This VCD, though carrying the same name as her latest album released by Blackboard, was made before Inul Daratista was first featured on TV. All the music clips include footage of her performing in outdoor concerts in seemingly rural town locations. She looks a lot younger than what you see of her in Blackboard videos.   3. The island of Bali is predominantly Hindu and their traditional arts, a major source of tourism revenue for the people, could be threatened by this law.   4. Raihan’s website spells nasyid as “nasyeed”, however, for consistency it is spelt as nasyid here as this is the spelling normally used in academic discourse and in the media.   5. Refer to .   6. Refer to .

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  7. Mixing entertainment with education.   8. Masri is a rhythm of Middle Eastern origin that is sometimes compared to a belly dancing rhythm .   9. A beledi dance is performed to earthy music based on the easy-to-dance-to beledi rhythm. A beledi dance from the region of Cairo includes vocals and may involve a questionand-answer play between two instruments or between the vocals and the instruments . 10. MTV Boom is a production of the MTV Asia channel, which features Malay pop music. 11. Worldbeat here means the genre with an appeal to fans who have a taste for “exotic ethnic” music, i.e., that is not the product of the Anglo-American English language pop music industry. 12. According to the RAA (Recording Industry Association of America) table, to reach platinum status in Malaysia an album needs to sell a minimum of 25,000 copies. 13. The other two are legendary Indian singer Latha Mangeskar and renowned sitarist Ravi Shankar (Ng 2005). 14. Gendang, a common Malay term used to denote any type of drum or membranophone.

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6 Countering Cultural Imperialism: Theoretical Analysis

Cultural issues have become increasingly important — both in global as well as local interactions among people — along with increased integration of trade, markets, currencies, transport, and media systems. Although the world appears to be becoming smaller, this is not characterized by equal relations among nations. Today the question of cultural identity plays a very important role in these interactions, with debate surrounding a “clash of civilizations” taking centre stage in global intellectual discourse. It is in this environment that this study was undertaken in the hope of adding further perspectives to ongoing intellectual discourses and debates. The principal research question that I raised at the outset was: In what ways are members of MTV’s youth audiences in Indonesia and Malaysia selective in their adoption and adaptation of MTV-mediated Euro-American entertainment values? This research has found that there are a number of ways in which this happens and that is related to a number of social, economic, and cultural factors. The main research finding is that this adoption or adaptation is directly related

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to what they — as a group or as an individual — perceive as their cultural identity and how this music could help to formulate this identity. Often, rather than merely adopting a hitherto foreign culture (as argued by cultural imperialism theorists), this new cultural adaptation is a hybrid culture such as irama Malaysia’s blending of traditional Malay musical instruments and Western instruments in their orchestras, dangdut musicians adapting a MTV-inspired style of music presentation on television such as adapting the “postmodernist” style of music video production, or nasyid musician’s use of this same music video presentation technique to take an Islamic message to youth audiences. All these modes of contemporary presentation, of what is essentially local music, helps youth audiences to adapt MTV-mediated Euro-American entertainment values, while formulating hybrid cultural identities, which are basically rooted in the soil. In Chapter 1 I stated that Kaplan (1988, p. 33) claims “MTV is often seen as the flag-bearer of postmodernist cultural expression”. By abandoning traditional narrational devices of most popular cultures and often violating cause, effect, time, space, and continuity relationships, MTV, according to Kaplan, is a continuous advertisement selling the sponsor’s goods, the rock stars’ records, and MTV itself. On the psychological level it sells an image, the “look” and the style (1988, p. 143). The objective of this study has been to examine how this description of MTV fits into the cultural and social environment of a traditional albeit liberal Islamic society and in what ways it is being absorbed by the said society so that its youth in particular are able to identify with its cultural

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content. In other words, is there a “clash of civilizations”1 — a clash between “alien” Western values and local Islamic values? Or is this potential clash avoided by developing a hybrid form of culture where the “local” tends to override the “alien”? Rethinking Cultural Imperialism Tomlinson (1991, p. 3) suggests that cultural imperialism could be defined as “the use of political and economic power to exalt and spread the values and habits of a foreign culture at the expense of a native culture”, and that it could be seen as “essentially about the exalting and spreading of values and habits” in which economic power plays an instrumental role. Petras (1993, p. 30) tends to endorse this view when he describes the main goals of cultural imperialism as “the United States’ ambition to capture markets for their cultural commodities and to establish hegemony by shaping popular consciousness”. He sees the export of entertainment commodities as one of the most important sources of capital accumulation, which “plays a major role in dissociating people from their cultural roots and traditions of solidarity” and replacing their cultural heritage with media-created “needs”. The findings of my research, while they tend to support to some degree the arguments of both Tomlinson and Petras, do not fully endorse them. MTV’s enormous economic power (compared to resources available to local television networks) has been able to penetrate the Indonesian market and, to a certain extent, influence the “habits of a native culture”. For example, MTV’s promotion of foreign music

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on their Indonesian network has created a taste among the urban middle-to-upper-class youth for products of the AngloAmerican pop culture, as indicated by the propensity of local high-rating youth radio stations in Jakarta to play songs recorded in the English language. Ingrained in the minds of this particular class of people is the notion that “Western” music is more “hip and cool” than the local/indigenous music (a perspective reflected in FGDs convened in both Jakarta and Bandung). This could also be what Alatas (2000) calls the “captive mind” wherein the MTV music culture has been able to exercise the “domination of one people by another in their world of thinking” (2000, p. 24). But as I suggest in the earlier chapters, this perception of Western music being superior to the local may have a class element to it, especially in the case of dangdut music, a music genre perceived by many urban middle- to upper-class people to be kampong (lower class) music, that has been elevated to the mainstream by packaging it to reflect — in terms of style — the type of music that is presented to the upper-class audiences by MTV. This process was described in detail in the interview I conducted with the producer of the Digoda Dangdut programme screened on Trans-TV in Jakarta (discussed in Chapter 4). Sowards (cited in Artz 2003) argues that in the case of MTV Asia, Asian “spokesmodel” VJs host programmes that promote both a Western consumerist culture and Western music; by and large, working class youth are on the periphery of MTV Asia culture. What the producers of dangdut music programmes are doing is bringing this perceived “workingclass” youth music into the mainstream, packaging it in such

