Dangdut Stories: A Social and Musical History of Indonesia’s Most Popular Music (review)

Abstract

Dangdut Stories: A Social and Musical History of Indonesia's Most Popular Music. By Andrew Weintraub. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. [vi, 258 p. ISBN 9780195395662 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9780195395679 (paperback), $24.95.] Illustrations, index, music examples. Dangdut Stories offers first booklength study of dangdut in English. It contributes to studies of global popular musics, ethnomusicology, and Southeast Asian studies through an in-depth cultural study of a style of popular music that has been described by many as Indonesia's de facto national music. Unlike previous English-language studies that have largely focused on genre's relation to nationalism, Andrew Weintraub offers new areas of focus, including gender, class, ethnicity, and media. He shows how music is a vivid reflection of national politics and offers a detailed reading of dangdut as an aesthetic and practice in modern Indonesia (p. 13). To do this, Wein traub offers descriptive analyses of many significant dangdut (and predangdut) songs, writes about its lyrics (source of title's stories), and presents biographies of major performers. Con - sistent themes throughout include hybrid roots of dangdut (from sources as varied as Hindi film music, Jimi Hendrix, and Melayu music in Malacca Straits), music's status as a contact zone for issues of cultural hybridity, Islam in public life, role and representation of women in Indonesian society, and tensions between local and national musics in Indo nesia. The book is based on Wein traub's fieldwork, participant observation, interviews, music lessons, research on articles from popular print media, and Internet sources. The book may be divided into three sections. The first (chapters 2 and 3) explores roots and influences of proto dangdut; second (chapters 4, 5, and 6) traces development of genre in 1970s-1990s, with particular attention to major artists and political trends; and third (chapters 7 and 8) traces changes in dangdut since 1998. The first section describes debates over roots of genre, as major performers espouse conflicting stories about its genesis. Some (like Rhoma Irama) link it to Indonesian and Islamic roots in North Sumatran Melayu culture, while others (like Elvy Sukaesih) stress its status as a uniquely Indonesian and highly participatory form of music. This dichotomy illustrates book's central rhetorical device: dangdut is used by various and groups in various ways to accomplish disparate cultural and ends. When Rhoma Irama stresses Melayu roots, he claims dangdut as a precolonial and Islamic expression; when Elvy Sukaesih claims it as uniquely Indonesian, she focuses on music's emotional immediacy and participatory elements. Thus, talk about music in ways that constructs various ideological positions (p. 35). The first section also emphasizes culturally hybrid roots of dangdut. Musical traits of proto dangdut, established in these chapters and traced in more detail later in book, include poetic conventions, increasingly complex musical form, influences (instruments, melodies, and ornamentations) from Indian film music, and chalte rhythmic pattern (which, Wein - traub suggests, may have origins in India, Malaysia, or even Latin music). By 1970s these hybrid elements had assimilated into a new genre called dangdut. The book's second section traces dangdut from 1970s through late 1990s. Chapter 4 describes early associations between dangdut and the people (rakyat), suggesting that music's purported relationship to popular masses varied depending on who was describing music and why. This chapter also presents a biography of Rhoma Irama, King of Dangdut, and a discussion of his major recordings (pp. 93-106). Chapter 5 turns to 1980s, with a particular focus on representation of women in songs and musical films, with a particular case study of music by Elvy Sukaesih (the Queen of Dangdut, pp. …