Ethnomusicologist Andrew Weintraub's Dangdut stories is the first comprehensive study of dangdut, ‘Indonesia's most popular music’, as the title rightfully claims. Given dangdut's enormous popularity and sheer inescapable aural presence in the daily life of modern Indonesia, it is in fact remarkable that it has taken so long for it to be recognised as a subject worthy of serious scholarly attention. However, one may wonder if this academic neglect somehow reflects dangdut's longstanding reputation of being a debased commercial music genre without any sophistication or originality – cheap music catering for the trivial tastes of the lower classes. Weintraub's work is the first volume dedicated fully to dangdut, covering its multiple musical, aesthetic, social, and political dimensions. As such it is a long overdue contribution to the study of Indonesia's enormously rich contemporary musicscape. This was quickly recognised in Indonesia itself: this spring, the Indonesian publisher Gramedia published an Indonesian translation of Dangdut Stories entitled Dangdut: Musik, identitas, dan budaya Indonesia.
Weintraub presents his rich account of dangdut's historical development up to its current position within mass-mediated commercial popular culture in the form of different ‘stories’ about the genre, while modestly acknowledging that these stories are inevitably ‘incomplete and selective’ (p. 233). His approach, which links an exploration of dangdut's musical origins and developments as a hybrid genre, influenced mainly by Indian, Malay, Western, Middle Eastern and local music styles yet distinctively Indonesian, with an analysis of it ‘as a political economy of contested symbols’ that mediate ‘meanings about social relations in modern Indonesian society’ (p. 28), sets a high standard for future ‘stories’ on the subject.
The first ‘story’, the Introduction, is a lively array of short ethnographic clips from different social sites where contemporary dangdut is performed: from TV shows and political campaign rallies to highly eroticised spectacles and ritual celebrations. The evocation of these contrasting atmospheres, and the multiple meanings associated with these diverse social sites, in which dangdut is an important part of contemporary Indonesian public life, is followed by an overview of the study's theoretical and methodological framework. Weintraub locates his ‘stories’ ‘within a range of broader narratives about class, gender, ethnicity, and nation in post-independence Indonesia’ (p. 11), arguing ‘that not only is dangdut a vivid reflection of national politics and culture, but that dangdut as an economic, political, and ideological practice has helped to shape people's ideas about class, gender, and ethnicity in the modern nation-state of Indonesia’ (p. 13).
The second and third chapters examine popular claims about dangdut's supposed origins in the Malay music of the Deli region in North Sumatra (Melayu Deli), and traces musical developments of the Orkes Melayu (Malay Orchestra) music of the 1950s and 1960s to a kind of ‘proto-dangdut’ (p. 72) that would eventually evolve into what came to be its current form.
Chapter four offers a detailed analysis of dangdut's emergence in the 1970s as a distinct genre within a broader context of articulating the rakyat (‘the people’) in Suharto's New Order Indonesia. It combines an account of Rhoma Irama's important role in the history of dangdut with a compelling exploration of dangdut's articulation with, and its constitution of the rakyat: From the 1970s onward, media discourse presented dangdut as the supposed authentic voice of the rakyat — the ‘masses’. Weintraub convincingly argues that ‘Dangdut's audience did not exist prior to the creation of dangdut, as a group whose class interests were subsequently reflected in a musical genre. Rather, dangdut acts as a structuring agent that helps to produce meanings about the rakyat in Indonesian society’ (p. 82). He contends that ‘middle classes and elites had long participated in dangdut as a discursive practice, if only as a way to distance themselves from the people and culture associated with the music’ (p. 83).
The fifth chapter looks at the paradoxical and seemingly contradictory, multiple relationships between the often mournful and fatalistic song lyrics mainly of the 1980s, upbeat music and joyous dancing, camp performance aesthetics and the multiple meanings that constitute dangdut as a music that offers its audience a deep and unique pleasure. Weintraub situates dangdut's ‘highly unstable meanings in commercial practices of production and consumption’ (p. 114). He argues that the ‘explosion of new styles, seemingly contradictory texts and music, and polysemy generated the pleasure and commercial popularity of dangdut’ (p. 115). While dangdut was criticised as vulgar, ‘pornographic’ and weepy, Weintraub shows that the song texts and performances were not as one-dimensional as they were often thought to be. Rather, the characteristic textual polysemy and the ‘wild exuberance and pleasure’ of dangdut that ‘emphasize openness, spontaneity, playfulness, and passion’ made it a commercial success while at the same time opening up a space that ‘pushed the limits of what was allowable in order to expose an excess of possibilities’ (p. 146).
The 1990s saw dangdut's political re-signification by the late New Order regime as the ‘national music’ of all Indonesians (chapter six). High-ranking government and military officials presented themselves dancing to dangdut or singing dangdut songs, the media focused on the new narrative of the wealthy dangdut star. Weintraub analyses the political incorporation of dangdut as a signifier for the nation into the official discourse of cultural identity, emphasising the influential role of television in this process.
Chapter seven analyses dangdut as a public arena in which fierce debates about Islam, the state, and the visibility of the eroticised female body in post-Suharto Indonesia of the early to mid-2000s were conducted, focusing mainly on Inul Daratista's infamous ‘drilling dance’ and the deep controversies this generated in Indonesian society. Situating the debate about Inul's body within the wider sociopolitical dynamics of Indonesia's search for democratic state–civil power relations and its need to conciliate between freedom of expression and women's rights on the one hand, and an ongoing incorporation of more conservative Islamic ideological positions into state politics on the other, Weintraub convincingly argues that in ‘the highly mediated sphere of popular culture, Inulmania contributed to a new dialogic space where conflicting ideological positions could be expressed and debated. As Indonesia moved out from under the shadow of the Suharto era, Inul's body became a stage to act out rehearsals for democracy’ (p. 197).
Chapter eight looks at recent musical and social developments in dangdut as it turns ‘local’ in its search for new inspirations in regional Indonesian musical traditions. The emergence of creative new regional styles like the extremely popular East-Javanese koplo performances shows that dangdut — once defined by the New Order as a ‘national’ music — is now increasingly used as a medium to articulate regional ethnic identity and inclusion. It is here that further ‘stories’ about dangdut at the regional level, performed not by the national stars that feature prominently in this book, but by myriad local dangdut bands and singers will continue to enrich our understanding. We eagerly anticipate such further studies.
In sum, Dangdut stories offers a fascinating exploration of dangdut's history and musical and social development. Weintraub's account of dangdut's contested and highly ambiguous popularity in Indonesian public culture sensibly situates the genre and its evolution within changing public discourses about national identity, Islam, modernity, class and gender relations. Rich in musical notation of popular songs, and clearly written in a style that does not descend into modish jargonism, it is an absorbing read. It is highly recommended not only to those specialising in ethnomusicology and Indonesian music, but to everyone interested in the ongoing cultural and socio-political dynamics that are shaping Indonesia's manifold contemporary public faces today.
