Tag Archives: Indonesia

Extreme metal and authoritarianism in Indonesia

In the mid-1990s, Indonesia’s authoritarian regime viewed extreme metal as a direct challenge to its enforced ideals of harmony and social stability. Live metal concerts were banned, and the government under President Suharto actively reinforced stereotypes of metalheads as communist-affiliated “folk devils”, a narrative perpetuated via mass media, government institutions, and religious leaders. This systematic marginalization pushed extreme metal to the fringes of the national music scene, forcing musicians and fans to rely on local communities in Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Bandung, and Bali—not only as spaces for musical expression but also as nodes for sustaining social networks. In response, extreme metal subcultures adapted their resistance strategies, embracing verbal and sonic transgressiveness, organizing independent do-it-yourself (DIY) gigs and independent recording and distribution, and maintaining strong intercity connections that kept the musical movement alive.

The crowd at the Jogjarockarta festival 2023. Photo by Umar R./MetalTalk

Since the fall of Suharto’s authoritarian regime in 1998 and the subsequent period of Reformasi (Reformation), the Indonesian government’s relationship with extreme metal subcultures has shifted. No longer vilified as a threat to social order, extreme metal is now viewed as a marketable commodity aligned with the country’s creative economic agenda. This shift is evident in the rapid expansion of regional metal music festivals that regularly draw thousands of fans, often sponsored by cigarette companies, mainstream clothing brands, and beverage corporations. Additionally, some Indonesian metal bands have secured grants from state-funded projects, enabling them to perform at international festivals and further integrate into the global metal scene.

Indonesia’s former president Joko Widodo sporting a Napalm Death t-shirt.

Widodo with his security detail at an Indonesian metal concert in 2014.

Indonesia has emerged as a significant hub for large-scale heavy metal festivals, most notably Hammersonic–recognized as Southeast Asia’s largest annual heavy metal music festival–which most recently took place in Jakarta in May 2024 and is slated to return in 2025. This growing acceptance of the genre reflects a broader cultural shift, one that reaches even the highest levels of government. Former President Joko Widodo—widely known as Jokowi—has openly expressed his enthusiasm for heavy metal, signaling a rare alignment between subcultural music scenes and political leadership. As Pri Ario Damar, Dean of Performing Arts at Institut Kesenian Jakarta (Jakarta Institute of the Arts), explains, “Indonesia is a moderate Muslim country, which is why we’re more open to foreign influences, including heavy metal music, compared to some more conservative nations.”

Whether this openness will persist remains uncertain, particularly given Indonesia’s political trajectory. Elected in 2014 on a wave of reformist optimism, Jokowi eventually came to embody the dynastic and anti-reform politics reminiscent of earlier regimes. His successor, Prabowo Subianto, is a former military general who served under Suharto.

This according to “From our own voices: The meaning making of subculture among extreme metal musicians in Indonesia” by Oki Rahadianto Sutopo and Agustinus Aryo Lukisworo (Metal music studies 9/3 [2023] 359–367; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2023-20530).

The photo at the beginning of this piece is of the hijab-wearing, female metal trio Voice of Baceprot, the first Indonesian band to perform at the 2024 Glastonbury Festival in the U.K.

Below, a vlog of an Indonesian metalhead’s journey to Hammersonic 2024.

Related Bibliolore posts:

https://bibliolore.org/2017/10/23/heavy-metal-and-antiquity/

https://bibliolore.org/2015/01/06/heavy-metal-cookbooks/

https://bibliolore.org/2018/07/02/karinding-attacks-heavy-metal-bamboo/

https://bibliolore.org/2025/02/28/nusantara-heavy-metal-and-malaysias-long-hair-ban/

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Filed under Asia, Politics, Popular music

Between kampung and puri in Bali

Indonesian Balinese Muslim communities, or kampung, have developed distinctive performing arts nurtured through their social and cultural interactions with their Hindu rulers and neighbors. Each kampung has its unique history and ancestral roots but generally maintains special and interdependent connections with the regional Balinese nobility, centered around the royal palaces, or puri. The puri provides authentication, social recognition, and financial support to the kampung, while the kampung contribute through their skills, loyalty, and specific knowledge, including labor. These relationships have persisted for centuries, deeply influencing Muslim Balinese cultural practices, particularly their performing arts traditions.

