Stars to the State and Beyond

Star performers and the way that their identities have been influenced by the historical moment in which they lived fascinate both avid popular music consumers and scholars alike (Danielson Reference Danielson1998; Lohman Reference Lohman2010). Stokes, in The Republic of Love (Reference Stokes2010), for example, relates the history of key Turkish performers to explore the political transformation of modern Turkey from the 1950s through the 1990s, thus using biography to better understand the identity of the state, or at least the identity the state aspired to, rather than the other way around.Footnote ¹⁰

He does so first by contextualizing the engaging life story of each individual, plus by analyzing characteristic representative works, within Turkish and broader global culture of the time. Within the chapter on “queer nightclub star” (35) Zeki Müren, Stokes's analysis moves fluidly from detailing Müren's life to identifying musical qualities—such as his compelling voice and a particularly interesting discussion of his use of makam, the modal system of this area—that define his style. Müren's flamboyant performances and enthusiastic engagement with audiences captured the cosmopolitan energy of 1950s Turkey. And though “largely remembered in terms of the kitsch and camp of” performances (35), upon his death he was reconfigured by the populace as a “model citizen” as he embodied “virtues to which the republic aspired” (71) even years later.

Arabesk, an important genre of popular music in Turkey (Stokes Reference Stokes1992), is introduced through the performer Orhan Gencebay. He possessed “an aura not only of intelligence and cosmopolitanism but also of self-sufficiency” (77), and his fans developed an intimacy with him through his open life story, while other arabesk stars remain shrouded in mystery. Gencebay came to be seen nostalgically as an “exemplary figure of sincerity, decency, and civic virtue” of the 1970s (103–4). His style challenged conceptions of how a modern Turkish musical identity could be formed. And his iconic recording “Everything Is Darkness” brought together hybrid elements of rural and urban, Western and Turkish, even old and modern in a “powerful song, a howl of protest at an unjust social order” (81) that proliferated through political oppression in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Sezen Aksu, a major Turkish pop star, created work that expressed “the radical transformations of Turkey” in the 1990s for her avid fans (5), while gendering Turkey's modern identity in varied ways. Her version of the song “What Are You Crying About?,” released in 1995, “became an icon of national soulfulness” (110) in part by evoking an image of the nation as a suffering woman. The song therefore perpetuates a trope common to the Middle East where “the political struggles of modernity have been played out over images of women's bodies” (110). Her personal story reveals a complex negotiation of traditional passivity and progressive resistance in female performance, in the end emphasizing the role of women as active agents in building modern Turkey (130). Through the performances of these individuals, popular music produced a “real” national identity of Turkey rather than an “officially fabricated past” (20) and thus collectively the work of these stars paints “an intimate, as opposed to official, idea of the nation” (16) that speaks to the people in a vibrant and emotional way.

An intimate relationship between the populace and the urban center of Istanbul is further evidenced through a deep comparison of three versions of the song “Beloved Istanbul,” which raises questions about how to position a “Turkish music past in the modern” (150), the simultaneous view of “the beloved, the city, and the nation” as first stable yet ultimately elusive, and Istanbul's transformation into an urban and cultural fulcrum of national identity. Through analyzing what remains consistent and what is open for interpretation, Stokes argues that all three versions of the song are in “conversation” with each other (179) across generations and genres. In doing so, “the songs and voices in question enable [him] to talk historically about extended and overlapping contexts rather than isolated and disconnected moments” (7). This approach to analyzing a song that is not bounded by a historical moment or stylistic convention highlights dramatic events in Turkey comparatively, complicating the typical read of musical and larger political history as progressive. As such, Stokes exceeds the typical read of Turkish popular music that focuses on “genre, region, ethnicity, class and historical periodization” (14), as these songs do not remain static within any one genre, location, or historical moment. The power of popular song thus paints a vivid picture of Turkey's modern history as ever transforming and interconnected. And through the performers' histories, and the sensitive and sophisticated analysis of the works that each produced, Turkish popular music is presented at once as personal, cosmopolitan, and global.

