Crossing borders and crossing the line

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1989, the Malaysian music group, Search, were a popular culture phenomenon across the Nusantara, successfully exporting their Malaysian brand of hard rock and heavy metal retrospectively termed rock kapak (lit. axe rock). Their success set the stage for cross-border collaboration in Indonesia, which included recordings, tours and a feature-length film. In 1992, the group was subject to a long hair ban that restricted broadcast of their music on television and radio in Malaysia. As a result of their defiance of the ban, the band’s live performances in the country were denied permits. This study conceptualises the connections and contestations mobilised by Malay rock as a crossing of nation-state borders and a crossing of moral boundaries. The former is viewed in inter-regional popular culture exchanges within the Nusantara region, while the latter is analysed in terms of Malay rock’s defiance to authoritarian moral policing. The boundary crossings of Search signify the musical mobilities of Malay rock, read as an informal cross-Nusantara ‘movement’ of mostly male, working-class youth who challenged conservative ethno-national states. While Search’s mobility across the region clearly represents a porous crossing of domestic and regional borders, it was the affectively ‘moving’ aspects of their ballads that appealed to a wide demographic of Nusantara audiences and the politicians that were complicit in controlling their public image.