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a way that the upper social classes — who are the consumers of MTV Asia — are beginning to identify with it, not by watching MTV but rather by switching to local television channels. To this end a foreign cultural invasion (MTV), which under the cultural imperialism theory would have uprooted the youth from their local cultural roots, has in fact motivated the local music industry to counterattack this potential threat by repackaging the local to reflect the global. But I would not go so far as to call this “glocalization”, because to date the industry has not taken the global (foreign) product and customized it to fit into the local market. In other words, it is not the Western pop music beat that is copied and sung in the local language by local artistes (albeit this is done in Indonesian rock and rap music to a large extent, but not in dangdut or nasyid). Rather, the dangdut artistes have taken a globalized format and customized it to fit into the global product in terms of presentation. If this means that local audiences, especially among the rural and lower classes, have been weaned away from local (village) stage shows to watch dangdut performances on TV, I would not call it an “imperialistic” onslaught “uprooting the local youth from their traditional roots”; rather it is an internal process of development, where populations are becoming increasingly urbanized (or modernized) with television becoming their major source of entertainment. Similarly, if Raihan (and other nasyid groups) by adopting MTV formats have taken nasyid away from the mosques and religious centres/events into television and stage shows, this again is not uprooting youth from their traditional culture, but taking this culture a step upwards into urbanized entertainment or in this case “edutainment” stage.

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Checking the Onslaught of Globalization Whereas in Indonesia the government has encouraged — or at least not restricted — MTV’s entry into the local market, in Malaysia local political power (i.e., government) has been instrumental in checking the intrusion of MTV into the Malaysian television scene, as indicated by comments made by the MTV Asia executive as well as representatives of the local music industry and various critics (see Chapters 3 and 4). The postcolonial theory is ostensibly built around the concept of otherness and resistance to outside influences. In the postcolonial era, what the Malaysian Government has done vis-à-vis MTV intrusion is exactly this. They have judged MTV to be the “outsider” that is trying to impose its musical tastes on the youth of the country, an imposition that needs to be resisted. This has created the space for local music groups to mount a “counterattack” against MTV’s perceived cultural imperialistic powers by appropriating some of its technology (i.e., production formula) and fitting local cultural content into it, thus creating a hybrid form of cultural expression. As Pak Ngah, Siti Nurhaliza’s composer, explained (see Chapter 5): In order to create the irama Malaysia music genre, they took traditional Malay instruments and incorporated them into a composition, imbuing it with a “modern sound” designed to attract the youthful cohort. This “modern” sound is not Western; it contains a certain “hybrid” style of presentation with which youngsters can identify as their music. At the same time, it is “cool and hip” modern music. However, it does not fit into the concept of “postmodern”, in that the music

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is not disjointed and, as Hall notes (see Chapter 1), it has not taken the music to a new height of fragmentation. Raihan, along with other nasyid groups that benefited from the Malaysian government policy, were able to challenge Petras’ theory that the Anglo-American cultural industries have the power to “dissociate people from their cultural roots and traditions of solidarity”. Raihan, by using the MTV formatting and branding formula, was able to create a contemporary “hip and cool” Islamic pop music movement which, in fact, lured the local youth back to their (Islamic) cultural roots and built a new network of solidarity based on religion and nasyid singing (as indicated in interviews with nasyid groups and FGDs). As fine arts student Yusri (FGD, Penang, 2004) suggested, “Nasyid reflects what we have. Our person, our habits. So it’s our identity.” It has provided the Malay Muslim youth with a new “tradition of solidarity”, and, as Malaysian Islamic youth group ABIM’s president Mohamad Raimi (personal interview, 2004) pointed out, “Raihan has shown how to use technology to good effect … they created a new nasyid group with a new branding, new image, new function” for nasyid singing. In other words, Raihan has turned cultural imperialism on its head by borrowing MTV’s technology and branding formulas and turning traditional Islamic religious poetry into a contemporary musical movement. They gathered together people who have common cultural roots — since they have used Malay music and not Arabic music — and created new networks of solidarity, creating, one could argue, a media-induced need for nasyid music, a fact which many FGD participants with Islamic leanings confirmed (see Chapter 3).

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In Indonesia the phenomenal success of Inul Daratista has created a more complex picture. Within the country there are many, especially the more conservative Muslims, who argue that she is a product of “decadent Western culture” promoted by MTV. Conversely, her fans (who are estimated to be in the millions), along with many liberal Indonesian Muslims, argue that she is using the MTV music presentation format to take local dangdut music to a new level, making it a permanent feature of mainstream television entertainment. Champagne and Millah (2003, p. 15) describe her dance style as “her signature move: the goyang ngebor or ‘drill dance’ involves moving up and down while madly swinging her hips. Her ability to do this for long periods of time while singing, has made her possibly the most-talked-about person in the archipelago.” This description could, in fact, fit any one of the “half-naked” Western pop stars featured on the MTV Asia channel. But as Faye Belnis (Jakarta Post, 4 May 2003) points out, what Inul does on TV is based on a traditional Javanese social dance called goyang pinggul, which has been popular in Javanese villages for generations. So rather than dissociating Indonesian youth from their cultural roots, one could argue that she is drawing them back to their roots. But since these roots are pre-Islamic in origin, the conservative Muslims may not see it as part of their “tradition”. MTV is yet to make any commercial gain in Indonesia from the Inul phenomenon. It has been Inul, her recording company, and the local television networks who have been the beneficiaries of the artiste’s success. There may be elements of “westernization” in her presentation style and in those of other rising dangdut stars on television in Indonesia.

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Rather than terming it “westernization”, this process could be described as the “modernization” of Indonesian television. If this is a form of “media imperialism” from the West, what is it that has been imposed on the local culture? Conservative Muslims would call it the dance style “which arouses male sexuality” (president of a leading Islamic university, personal interview, 2005), a style that is inappropriate for public television viewing. But, their critics could argue, these conservative Islamic values are in themselves a result of cultural imperialism, e.g., Islamic fundamentalist movements that have their genesis in Iran and the Arab world. Indonesian Islam, on the other hand, has traditionally been very liberal, due in the main to centuries of Hindu and Buddhist influences and civilizations in the archipelago. This raises the question of whether the cultural imperialism theory is too techno-centric or Euro-centric, as Rao (2002) claims: Has undue emphasis been placed on the perceived power of Western culture to impose itself on the rest? Surely other cultural powers which are not Western (such as Indian pop or film culture, for example) must not be overlooked. Indonesian dangdut star Rhoma Irama (personal interview, 2004) made an interesting comment in this context: “MTV is just a little part of that global music penetration. It’s not just from [the] West; it comes also from India. Indian music, Indian films are much more popular and influential than MTV. [They are] much more dangerous. There is eroticism, sexuality. In Islam the female body is forbidden to be shown to others. But in India it is acceptable. So Indian movies, songs add up to foreign influence in Indonesian culture.”