Olsen, in Popular Music of Vietnam (Reference Olsen2008), similarly relies on the voices of performers, but here to express the identity of popular music that dominated Vietnam from the 1990s through 2005.Footnote ¹¹ Unlike Stokes's detailed focus on three performers and several versions of one song, Olsen's approach is broad, as he looks at diverse aspects of popular music from production to performance spaces.

He does so, just as Stokes does, by relating key pop singers' biographies and the life events that shape their personal and musical identities, but with a particular interest in what they undergo to practice their trade within a modern Vietnam that has increasingly global interactions. Vietnamese pop stars do not have to go through “recording companies and other gate keepers yet,” for example, but that system may change with increased exposure to other modes of artistic management from the West (94). Particularly interesting are the ways in which bands deal with questions of originality when performing musics that can be heard globally, as the government desires performers to strive for “originality,” in the sense that music should express something uniquely “Vietnamese,” and is critical of the quality of popular music and the behavior of the youths who consume it as arguably too global and lacking local identity (124–28). Political powers continue to have a problematic role in shaping the identity of Vietnamese popular music through censorship of song lyrics, which are extremely important markers because of the emphasis on and appreciation for singing in the culture in general. Song lyrics reveal how Vietnamese artists negotiate the need to represent what social themes are significant to the people, but at the same time can pass government scrutiny to present an approved national agenda (129).

Political implications are evident in other aspects of the popular music industry in Vietnam as well. Popular music, as is common in many areas of the world, is disseminated through live performance at a variety of venues as well as through audiocassettes, CDs, VCDs, and other forms of media, which are all necessary for the music industry to survive. The development of this media is unique though, as interesting issues of piracy and copyright infringement arise in the context of Vietnam. The ability to record, make copies, and distribute them came late to the country in the 1990s, and production of audiocassettes and CDs only increased after Clinton lifted the trade embargo and more people had access to CD players (222–27). The karaoke industry has become an important means of disseminating Vietnamese popular music as well (236). The government, however, is suspicious of the moral content of karaoke, which as an industry is primarily economically and not artistically driven, again highlighting the government's public desire for Vietnamese popular musicians to find a unique artistic voice in global popular music.

Like tourism, music can be used to build a Vietnamese identity to present to the world, but unlike the intimate identity that individuals can form with the nation through popular music in Stokes's study of Turkey, the national identity in Vietnam is a government-censored construction informed by globalizing processes. Olsen therefore seems to be making a subtle call for the government to loosen censorship so musical creativity can flourish and the unique Vietnamese identity that the government supposedly desires can actually emerge (258).

Any work that claims to present a popular music system in its entirety is always suspicious, as it is extremely difficult to conduct in-depth research of all musical practices in an entire country. For example, though there are a wide variety of venues in which music is performed—from large, outdoor community venues to intimate cafes—Olsen finds few “alternative” performance venues, claiming that most are mainstream and performances are primarily motivated by the desire to make money (198). He fails to recognize that alternative performance spaces and related practices often operate deeply underground in strict political climates, and should not be so quick to dismiss the existence of possible dissenting musical and political voices. Nonetheless, such scholarship, which is usually focused on mainstream popular musics in urban centers, as is the case here, is often necessary to support more in-depth studies of specific performers, genres, scenes, or other topics of interest. Olsen thus presents a study of youth-oriented musics performed in Vietnam—and the government's involvement, either active or passive, in their production—that others can build upon in more focused, critical studies in the future.

