Alternative Conceptions of Modernity in the History of Iban Popular Music

Abstract

The Iban make up one third of the Sarawakian population and is the largest ethnic group in Sarawak, Malaysia. As with other ethnicities in the nation, modernity has presented challenges for socio-cultural development and lifestyle of Iban people. Historically, the Iban are a cultural group located geographically and politically in Sarawak, Malaysia. Iban society had gone through a state of flux where people have gone through the process of readapting themselves in meeting the demanding challenges of modernisation. Drawing upon Barendregt’s (2014) ‘alternative conceptions of modernity’ this paper examines how the Iban associate both a national as well as a local music industry particularly through their use of language as an expression of Iban. First the paper will examine changes in Iban society through political and economic modernisation. Differential transformation within Iban music industry is examined in relation to exposure to agents of change such as the influence through Christian missionary and education. This reflects how the Iban react and interact in adaptation of modem demands of change as a result of the effects of historical processes on the social, cultural and physical environments.