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When analysing cultural trends in Asia, it is important to consider the historical cultural links within the region, as well as the colonial cultural links with Western powers. Very often Western researchers tend to consider the latter, giving scant attention to the former. Language can become a major barrier here for foreign researchers, who would not be able to access local research material written in the local language for example. As Barker (1997) observes, much of the debate surrounding media and cultural imperialism has centred on the role of Western — mainly American — programmes’ penetration of local networks. But in Indonesia and Malaysia Indian movies have for decades been far more popular than their Hollywood counterparts. It will be interesting to research, as a follow up to this study, the question of what role the Indian Bollywood film industry has played in influencing the television-based dangdut musical boom in Indonesia. During my contents survey of the Digoda Dangdut tapes, I found very clear examples of Bollywood influence in the dance sequences. Another issue vis-à-vis cultural imperialism is the assumption that limitation of production capacity in the developing countries of the South could lead to cultural imperialism from the West. Here, again, the advent of cheap digital technology has made it possible for countries like Indonesia and Malaysia to develop a production capacity which has been able to withstand and even counter-attack and fend off the MTV intrusion. The development and popularization of irama Malaysia music by Siti Nurhaliza is a good example of this direction. Perhaps imbued with a sense of nationalism that urged him to initiate a genre of indigenous contemporary popular

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music that would counter the MTV intrusion, Malaysian composer Pak Ngah (personal interview, 2004) created a “modern sound” for young people “with the element of traditional inside the music”. Then Siti Nurhaliza presented this music via an elaborate network of television shows and video clips (a formula mastered by MTV) to local audiences, who seized it enthusiastically, seeing it as the music of a modern age. As musicologist Sooi Beng Tan (2003, p. 11) observes, they found “the lively rhythms and scales, among other elements,… exotic”. As Embong (2004, p. 341) points out, language is an important part of a nation’s cultural identity, especially for former colonized countries, for whom language is an “identity marker and an instrument for showing the collective consciousness and will of the community”. Irama Malaysia and nasyid movements in Malaysia fit this argument, for in the latter case (i.e., nasyid), religion, along with language, plays a major part. Post-colonialism and cultural theorist Homi Bhabha (1990) argues that despite the certainty with which historians speak about the origins of a nation as a sign of the “modern” society, the “cultural temporality” of the nation inscribes a much more transitional society. While it is common to study the emergence of a nation either as the ideological apparatus of state power or as the incipient or emergent expression of the “national-popular” sentiment preserved in a radical memory, national cultures in a modern state may be neither unified nor unitary, rather they may be a process of hybridity producing unmanned sites of political antagonism and unpredictable forces for political representation.

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In nasyid, irama Malaysia, and dangdut’s modern mode of expression there are elements of hybridity in which global influences and local expressions interact. Bignell (2000) suggests that hybrid identities could be formed through or against global or local cultural forms, with global broadcasting the dominant against which these alternatives are measured. And if one views the development of the three musical genres as predominantly television-driven musical expression, this argument fits well with the process. What I have attempted to demonstrate throughout this study is how the nasyid, irama Malaysia, and dangdut music industries have stood up to the challenge of the dominant global music television industry by emphasizing local cultural identities. As Kraidy (2005) argues, hybridity’s ability to be many things at once makes it an ideal tool for “corporate transculturalism”. The Malaysian and Indonesian television industries have upstaged the global media by creating these hybridities and attracting local youth audiences in large numbers to their channels. They do not need MTV or any other global broadcaster to reach these audiences. Exploring Postmodernism in the Asian Context The very word “postmodern” is a misnomer when attempting to analyse the impact of music as a “modernizing” project in the development of youth culture in an Asian environment such as Malaysia or Indonesia. Thompson argues that there are many ways to describe postmodernism, a term, he claims, that basically describes a new popular culture of the media, which “renounces purity, mastery of form and elitism and is more playful, ironic and

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eclectic in style” (1992, p. 226). The postmodern culture is “totally commodified and tends to be judged in terms of what gives immediate pleasure and makes money” (1992, p. 232). Lovejoy (1997) contends that the powerful new media, driven by technology, are able to invade every aspect of contemporary life, deeply affecting public consciousness and lead to new attitudes and new understandings. The above definitions of postmodernism cannot be completely dismissed as too Eurocentric when analysing the trends in Asia. The ways in which the dangdut, nasyid, and irama Malaysia music genres have developed have elements of the above definitions. For example, dangdut, when presented on television, appears more playful — while not renouncing its purity of form — and eclectic in form; nasyid, while promoting Islamic values, has been commodified to make money (by marketing it as pop music on CDs and VCDs); irama Malaysia has been developed via a process of renouncing some of the purity of the Malay traditional sounds so that the genre can reflect the “modern sound” so attractive to young people (see Chapter 5). These new electronic media, technology-driven forms of music fit the definitions provided by Lovejoy of the impact of postmodernist media products. However, I am reluctant to describe the new music trends in Malaysia and Indonesia as “postmodernist”, because in both of these countries people are not talking about postmodern society; rather, they are modernizing their society. They are going through the modernizing phase that precedes the postmodern stage. As already discussed, when one considers some of the media-induced modern forms of entertainment introduced as part of this modernizing process,

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elements of postmodernism (from the perspective of Western scholars) may be detected. On the other hand, the music cultures being developed in Malaysia and Indonesia are not detached from their traditional culture; the process is not a representation of the postmodern historic blurring of culture, which Barker (2003, p. 209) describes as “representations of the past and present displayed together in a bricolage”. “Bricolage” cultural expression has led to new multicultural formations in Western cultures, which usually belong neither here nor there. Such multicultural expressions of culture are often resisted in post-colonial Asian countries, because of the attempts by colonial powers in the past to use such cultural formations to dilute indigenous cultural expression. Thus, postcolonial theories may provide a better road map to describe the new cultural expressions developed in Malaysia and Indonesia, which have been inspired by postmodern MTV cultural expression formats that have strong elements of resistance to the “other”, i.e., the West. Post-colonialism Theories and New Cultural Expressions in Asia When Raihan was initially formed, the group members wanted to show that “in Islam we can get knowledge by enjoying” (Idris, personal interview, 2004), which is more in line with postcolonialism theory’s focus on resistance and cultural assertion rather than with postmodernism’s concept of detachment from one’s cultural roots. In his bid to take dangdut to the mainstream, Rhoma Irama (personal interview, 2004) “changed from the stage act setting to presenting like rock music. I changed the beats, the rhythms from slow to