Weintraub's Dangdut Stories (Reference Weintraub2010) shifts the focus from both individuals and an encompassing overview of a mainstream popular music system to the development of a single genre, dangdut, a dominant type of Indonesian popular music.Footnote ¹² Like Stokes, Weintraub studies the music itself, using “vocal style, melody, rhythm, harmony, form, and song texts to articulate symbolic struggles over meaning in the realm of culture” (13). But first he begins with a detailed analysis of the contested history of dangdut that highlights the inter-Asian exchange that characterized its development, considering in particular the role of melayu ethnic musical practices as its origin. Several styles, especially orkes (or orchestras), which drew on musical sources from the melayu region that extended from Malaysia to Java, combined with influences from the Middle East, India, and the United States during the 1950s. Sukarno's ban on “the allegedly harmful influence of American and European commercial culture” (57) continued to limit Western music's impact in the 1960s, while popular music and film from India and the Middle East were officially allowed and actively consumed. With the successful 1966 coup of Suharto, attitudes would shift again; American popular music was encouraged, and “pop Indonesia” flourished in the late 1960s. Nonetheless, dangdut developed from diverse musical sources, contradicting a common myth that Western cultural influences necessarily dominate in the development of local popular musics globally.

Weintraub interrogates the association between this music and “the people,” individuals lower on the political and economic scale, in the 1970s and 1980s. The powerful performances of Rhoma Irama, “the King” of dangdut, further solidified the position of popular music to express the needs of everyday people. Dangdut of this period dealt with real, everyday problems, but at the same time offered “hope rather than despair” through upbeat music geared for dancehalls (136). Though this may seem contradictory, the Indonesian people clearly identified with the serious message, while gravitating to the dance groove. But by the 1990s, like so many popular musics that have origins amongst the disenfranchised, dangdut had transformed to become a music of all Indonesians and was no longer exclusively associated with the underclass (149). Weintraub argues that dangdut was reconfigured into a national genre primarily through commercial television (151), which was heavily censored and patrolled, but still helped turn a localized genre with transnational origins into a national phenomenon. Popular music, as is intimated in Olsen's (Reference Olsen2008) study in Vietnam, is again used to reinforce the ideals and values that the government associates with its new national identity.

Weintraub (Reference Weintraub2010) problematizes dangdut in the early 2000s by introducing the female performer Inul, whose suggestive dance moves generated a hailstorm of critique. Her body became a site where debates raged about religion, culture, and politics in post-Suharto Indonesia (175). For example, her image was able to circulate freely, which some argued signaled that censorship no longer reigned, but conservatives critiqued the open display of female sexuality, which was heavily influenced by provocative female performers from abroad. Thus, because of the power of popular music to reach so many people, the performance of a single star became a site where national identity was highly contested (192).

Dangdut's position as a national popular music has actually increased through local variation. Ethnic or regional dangdut, sung in specific dialects, on the surface would seem to contradict Suharto's New Order discourse on dangdut as Indonesia's national popular music. But Weintraub argues, “dangdut via an increasing number of regional ethnocultural varieties had become Indonesia's de facto national music, each one signifying different socio-economic realities and cultural interests” (223). So in fact dangdut's ability to express a unified national identity is actually enhanced by its ability to represent diverse regional interests.

Weintraub's work is thus structured along a chronological account of the history of a genre, but does not simply provide a point-by-point description of its development. Rather he eloquently weaves in theoretical considerations on diverse issues such as the transnational development of musical style, the effects of political agendas on changing meanings of musical performance, and modes of viewing the female body to understand contested values important to defining a nation. At the same time, he provides a clear understanding of the history and development of contemporary dangdut, showing how musical genres intersect with national identities.

De Kloet, in China with a Cut (Reference de Kloet2008), is similarly interested in the ways in which genre expresses identity at the individual and national levels, but focuses on the communal identities that are produced through the performance of various music scenes in mid-1990s China.Footnote ¹³ In doing so, de Kloet asks how seemingly global sound is localized by youths within socio-cultural and politically transforming China. Though Stokes (Reference Stokes2010), Olsen (Reference Olsen2008), and Weintraub (Reference Weintraub2010) necessarily consider youth culture by the very fact that they are using popular music as a means to discuss larger social issues, de Kloet (Reference de Kloet2008) actually frames his study on the collective identity of the “Dakou Generation,” referring to adolescents who regularly consumed dakou CDs, or CDs that were physically cut in the West to mark them as rejects that should have been recycled, but were smuggled into China. These illegal CDs were so eagerly consumed that the term “dakou” came to symbolize an entire generation in the late 1990s (20–21); a generation that is crucial in shaping the identity of contemporary China now. These individuals, born after the Cultural Revolution, have no connection with that past and do not remember Tiananmen Square. They also have a more relaxed attitude about popular culture, and therefore no longer view music as having the same potential political impact as in the past. Nonetheless, making music still plays an important role in their identity politics (25)—identities that though varied and multifaceted are deeply informed by accelerating globalizing processes and therefore in general are distinct from earlier generations.

