Creating Indonesia in Australia: Bridges, Communities and Identities through Music

Abstract

Australia's geographic positioning as the closest ‘western’ country to Indonesia and its immediate neighbour has been a unique influence on and frame for Indonesian and Indonesian-inflected music and music-related performance in Australia. Proximity to Indonesia has fostered direct person-to-person contact and other forms of cultural interaction, including diverse Australian–Indonesian creative encounters and endeavours mediated by music. Cultural interaction has been further facilitated by migration from Indonesia, easier travel, the advent of Australian multiculturalism and the transnational cultural flows of the present-day global environment. This article uses case studies to show how contemporary music and other performance create meaningful connections between Australians and Indonesians, or inform existing connections. The case studies, drawn from a much wider array of Australian-based, Indonesia-related performance activity, comprise gamelan performance in Australia; three Indonesian-flavoured intercultural music-theatre or world music projects led by Australians of Indonesian descent or Indonesians resident in Australia; and the vibrant Indonesian student pop culture scene in Melbourne. These music and performance activities are expressive of the various communities that generate them and of the identities that are constructed or affirmed in the process of music-making and performance-making. The musicians and performers discussed in the article have variously projected their Indonesianness (their cultural roots), explored their Indonesian ancestral or other ties, or identified with Indonesia (as an adopted culture) through performance activity.