Origins and hybridity

After the introduction, Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to discussing contesting claims about dangdut as originating in the Islamic tradition of Melayu in North Sumatra and Indian film music, respectively. In response to these claims, Weintraub examines various predecessors of dangdut (most notably orkes Malayu), their use of musical instruments, song structures, scales and rhythmic patterns. Up to the emergence of the pattern of dang and doot that defines the genre, everything contributes to the conclusion that all of its predecessors are hybrids of Melayu, Middle Eastern, Indian and Western musical elements. Claims to any single point of origin are ideologically motivated, and Weintraub, perhaps wisely, choses to remain uncommitted.

The people

‘Throughout this book’, writes Weintraub in the Introduction, ‘I will speak on behalf of dangdut's main audience, “the people” (rakyat)’. The rakyat are by definition morally superior, economically unprivileged and exploited by the rich and powerful. Later, Weintraub equates the term with ‘underclass’ (pp. 82, 149). Through this notion of the rakyat, Dangdut Stories relates the social mobility of the musical genre to that of the underclass.

In this discourse, the co-optation and sanitation of dangdut from the 1970s onwards is primarily a means of disciplining its unruly audiences. This is clearly the project of the middle-class newspapers and magazines that Weintraub analyses in Chapters 4 and 5. Subsequently, in Chapters 6 and 8, Weintraub juxtaposes the national mainstream, which claims to speak for everyone, but through its control of the media (in particular television) excludes critical voices and favours rich ones (pp. 151–3) on the one hand, and the underclass and local singers and subgenres which address real issues on the other (pp. 14–16, 136). Chapter 8 explicitly challenges the centre/periphery model, arguing that local subgenres such as the ethnic pop of Saluang Dangdut, the sensational dance music of Koplo and the neoclassic art songs of Dangdut Melayu ‘take on broader meanings outside the national-ethnic model of culture’ (p. 203). This brings us back to the celebration of hybridity of the opening chapter, along with a returned focus on cross-border connections. A copyright lawsuit in 2004 over what in the end proved to be a Malaysian song (p. 222) begs the question why Dangdut Stories doesn't adopt a more thoroughly international perspective in its middle chapters.

The rakyat perspective seems to work well when Weintraub comments on the ironies of the appropriation of dangdut by elites, as when then-secretary of state Moerdiono in 1991 said he feels represented by the hit song ‘Two Eat from One Plate’ (p. 155). But its shortcomings become clear in stereotypical presentations of the music industry as exploitative. The fact is that artists usually sell the copyright of their recordings for flat rates, and the single case of a disenfranchised singer does not warrant the conclusion that ‘stars did not profit from the sales of their commercial products’ (p. 171). This is all the more so because Weintraub earlier chastises dangdut's largest star, Rhoma Irama, for being too rich to represent the rakyat (p. 104), near the end of a 20-page analysis of his music and social significance. The widespread practice of artists selling their own recordings of their shows behind the backs of their record companies (p. 205) further demands a more sophisticated vocabulary to describe the interplay of bands, record labels, booking agencies and powerful media such as television stations in the production of dangdut.

The symbolic order and its discontents

According to Dangdut Stories, censorship of dangdut is invariably counter-productive (p. 92) and despite commercial manipulation dangdut always succeeds in articulating underclass interests (pp. 21, 227). Presumably this is because dangdut is the rakyat (p. 83), the underbelly that teems with primordial sexual desire and that seeks to tear through the symbolic order and reveal the gritty reality it fronts. Rather than the psychoanalytical notion of ‘the symbolic order’ that I employ here, in Chapter 5 Weintraub introduces ‘the spectacle of excess’ to describe this unruly and carnivalesque nature of dangdut, after Roland Barthes' analysis of wrestling (p. 114). Unfortunately Dangdut Stories goes no further than taking note of ‘seemingly contradictory meanings’ (pp. 22, 96, 114) in a country that is full of contradictions (p. 145). This comes despite the good focus of the chapter on the paradoxical combination of upbeat, escapist music and downbeat, realist lyrics, which ends in remarks that offering unresolved tensions apparently sells (pp. 137, 142).

Dangdut Stories repeatedly describes dangdut performances as hot, pornographic and wild. This feeds into a subplot of dangdut as a force for the emancipation of women. Here Weintraub basically adopts a liberal position, interpreting sexy dance moves, revealing outfits and crooning vocal styles as signs of female agency (pp. 127–31). This subplot accumulates in the high profile case of the singer Inul and her ‘drilling dance’ in Chapter 7. ‘Excuse me!’ sings Inul as she pushes aside previously popular expressions of coy, purring and glamorous femininity (pp. 177, 179). This emancipatory trend is most likely fuelled by the shift away from a male audience that danced wildly at live concerts, sometimes on stage, towards a predominantly female audience, which watches dangdut at home, after television became its major medium in the course of the 1990s (p. 153).

In this historical context, gender seems to be a proxy for conflicts over Indonesia's path of modernisation and globalisation. The most vocal opposition to Inul's sensational dance came from a minority of orthodox Islamic organisations and people, including a now rather stern sounding Rhoma Irama. Their statements, including the invoking of a fatwa, further drove liberal Islamists and dangdut singers into each other's arms. From the 1970s onwards, but especially since the fall of Suharto's New Order regime in 1998, liberal politicians brought prestige and access to national platforms, and dangdut brought the rakyat, ‘despite the fact that the majority of people did not vote, and the elections were not conducted fairly’ (p. 189). In other words, Weintraub is critical of this development, but doesn't consider the possibility that the overt sexuality of dangdut is part and parcel of the same mediatised, neoliberal (world) order.

Criticality

Dangdut Stories shows how these singers constantly oscillate between reconnecting with gritty reality and offering escape from it. In films, stars supposedly perform their humble selves, but also acknowledge that the happy endings are unrealistic and misleading (pp. 105, 232). In lyrics, compulsory moral conclusions enable otherwise outrageous stories to be told (p. 208). With regard to vocal delivery, singers explain how they trick the audience into empathy (p. 126). In music videos, the postmodern pastiche of images, characters, music and dance styles occasionally has an exaggerated camp quality, that enables the articulation of new femininities (p. 130). In its analysis of these seemingly contradictory meanings, Dangdut Stories would have benefited from a more systematic use of terms such as ‘hybridity’, ‘nation-building’, ‘articulation’, ‘representation’, ‘the subaltern’, ‘carnivalesque’ and ‘the symbolic order’, to name a few. That said, by offering us these examples the book offers the reader many vantage points to understand the performances of this important musical genre in relation to developments elsewhere and in their own unique cultural and historical moments. This wealth of previously unavailable information, including for instance the explanations of word play and textual hooks such as krismon (acronym for ‘monetary crises’, p. 204) and fenomInul for the Inul phenomenon (p. 193) make the book an entertaining read. Dangdut Stories is open, swinging and sometimes unfinished at its edges, like dangdut itself.