Rock music, for example, can no longer be viewed as simplistically rebellious and the state in China as completely totalitarian, with de Kloet instead offering a more nuanced read of the production of rock music in a communist context (16–17). In an important move, he stresses that he is not trying to categorize “Chinese Rock” as a single genre, but rather to look at the performance of rock in varied sites and situations, contextualizing its production not only within the global influence of Western rock, but also within the “commercial” music of the south and the “cultural” music of the north in China (25). Thus, as with Weintraub (Reference Weintraub2010), de Kloet (Reference de Kloet2008) makes clear that globalizing processes in Asia should not be viewed in relation to the West only, but rather as flows throughout Asia and within individual nations as well. He further critiques the typical read of popular music in China that presumes that the only way to “sinify” Western rock is to incorporate Chinese languages, instrumentation, and musical elements, which actually perpetuates an orientalizing view. Chinese themselves reflect and reinforce this Western gaze by questioning the authenticity of Chinese-produced popular music (27–28).

Chinese media, performers, and audience are implicit in this bifurcation process that reifies a “rock mythology,” which presents Western-generated rock as “authentic . . . subcultural, masculine, rebellious and (counter) political” (26) while critiquing Chinese-produced music against this ideal. De Kloet weaves in references to star performers and provides details on the development of specific musical genres through his comparative analysis of scenes generated by the performance of underground bands, heavy metal, punk, hip-hop, folk-rock, pop-rock, and fashionable bands, as well as his exploration of larger epicenters of popular music production in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Thus de Kloet successfully integrates intelligent discussion of pop into the same pages as his analysis of rock, rather than simply dismissing “commercial” popular music as unworthy of study, or focusing exclusively on supposed dominant styles with no acknowledgement of possible underground movements. He also challenges the typical read of the record industry and commercialization of “pop” music as “hostile” to authentic rock (168), thus providing a nuanced read of many of the binaries that are often assumed between authentic rock and commercial pop, and by extension the identities of those who perform them.

Most importantly for the discussion here, de Kloet throughout emphasizes that “music serves as an important ingredient in [the] constant production and reproduction of the self” (140). He finds, for example, that rock is an important site through which young Beijing males negotiate a complicated masculine identity informed by Western ideals (156). Though his approach to presenting a multiplicity of scenes within one volume does not allow him the depth of knowledge necessary to fully interrogate the meanings generated by any one scene, it does successfully introduce the reader to a breadth of music of contemporary China and its role in expressing the varied identities of the Dakou Generation.

Levine, in Heavy Metal Islam (Reference Levine2008), explores how a single genre—heavy metal—may be used to shape a positive interregional identity amongst youths that combats the oppressive agenda of religiously motivated political powers in the Middle East. In order to do so, Levine introduces scenes specific to Morocco, Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and Pakistan that are informed by both a regional identity as well as more immediate cultural concerns within each area. Heavy metal and other similar underground musics may be widely enjoyed throughout the Middle East, but what it means to engage with the performance of this challenging music varies greatly among its participants. Levine, however, encourages young Arabs throughout the Middle East to embrace metal as a way to critique oppressive regimes and enact change even though the interregional metal scene's desire for an autonomous identity itself might be a dangerous political act.