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more modern.” Here, again, he did not detach dangdut from its roots but gave it a more modern presentation style and a beat, to provide modern youth with a musical genre with which they could identify. He did not make dangdut sound like a carbon copy of Western rock, as some Indonesian rock music groups have done. The irama Malaysia genre is undergoing a similar process in Malaysia, a process that reflects the postcolonial theory’s main elements of resistance. This resistance is provided by the local traditional sound modernizing by a hybrid process, but maintaining its cultural leanings and fending off the Western (alien) musical product. In the process the new modern musical sound provided by the irama Malaysia brand can be identified by Malaysian youth as their music. As Turkmen (2003, p. 188) argues, “Identity is one of the indispensable components of colonialism.” Postcolonialism studies need to go beyond merely criticizing First World domination and resistance in order to explore identity in more detail. Appadurai (1996, p. 32) maintains that the central problem that marks today’s global interactions is the tension between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization. “Most often, the homogenisation argument subspeciates into either an argument about Americanisation or an argument about commoditisation, and very often the two arguments are closely linked. What these arguments fail to consider is that at least as rapidly as forces from various metropolises are brought into new societies they tend to become indigenised in one or another way.” It is these postcolonial cultural interactions or processes that are affecting both the dangdut and irama Malaysia

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genres in Indonesia and Malaysia today. While the music may be turning into a commodity to be marketed, it cannot be argued that it is being Americanized. Often researchers who are unfamiliar with the traditional dance music beats of Eastern societies tend to equate any dance beat they find in their modern pop music with Americanization. The reality is that (a) these dance beats have been present in Asian cultures for centuries and (b) music and dancing have been important elements of everyday cultural life — both social and religious — in most Asian countries. What Thompson (1995, p. 177) describes as the “localised appropriation of the globalised media” often becomes a source of tension and conflict “partly because media products can convey images and messages, which clash with, or do not entirely support, the values associated with a traditional way of life”. This is reflected in the antipornography movement’s targeting of Inul’s drilling dance, which is considered inappropriate in the local cultural context, especially when broadcast on mainstream television. But when it is performed in the villages of Java in particular, at weddings and other social gatherings, it is not seen in that context, because this style of dancing has been there in their traditional culture. In the case of contemporary Indonesia, a resurgent, conservative Islamic movement views Inul’s drilling dance as not representative of the region’s cultural identity. Islamists assign it political connotations because this perceived hybrid form of the modern goyang pinggul is seen as the embodiment of the “decadent” cultural imperialism they see as characteristic of the West (MTV). It is seen thus because of the machinations of its presentation; that is, television

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which is seen as influenced by the West. Conversely, many of the middle-class urban youth are enchanted by Inul’s dance videos; they dance to them at parties and discos and watch them on television, seeing the form as representative of their local culture albeit in modern “dress”. When television created the nasyid music revolution in Malaysia, the genre was accepted as a form both of modernization of local cultural expression and as an expression of their own cultural identity, even by the conservative Islamic social and political movements. As discussed in Chapter 3, the musicians themselves placed considerable emphasis on the “machinations” of how they should express themselves on television and in the public domain. The representative elements were built into the music and its presentation beforehand, rather than being a reflexive after-the-event accretion. The question here is: How do these images and musical expressions form cultural identities? This is the specific question that I have set out to find an answer to. Robertson (2001), and others who espouse the theory that such cultural identities are formed by the “glocalization” of globalized cultural flows, argue that there are standardized products which could be offered for different markets by changing their flavour to suit local tastes. Khondker (2004, p. 6) calls this “micro-globalisation”, which involves incorporating certain global processes into the local setting. I would not call the processes in Malaysia and Indonesia, in regards to nasyid, dangdut, and irama Malaysia, “music glocalization”, because it is not a Western product that has been repackaged to suit local tastes. Rather, it is a reverse process, which has occurred here. In addition, the way the

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word “glocalization” has been used in intellectual discourses tends to reflect the view that “West dominates over the Rest”, which has similarities to what is argued by the cultural imperialism theory, which I have rejected in the context of the findings of this study. Although the presentation styles of dangdut and nasyid may fit the micro-globalization concept, when it comes to shaping local cultural identities, I do not believe that these processes could be described in terms of the glocalization theory because, as I have argued earlier, it is not a Western cultural product which has been localized. For example, when rap musicians sing in the local language to the rap beat of New York, this could perhaps be seen as glocalization of an American cultural expression rather than a product. In the case of rap, the product is made suitable for local consumption by singing it in the local language; at the same time, the sound, style and presentation remains American. Dangdut, nasyid, and irama Malaysia do not reflect those Western origins. Their cultural origins are neither global nor foreign; they are indigenous. Thus I am inclined to describe this process as “indigenizing globalization”. Tomlinson (2003, p. 270) claims that “rather than being the fragile flower that globalisation tramples”, identity could become the “upsurging power of local culture” that offers resistance to the “centrifugal force of capitalist globalisation”. The paths of development of dangdut in Indonesia and nasyid and irama Malaysia music in Malaysia indicate that it is exactly this process which is taking place in both of these countries. The research has shown that theories of postmodernism and postcolonialism may be too Eurocentric to fully inform

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the new cultural processes taking place in Asia. Very often postcolonial theorists tend to argue in the context of minority migrant communities’ (in the West) resistance to the dominant culture, and the development of hybrid cultures as a result. However, as the discussion in this chapter suggests, these theories could be applied to the Asian environment where the cultural context could be different but the theoretical basis may evince some commonalities. Diasporic hybrid cultural flows are a valid basis from which to study cultural identities being formed in the postcolonial period in Western nations, which have seen large scale migration of people from their former colonies to the metropolitan countries. However, in Asia, these kinds of flows are less visible or even non-existent. Often it is the dominant culture which is resisting the globalized cultural flows into their countries/ communities. However, by applying these theories to the Asian context, over time, researchers should be able to develop theories that are more Asia-specific. For example, cultural hybridity is not a process to develop a cultural identity for a minority migrant community, but a process where the majority indigenous culture is protected from the forces of the globalizing Western culture. As evident in Indonesia and Malaysia, a certain hybrid cultural expression has evolved, and if there is any Western component to it, it is more in the style of presentation than in terms of cultural content (i.e., lyrics or music). Rather than a hybrid culture, it is a “de-colonized global cultural expression”, attributable to the fact that when this form of cultural expression arrived in the country, its power to influence the musical tastes of youth with an alien sound and ideology was dismantled by the taking away of the

