Indie Music Counterculture towards Indonesia Pop Music Domination (A Literature Review)

Abstract

Music is a communication instrument which is emphatically affected by culture of the place where the music grows. While learning certain language particularly involves the knowledge of the language’s culture, music is likewise. Music reflects life and daily features such as joy, suffering, and frustration. It generates both human intellectuality and feelings, while music has become integral part of humankind across the centuries. Music is created from men’s affection towards life and based on their life’s memories. Music first originated as human beings took place. Indie Music is born from the boredom and rebellion towards mainstream culture on music industry, while giant recording labels only offers market-oriented music and highlyprofitable music products, resulting to the sacrifice of creativity of musicians and related-artists.Talking about Indie Music, it becomes part of subculture created from the boredom and the antithesis towards mainstream culture in music industry, whereas recording labels or companies will only create music products which are widely marketable and commercially profitable for the companies; and it results to the homogenization of creativity by commercial purposes. What so-called “mainstream” band groups cannot freely identify themselves any longer with their particular music genres. According to Adorno and Horkheimer, when they would like to perform in media such as radio, TV and recording labels, they often have to exchange their musical idealism with popularity in culture industry. Subculture is culture derived from dominant culture and also an entire movement towards dominant cultural resistance. This movement and resistance is not an armed movement, yet featured with fashion, music, ideology and life style while subculture is a place to attain pleasure, desire and attention