In Egypt, for example, Levine found that, largely due to a mass-jailing of musicians and fans in 1997, many now avoid public identification with the scene and the use of metal to make explicit political critique because of the fear of severe persecution. Young men waving long hair and wearing black t-shirts with provocative images can actually be harassed and may choose to hide their markers of metal identity when in mainstream, conservative Arab areas (78). Unlike the case in Egypt, where metal bands want to avoid public politicizing and the possible retribution associated with it, in Palestine and Israel a variety of underground musicians are overtly and quite loudly speaking to all sides of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, whether pro-Palestinian, pro-Israeli, pro-peace, or critical of all of the above. While musicians in Lebanon have faced similar religiously motivated critique as in Egypt, this supposedly negative attention actually has led to increased sales (159–60).

In areas where there is strong control over what happens in public—including restrictions on music—vibrant underground musical happenings often develop, as is the case in Iran. But where musicians in Egypt may deny the subversive potential, some Iranian musicians see the performance of metal as a deeply political act. Indeed, it seems particularly difficult to separate politics from religion in Iran. While rappers and metal heads alike still have to walk that dangerous line between finding ways to express an authentic identity yet avoiding censorship (or worse) in retribution, Levine sees enough evidence to suggest that young people in Iran are resisting the government's oppression to some degree through music (209–10). The Pakistani band Junoon best exhibits how a group can “create a powerful, truly groundbreaking new form of rock ‘n’ roll, and use their fame to offer a direct challenge to a corrupt and despotic political and economic system” (212), using rock as a pathway to liberation.

This liberation is gained when young people come together in interregional and transnational communities generated by a shared passion for popular music. Music festivals featuring metal, such as “Desert Rock” in Dubai, hold “the potential for transcending individual identities into communal solidarities, which, however tentative and insecure are in marked contrast to the kind of violence-laden ‘self-annihilation’ demanded of young people by the more extreme forms of Sunni and Shi'i Islam” (269). Levine acknowledges that metal is about anger and violence, but also so much more, as it supports the creation of an identity distinct from that sanctioned by states throughout the Middle East.

Levine finds individuals struggling for artistic expression under oppressive, religiously driven political regimes, with music having the potential in general to motivate, inspire, and provide hope. So much so, that he continually seems disappointed with groups and individuals he feels are not fully embracing the political potential of underground music. The rigor of his scholarship is questionable and his approach is most subjective, as he continually proclaims the potential power of metal to break through what he only sees as oppressive Islamist regimes, taking an entirely negative view of political powers, and providing little critical analysis of the scenes he encounters. He makes clear though music's ability to both express and critique religious belief at the same time, which often becomes a political act, while also introducing readers to a really eclectic collection of artists and their work.

Though the preceding examples highlight the ways in which popular musics play with diverse global cultural and musical influences in shaping local identity, the movement of peoples and pop musics through transnational scenes inspires reads of identity that move beyond even regional borders. Sterling, in Babylon East (Reference Sterling2010), for example, studies young Japanese engagement with Jamaican popular culture, specifically reggae and dancehall, both within Japan and abroad. In locating this work in Asia, he significantly moves away from a historically common positioning of racial identity politics in popular music as a white-black dichotomy alone. His theoretical exploration of what he calls the “global imagination of blackness” is rooted in ethnographic inquiry into how some disenfranchised Japanese negotiate their identity through Rastafarianism and reggae, arguing that the flexible construction of race must be viewed within the immediate socio-historical-political climate, looking at the specific history of “blackness” in Japan (59).

Japanese engage with blackness through two significant gendered subcultures—male-dominated sound systems and the female world of the dancehall queen. Within these worlds, Japanese performers use Jamaican language and music, especially when learned directly in Jamaica, to create an authentic medium. In doing so, certain elements of reggae and dancehall performance are transformed to meet immediate aesthetic and social needs in the context of Japan, such as personalizing lyrics to express pride in one's home country. At the same time, the use of patois is a marker of cross-cultural immersion and authenticity amongst Japanese. Sterling argues though that there are problems directly translating Jamaican cultural politics to Japan, which is by no means perfect, but faces its own unique social ills (69).Footnote ¹⁴

The problem of translating certain Jamaican beliefs into the Japanese context is further apparent in Dancehall Queen competitions. For example, ridicule of homosexuality is a constant feature within this subculture, but doing so is particularly problematic in Japan, as homosexuality is relatively open in popular-culture expressions (108). There is a history of young Japanese girls using foreign sources to express identity, however, and the consumption of dancehall through diverse media is consistent with this larger historical practice. Needless to say, common characteristics do not necessarily carry over to the new cultural context. Indeed, the ways in which social practices are modified are most telling about identity, as they indicate just what individuals and collective communities value in each new performative context.