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lyrics and appropriating its technological formats, style, and marketing formulas to help brand and popularize a local sound/religious ideology. I would suggest here that the fear of MTV’s cultural domination and cultural imperialism in the postcolonial Asian context is due, in large part, to an incomplete recognition of the cultural “decolonization” and heterogeneity of the globalization process. Many scholars in the East make the mistake of equating traditional culture to an unchanging model of cultural expression, leaving no room for incorporating new technology into developing modern versions of these cultural expressions, especially in song and dance. Immediately a new artist does it, it is described as westernization of traditional culture. What I have tried to convey in this study is that this mindset needs to change. Countering Western culture need not be a complete rejection of anything from the West. The modern forms of cultural expression from the West could be appropriated and refashioned so that the cultural output of the local product reflects indigenous traditional culture, albeit in a modern format. While the hybridity theory — rather than the cultural imperialism theory — offers much scope for studying new cultural movements and music genres, researchers need to move further from merely studying such cultural formations as cultural fusions. The latter need to be seen in the context of how these contemporary hybrid cultural expressions empower people to self-determine their lifestyles. Today, a satellite generation of youth in Southeast Asia is exploring progressive notions of identity through identification with new forms of media, e.g., music television. Television — especially the globalized version

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— may have to respond to their notion of identity rather than the other way around. MTV Indonesia’s decision to introduce Salam Dangdut into their regular programming, after initially rejecting the music as not suitable for MTV, is a good example. The cultural imperialism theory is being challenged but not rendered obsolete; postmodernism is marginally relevant, and new theories dealing with postcolonial hybridity need to be developed without excessive focus being centred upon Western-centric diasporic cultural expression, i.e., a more all-encompassing notion of multiple cultural dominance/ influences, some of them emanating from outside Western cultural spheres, from countries such as India, China, and the Arab world. There is a need to look at people less as individuals who consume cultural products and more in terms of how these cultural products contribute to the development of social movements, and by extension cultural identities. In conclusion I would like to emphasize that contemporary global cultural flows via new media technology such as MTV need to be looked at from the audience reception perspective. With modern digital media technology dramatically reducing the technological gap between the developed and developing countries in terms of media production capacities, the global flow of media-driven cultural products is no longer a oneway flow; today it is a multidirectional flow. For this reason, examining this proposition employing cultural imperialism theory has its limitations. Rather than political ideology and economic disparities, it is the politics of representation and identity which are critical factors today. Often religion also plays a major role in it and this should not be dismissed as extremism or old-fashioned.

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The packaging and branding of the product has become much more important than political rhetoric in today’s cultural representation battles. As this study has shown, using modern formats to package cultural products, even hybrids of cultural expression consisting of the global and the local, could make these products seem products of the indigenous culture, a symbol of local cultural representation or identity. In other words, globalizing forces have been indigenized to create this cultural hybrid, which is seen as local expression, a process I would prefer to call “indigenizing globalization” rather than “glocalization”. Note 1.

In the post Cold War world, few articles have influenced how Western and especially American policymakers view the world more than Harvard University Professor Samuel P. Huntington’s 1993 article, “The Clash of Civilizations”. Published in the influential Foreign Affairs Journal, the article suggested the world was returning to a civilizationdominated world where future conflicts would originate from clashes between “civilizations”.

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Index A Abdullah bin Haji Ahmad Badawi, Datuk, 52–53, 119 ABIM (Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia), 96, 159, 170, 210, 233 Abu Bakar Mohammad Yatim, 126, 127, 211 Aceh, 67 Ahmad, Aijaz, 31–32 Ahmed, Akbar, 25 AIM awards, 217, 224 Air Asia, 157 Alatas, S.H., 230 Ali bin Mohamed, 102 Al Islam, 130 Allahau (album), 126 Alleycats (group), 12 “Al Qur’an Dan Koran” (song), 107 Alud, 220, 223, 224 Amelina, 12, 136, 157 American Express, 1 Amidhan, 100 Amir, Nazar, 155 AMI Sharp Awards, 218

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Amran Ibrahim, 208 Anderson, Benedict, 54, 67–68, 71, 131 Anggun, 36–37 Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM), 96, 159, 170, 210, 233 Antara news agency, 198 Anteve (ANTV), 78, 81, 170, 171 Anti-Pornography and Pornographic Acts Bill, 83–84, 99–101, 178, 204, 205–6 Anuar, M.K., 45, 54 Anugerah Industri Muzik, 209, 212 Anwar Ibrahim, 26, 52, 96 Appadurai, Arjun, 34, 241 Appiah, Kwame, 33 Arifin, Arian, 154, 180 Armando, Ade, 75, 82–83, 178, 206 Asia Pacific Song Festival Award, 218 Asitha, Lenny, 143 asli music, 11, 135

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266

Association of Malay Music Artists, 197 ASTRO (cable company), 170, 189n12 Au nom de la lune (album), 36 Australia, 218 Awie, 126 Ayoub, Mahmoud, 18, 19 Azhari Ahmad, 208, 213 Azra, Azyumardi, 97, 106, 107, 204 B Bahasa Indonesia, 64, 68, 75, 86 Bali, 14, 65, 98, 206, 225n3 Bandung, 86, 151, 170 Banerjee, Indrajit, 40–41 bangsawan, 11, 135, 188n1 Barendregt, Bart, 77, 121 Barker, Chris, 27, 33, 35, 127, 129, 236, 240 Batam, 86, 123, 153, 156, 166, 203–4 Belnis, Faye, 192, 234 Bhabha, Homi, 34, 39, 237 bhangra, 4, 142, 160 Bhosle, Asha, 142, 188n4 Bignell, Jonathan, 38, 238 Bintan, 166 Bintang, 55, 170 Blackboard Music, 122, 198, 201