For example, one can perform dancehall and reggae with varying degrees of commitment to the spiritual practice of Rastafarianism. Some Japanese are drawn to the spiritual practice, sometimes through the music first and sometimes the other way around. Sterling actually finds a correlation between a desire to return to a natural, rural-based lifestyle and the practice of Rastafarianism. Japanese who feel out of place with mainstream society, who seek a life that returns to an imagined traditional Japan even, may find solace, comfort, and modes of expressing themselves through Rastafarianism. Japanese who feel the presence of Western philosophy and practices as oppressive can identify with the concept that “Babylon” (referring to the corrupt West) is a negative force. In this way, some Japanese identify with blackness/Rastafarianism/dancehall/etc. because they feel they are another repressed minority, just like black Jamaicans. In this way, “Rasta in Japan manifests itself as a community, representing a rich symbolic method by which its followers explore, collectively and individually, the socioeconomic, political, historical, religious, and personal in Japan, Asia, and the world at large” (155). Sterling thus highlights again how the performance of popular music allows individuals to negotiate local identity through transnational flows of culture.

Sharma, in Hip Hop Desis (Reference Sharma2010), similarly explores how Asians adapt expressions of blackness, but in this case amongst what she terms the 1.5 and second generation of South Asian American hip-hop artists. Sharma does not identify a unified scene in North America though. Rather, she highlights the lack of cohesion amongst hip-hop desis (South Asians in America) as well as the absence of a single uniform musical style. Nonetheless, these performers collectively play with blackness to create a unique desis identity, which they perform “in the most popular and generationally relevant expression of Blackness at this time – hip hop” (3). Like Japanese and Jamaicans, desis can see a commonality with African Americans through their shared status as minorities in the United States (2–3). Blackness is seen as empowering rather than denigrating, a view that is complicated when contextualized by the fact that there is a negative, racially motivated, critical view of African Americans shared by many mainstream South Asians in North America. Add to this the racist perception of South Asians as the model minority, and you have a complex negotiation of racialized identity politics at play in the performance practices of hip-hop desis. These artists “take hip hop not only to challenge the model minority myth and issues concerning less fortunate South Asians, but also to resist South Asian anti-Black racism” (15). This is unusual again because of a “great divide” between South Asians and African Americans, which makes the use of black cultural forms all the more significant.

Sharma thus looks at how “desi hip hoppers express their identifications with Blacks by infusing traditionally United States-bound and Black-centered themes in hip hop with a diasporic sensibility and a global lens” (4). She does so by politicizing the ways in which desis sample what they want from African American hip-hop and South Asian performance forms. Indeed, her study is firmly grounded in discourse on racial politics in the United States at the turn of the twenty-first century. This book therefore explores how “some young South Asians negotiate their racial invisibility in the United States by developing newly racialized identities that express a political consciousness of interminority solidarity” (3), thus counter-affecting “the invisibility of Asian-Americans in US racial discourse” (10).

Sharma's work also highlights the inappropriate application of theories of white appropriation of blackness, calling instead for a theoretical reading that considers the unique position of South Asian ethnic identity. Desis' motivations for performing hip-hop otherwise are often misinterpreted. The ways in which desis create a unique identity through sampling what they want from both predominantly black hip-hop culture and South Asian culture (language, instrumentation, etc.) reveal a complicated ethnic positioning. Sharma focuses on appropriation, but rather than the common discourse on black-white appropriation, here looking at the nuances of appropriation between two minority groups. Thus both Sterling (Reference Sterling2010) and Sharma present the layers of complexity involved in reading Asian-ethnic racial identity, and related political possibilities, though in two vastly different music-cultural worlds.