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Index

Blue (group), 6 BMG, 114 Bodden, M., 17 Bollywood film industry, 9, 10, 42n6, 126, 188n2, 236 Brakel, L.F., 65, 66 Brooks, Tim, 2 Brown, Frank, 5, 7, 8, 169, 186 Buddhism, 65, 67, 97, 106, 235 Budhisantoso, S., 69–70 Budianta, M., 70–71, 72–73 C Canada, 214 Carnatic music, 9–10 Carter, Shawn “Jay-Z”, 8 Cemburu Inul (VCD), 199, 200 Champagne, Jessica, 191, 194, 208, 234 Chandra Muzaffar, 214–15 Charles, Prince of Wales, 115 Che Amran bin Idris, 109– 10, 112, 113, 115, 208, 210, 213–14 China, 7, 10, 218 Chinese music, 10, 11 Chou, Jay, 6 Christianity, 66 “Cindai” (song), 220 Citibank, 7

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Index

CNN, 6 COMEDY (television channel), 2 Commonwealth Games (Kuala Lumpur, 1998), 13, 115–16, 209 Complete Directory to Primetime Network and Cable Shows, 2 Congress of Young Java, 64 Council on Pornography, 197 cultural identity, 35–42, 227–28 cultural imperialism, 26–29, 127–32, 227–48 D dakwah movement, 95–97, 131 dangdut. See also Daratista, Inul Anti-Pornography Bill and, 101 Bollywood influence, 136, 142, 236 class associations, 56, 73, 152–57, 158–59, 183, 185, 230 clubs and bars, 162–68 hybridity, 165, 168–69 in Indonesia vs. Malaysia, 161–62 modernization, 12, 140–41

08 Countering MTV.indd 267

267

MTV and, 4, 5, 79–80, 182–83 origins and history, 14–16, 136 in political campaigns, 202 as postmodern entertainment, 239 on the radio, 86–87, 88 Rhoma Irama and, 106–9, 139–40, 148–51 youth perspectives on, 151–54, 159–61 Dangdut Music Awards, 15 Dangdut Ngebor (VCD), 199 “Dangdut Rock” (song), 150 Daratista, Inul, 190–208 Anti-Pornography Bill and, 101, 204, 206 cultural identity and, 37–38, 187–88, 234 dance style, 142, 144, 192, 194 radio stations and, 156 Rhoma Irama and, 16, 192, 197, 198–99, 204 “Dari Tuhan” (song), 126 Demi Masa (album), 212 Desker, Lesley, 79, 172, 182 Dewa, 155, 189n8 Digoda Dangdut (television programme), 80, 108, 183, 184–85, 202, 230, 236

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268

dikir barat, 10 Disco Dangdut (VCD), 144 Disco Joget Dangdut (VCD), 144 Donnan, Hastings, 25 Dua Warna, 77 Dyanthi, Kris, 201 E Edinburgh Music Festival, 115, 209 Embong, A.R., 237 EMI, 114 English language, 85–86 Evans, Gareth, 222 F Fakharia Lokman, 105–6, 112 Farihin Abdul Fattah, 211 Farish A. Noor, 50–51, 97 al Faruqi, Lois Ibsen, 18–20 Fernandez, Tony, 157 Fernando, Sunetra, 9 France, 214 Frederick, W.H., 146, 149 Frith, Simon, 36 G Gallegos, Aaron, 4–5 gamelan, 9, 14, 42n7 Gani, A.K., 147 Gema Alam (album), 212 Genting Highlands, 158

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Index

Gerke, Solvay, 84–85 Germany, 224 Ghouse, 137–38 Giddens, Anthony, 48 globalization, 24–26, 32, 40–41, 100, 138–39, 232–38 Global TV, 79, 170 “God is Light” (song), 212 Goh, B.L., 46, 52, 59 Golkar, 150, 189n7 Goyang Inul (VCD), 199 goyang ngebor, 101, 192, 234 goyang pinggul, 192, 234, 242 Guerin, B., 194–95 Gujarat, 65 Gulali (album), 142 H Habibie, B.J., 88 Hadith, 19, 23, 43n11, 101, 106 Hailai Club, 201 Hall, Stuart, 33–34, 130–31, 233 HardRock FM, 154 Haryanto, Ignatius, 81, 100 Haz, Hamzah, 82, 99 Heck, Paul L., 102–3 Herman, E.S., 25 Hidayat, Herdi, 80, 108, 183–84, 185, 202–3

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Index

hijab, 96, 130 Hijjaz (group), 113, 114, 119, 213 Hill, David, 140, 141, 168, 193 Hindi pop music, 10. See also Bollywood film industry Hinduism, 65, 67, 97, 106, 235 Hodge, Bob, 29 Hong Kong, 10, 11 hua yue tuan, 10 Huntington, Samuel P., 248n1 hybridity cultural identity and, 38–39, 245–46 of dangdut, irama Malaysia and nasyid, 186–88, 228 defined, 30 globalization and, 32 in Malay-Muslim culture, 130 postcolonial theory and, 34–35, 237 I Iglesias, Enrique, 6 IKIM Radio, 114 IMS Prima, 207 India, 7, 8, 35 Indonesia anti-pornography bill,

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269

83–84, 99–101, 178, 204, 205–6 Islam in, 65–66, 83, 89–90, 97–101, 106, 235 musical traditions, 13–17 national identity, 61–90 1997-98 economic crisis, 70–71, 81 Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI), 75, 81, 178, 179, 206 Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), 206 Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), 100, 132n3, 196–97 Indostar TV, 181, 203 International Qur’an Reading Competitions, 111 International Song and Music Festival, 218 Irama, Rhoma collaboration with Latha Mangeskar, 142 on global music influences, 235 Inul Daratista and, 16, 192, 197, 198–99, 204 Islamic message, 106–9 nasyid and, 108–9, 123 popularization of dangdut, 15, 139–40, 148–51, 240–41

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270

irama Malaysia features and development, 58, 137, 187, 221, 232, 236–37, 239, 241 government support for, 55, 138 Siti Nurhaliza and, 13, 57–58, 138, 218 vs. dangdut, 162 Iranian revolution, 49, 97 Ishadi, S.K., 80 Islam in Indonesia, 65–66, 83, 89–90, 97–101, 235 in Malaysia, 46, 48, 49–54, 59–60, 119 music in, 17–23, 104–9, 177 Islam, Izatul, 121 Islam, Yusuf, 23, 115, 209, 212 Italy, 224 Iwa-K, 17 Iwan, 157 J Jabatan Kemajaan, 113 jaipongan, 16–17, 198 Jakarta, 145, 151, 154, 164–65, 170, 201, 202 Jamal Abdillah, 138 Japan, 224

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Index

Java, 14, 65, 99, 153, 166, 242 Jay-Z, 8 jihad, 93, 101–4 joget, 11 Juara Bintang Hiburan Minggu Ini, 217 Junoon (group), 22–23 Jurriens, Edwin, 76 K Kaiser Family Foundation, 8 Kalimantan, 67 Kaplan, E.A., 36, 228 karaoke, 115, 143, 163 Kartomi, M.J., 145 Kasido, Mugiono, 99 Kazakhstan, 218 KDI (Kontest Dangdut Idol), 15 Keating, Ronan, 6 Kelantan, 10, 51, 113, 177 keroncong music, 14, 146–47 Khairy Jamaluddin, 59–60 Khan, Nusrat Fateh Ali, 22, 104 Khondker, H.H., 243 “Kocok-Kocok” (music video), 205 Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia (KPI), 75, 81, 178, 179, 206 Kondangin, 181

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Index

Konsert Fenomena Dangdut Inul Daratista (VCD), 207 Kontes Dangdut Indonesia (KDI), 181, 185, 202 Kota Bharu, 113, 177 Kraidy, Marwaan M., 38–39, 238 Kuala Lipis, 216 Kuala Lumpur, 13, 115–16, 163 L Lacey, 28–29 Laras Gong gamelan orchestra, 9 Latin American music, 4 Lee, Coco, 7 Lewisohn, Leonard, 21 Lockard, C.A., 145, 150 Lokananta, 73 London, 214, 218 London Symphony Orchestra, 218, 223 Lovejoy, M., 239 Luvaas, B., 88 M Mahathir bin Mohamad, 44, 45–46, 52 Mahmood, Kazi, 195 Malay Dilemma, The, 45 Malay pop music, 11, 12–13

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271

Malaysia formation of national identity, 44–61, 94–97 Islam in, 46, 48, 49–54, 59–60, 95–97 musical traditions, 9–13, 135–39 Malaysian Book of Records, 209, 218 Malik, Dedy, 204–5 Manan, A., 48–49 Mangeskar, Latha, 142, 188n4, 226n13 Maris, Inke, 207 Martin, Ricky, 4 Matusky, Patricia, 111 Mau Dong (VCD), 199, 200–201, 205, 225n2 McChesney, Robert W., 25 McDonalds, 145 Medan, 147, 170 Mega Dangdut, 166–67 Melaka Sultanate, 9 Men’s Review (magazine), 164 Mihardja, Emyth, 168 Millah, Faiz Tajul, 191, 193, 208, 234 Misra, Vijay, 29–30 Moerdiono, 141 Mohamad Raimi, 170, 210–11, 233 Momin, A.R., 35

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272

Moore, Mandy, 6 Mountain of Light, 23, 115, 212 Mowlana, Hamid, 59 MTV (Music Television) as cultural expression, 228 cultural identity and, 35–38, 169, 180 establishment, 1–2 global reach, 2–3 influence on local music scene, 177–81 launch in Indonesia, 170, 171–72, 232 launch in Malaysia, 170, 171, 232 political and social messages, 7–8 youth perspectives on, 170–71, 173–76 MTV Asia, 2, 4, 6–7, 15, 230 MTV Asia Awards, 5–6, 218, 222 MTV Boom, 226n10 MTV India, 7, 23 MTV Indonesia, 16, 78–79, 172, 182–83, 247 MTV Syok, 55, 170 MTV Trax, 154, 180 Muara FM, 155 Mu’arif, Syamsul, 82 Muhammad Haniff Hassan, 103

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Index

Muhammadiyah, 83, 92n20, 100 MUI (Indonesian Ulema Council), 100, 132n3, 196–97 Mumbai, 8 Munis, 122 Murdoch, Rupert, 81 Muzik TV, 55, 170 N al-Nabulusi, Abd al-Ghani, 22 Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), 83, 92n20, 100, 197 Najib Abdul Razak, 53–54 Nalanda, 65 Napoleoni, Loretta, 101 Nasir, M., 136–37 nasyid. See also Raihan (group) in debate on music in Islam, 22 in Indonesia, 89–90, 120–23 in Malaysia, 54–57, 109– 20, 214, 237, 243 popularization, 12–13, 110–11, 114–15, 174, 239 social impact, 123–27 vs. dangdut, 108–9 youth perspectives on, 117–20, 233

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Index

Nasyid Industry Activists Association (PIN), 214 National Cultural Policy, 58 National Public Radio (NPR), 4 Nazrey Johani, 208 Neo Shalawat (album), 93, 122 New Economic Policy (NEP), 47–48, 49, 90n4 New Order regime, 139, 140, 148, 150 News Corporation, 81 New Straits Times, 210 Nickelodeon (television channel), 2 nobat, 9–10 Noraniza Idris, 138 Norazlina Amir Sharipuddin, 12, 136, 157 O Orientalism, 31 orkes Melayu, 14, 135, 147–48 Othman, Johan, 57, 160–61 P Padang, 147 Padi (group), 6, 155, 189n8 Pahang, 216 Pak Ngah development of irama

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273

Malaysia, 57, 137, 187, 218–20, 232, 237 on Siti Nurhaliza, 138, 222 Pancasila, 61–64, 70, 98 Pangesto, Ali, 168 Partai Serikat Islam Indonesia, 147 PAS (Parti Islam SeMalaysia), 10, 51–52, 53, 91n5, 113, 177, 216 PDI-P (Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle), 206 Peletz, M., 49, 51–52 Penang, 9, 160 “Penari” (music video), 200 “Perahu Layar” (music video), 199–200 Peter Pan (group), 201 Petras, James, 27–28, 128, 229, 233 Philo, Simon, 2 Pink, 6 Planet Music Awards, 218 P.O.D. (group), 6 pop daerah, 165 Portuguese musical traditions, 11, 14, 146 postcolonial theory, 29–32, 232, 240–48 postmodernism, 32–34, 238–40 Pouplain, C., 37

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274

PPP (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan), 150 Prambors Radio, 75, 154, 179 prostitution, 167–68 Puji Pujian (album), 12–13, 109, 209, 211, 213 Q qasidah, 89 qawwali singing, 22, 104, 132n4 Qur’an, 18–19, 43n10, 101, 105, 106, 111 R Rabbani (group), 12, 113, 114, 213 radio, 73–76, 86–88, 114–15, 123, 154–56 Radio Hang FM, 123 Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI), 73, 74, 87, 92n13 Radio Suara FM, 155 Radio Suara Persaudaraan Matraman, 88 Raihan (group), 208–16 as Malay-Muslim culture, 131, 233 MTV and, 7, 118 music videos, 56, 112–13 nasyid singing and, 22, 109–10, 126, 231

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Index

popularity, 12–13, 115–16, 125, 130, 209 postcolonial theory and, 240 Rai music, 186 Ramlee, P., 11, 135–36, 147–48 “Randa Ta’lowan” (song), 143 Rao, Shakuntala, 235 rap music, 88–89 RCTI (television channel), 77 Reformasi, 67, 76, 88, 91n12, 98, 132n3 Riau province, 67, 77, 86 Robertson, Roland, 243 Rock Dangdut (VCD), 143 Roedy, Bill, 3 Rokhimah, Ainur. See Daratista, Inul Rosa, 201 Royal Albert Hall, 218, 223 RTM (Radio Television Malaysia), 55, 178, 217 “Rupiah” (song), 107, 150 S Said, Edward W., 31 Salam Dangdut, 5, 15, 182, 183, 247 Salimah, 207 sama, 20–22 Sami, Adnan, 7

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Index

Santana, K., 5–6, 79 Sari, Yuni, 201 Saudi Arabia, 214 Saujana (group), 116–17, 123, 124, 125 Say No To Pornography, 100, 206 Schiller, Herbert, 28 SCTV (television channel), 79, 92n17 Semalam di Malaysia (television programme), 158 Semarang, 170 Sen, Krishna, 74, 140, 141, 168, 193 Sentaun, Hendra, 155 Senyun (album), 212 Shakira, 4 Shamsul, A.B., 95, 96 Shanghai Music Festival, 218 Shankar, Ravi, 226n13 Shiloah, Amnon, 18, 20 Singapore, 6, 7, 11, 13, 218 Sirah Junjungan (album), 214 Siti Nurhaliza, 216–25 cultural identity, 37 dangdut and, 12 efforts to go global, 222–25 irama Malaysia and, 57–58, 138, 218–20

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275

joget music and, 11 rise to stardom, 13, 217– 18 Slank (group), 17 Snada (group), 93, 120, 122, 130 Soeharto, 71, 73, 92n12, 98, 139, 148, 195 Soerjono, Inge, 122, 198–99, 201 Soneta (group), 139, 148, 149 Sony, 145 Sowards, Stacey K., 230 SPFM, 155 Sriwijaya, 65 Stevens, Cat, 23, 115, 209 Straits Times, 157, 224 Subono, N.I., 68–69 Suffian Amrin, 117 Sufism, 19, 21–22, 43n12, 101, 104 Suhaimi Zain. See Pak Ngah Sukaesih, Elvy, 139 Sukarnaputra, Guruh, 198 Sukarno, 16, 62, 67–68, 73, 139, 147 Sukarnoputri, Megawati, 99, 198 Sukur (album), 212 “Sukur” (music video), 56, 112–13, 212 Sulawesi, 166

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276

Sumatra, 65, 153, 166 Sundanese musical traditions, 106, 146 Surabaya, 170 Suria Records, 217 Suryadi, 76, 87 Sutton, R.A., 77, 79, 172, 182 Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, 97 Syukur 21 (film), 214 T Taiwan, 7, 10, 11 Tan, Sooi Beng on irama Malaysia, 58, 221, 237 on Malaysian music videos, 176–77 on nasyid, 55–56, 110, 111, 119, 211–12 on worldbeat influence, 136, 138–39, 211–12 Tempo magazine, 198 “THINK HIV”, 8 Thompson, J.B., 238, 242 Time magazine, 196 Tomlinson, J., 229, 244 TooFat, 126 TPI (television station), 15, 79, 92n17, 157–58, 181, 185 TransTV (television channel), 16, 80, 108, 183, 203

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Index

Tsai, Jolin, 7 Turkmen, S., 241 TVRI (television channel), 140, 150 U Umayyad dynasty, 103 UMNO (United Malays National Organisation), 51, 91n6 United Kingdom, 224 United Nations Foundation, 8 United Overseas Bank, 7 United States, 224, 229 Universiti Sains Malaysia, 9 V Valdellon, Lionel, 37 van Zanten, Wim, 77, 121 Varma, Mishal, 180 Viacom, 2 Vijayanagaran, 65 Vision 2020, 44–45, 46, 48–49, 52 W Wahid, Abdurrahman, 92n15, 99, 197 Wahyudi, Anton, 75–76, 154–55, 179 Wahyutama, 100, 122, 180, 206–7 Wallach, Jeremy, 164–65

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Index

Walsh, Bryan, 196 Wang, J., 186 Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment Company, 1 Warner Communications, 1 Warner Music, 5, 113–14, 145, 157, 211, 212, 222 Warung Tojedo (television programme), 193 Washington Post, 196 wayang kulit, 72 Weintraub, Andrew N., 15 Western pop music, 12 Westlife (group), 6 West Papua, 67 Wong, Kean, 164

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277

worldbeat, 136–37, 188n3, 211, 224, 226n11 X Xie, Shaobo, 31 Y Yahya, Erwin, 120, 121 Yamin, Kafil, 150–51 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang, 202 Z Zainal Abidin, 136–37 Zazawi Ibrahim, 215, 222 Zulkiple Abdul Ghani, 123–25

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Countering MTV Influence in Indonesia and Malaysia

About the Author Dr Kalinga Seneviratne is a Sri Lanka born journalist, radio broadcaster, television documentary maker, and a media and international communications analyst. Currently he is the Head of Research and Capacity Building at the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) in Singapore. Kalinga holds a PhD in International Communications (Macquarie University, Australia), Masters in Social Sciences (UTS, Australia), and Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science (Reading University, England). He specializes in development journalism and feature writing and has been writing for the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency since 1991. He has written many published research papers on development communications, journalism with an Asian perspective, multicultural broadcasting, and community media. In 1987 he won a UN Media Peace Award for a series broadcast on Australian community radio titled “We Don’t Want No Peace” looking at the relationship between rich and poor countries. He has taught radio production, international communications, and journalism at the tertiary level in Australia and Singapore. This book is based on his PhD research project.

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