A Balinese dance performance.

Muslim Balinese performing arts have long emphasized the historical, social, and cultural interplay between puri and kampung, with examples from eastern and southern Bali. The puri often offer performance opportunities for Muslim Balinese, allowing them to express their cultural identity and strengthen their community presence. In turn, the puri benefit from showcasing their power and history through these performances. Thus, the performing arts not only sustain these reciprocal relationships but also enhance social cohesion within the neighborhood and foster a unified local community.

This according to “Performing arts as a cultural bridge between Hindu rulers and Muslim communities in Bali” by Ako Mashino, Performing arts and the royal courts of Southeast Asia II: Pusaka as documented heritage, ed. by Mayco Santaella (Leiden: Brill, 2024, 45–68; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2024-3868).

The video below shows a royal wedding ceremony held at a Balinese puri.

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A military brass band in the Riau Islands

The “Sultan of Lingga’s brass band”, as it was dubbed by the Singapore press, or korps musik as it was known locally, was a European-style military band located in the former Netherlands East Indies, owned and operated by the Sultan of Riau-Lingga, not by the colonial Dutch regime. Formed in the 1820s, the band was particularly prominent from the installation of the last sultan, Abdulrahman Mu’azamsyah, in 1885 until he was deposed in 1911.

Despite this history, there is no surviving tradition of military band music practiced in the band’s former home on Penyengat Island and few discernible traces of the band exist in the cultural memory of the Riau region. After reaching its height of prominence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the history of the Sultan of Lingga’s brass band is now all but forgotten. In this regard, the Sultan’s band differs from examples of military band traditions elsewhere that have grown and thrived long after the withdrawal of colonial regimes that introduced them.

Below: The last Sultan of Riau-Lingga, Abdul Rahman II.

This according to “The sultan of Lingga’s brass band: Music, politics and memory in the Riau-Lingga sultanate” by Anthea Skinner, Performing arts and the royal courts of Southeast Asia I: Pusaka as documented heritage, ed. by Mayco Santaella (Leiden: Brill, 2023, 239–258; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2023-13007).

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Batanghari sembilan in South Sumatra

Batanghari sembilan is a genre of popular guitar music performed in the province of South Sumatra, Indonesia. The sound of batanghari, for many locals, evokes a strong sense of cultural pride for their natural and agricultural surroundings, especially for the long winding rivers that flow across the elongated island’s mountainous landscape. Some have described the genre as melancholic or romantic for its minimalistic sound. In earlier times, the sound of batanghari sembilan was more dense as it was performed in small ensembles comprised of a gambus (a lute instrument similar to an oud), suling (an Indonesian bamboo flute), and small hanging gongs. Today, however, it is performed primarily on solo acoustic guitar.

In the village of Batu Urip, batanghari sembilan accompanies the sekedah bumi, a ceremony performed to summon the spirits of the deceased as a form of memorialization, expression of gratitude, and to repel future misfortune. The version of batanghari sembilan performed here in sekedah bumi is unique in its incorporation of pantun, a Malay poetic form, in this case, used to express deep sadness and longing for ancestors or recent relatives who have passed away.  For instance, in the popular pantun phrase below, the third and fourth lines describe a sense of seduction that can be attributed to either an ancestor or perhaps a lover.

Betang hagu umban di tebang

Betang duku di buat hahang

Jengan ragu jengan bimbang

Linjang ku tuk ngas suhang

In this context, the performance of batanghari sembilan in sekedah bumi is not merely intended as entertainment but as ritual function, conveying the social values and history of South Sumatran cultures while strengthening local communities.

Learn more in “The function of pantun in the art performance of batang hari sembilan solo guitar during sedekah bumi ceremony held in Batu Urip hamlet, South Sumatera” by Imelda Tri Andari and Suharto (Harmonia 20/2, [2020] 195–204); RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2020-60314.

The video below features the guitarist Sahilin, one of South Sumatra’s most renowned contemporary batanghari sembilan performers.

Pictured above are Randi Putra Ramadhan and Rosa Jannatri Harkha, two younger batanghari performers.

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Lost and found Balinese music

In August 1928 representatives from the German record companies Odeon and Beka were sent to Bali; their efforts resulted in 98 recordings of a wide variety of examples of Balinese music on 78 rpm discs.

Fortunately, expert guidance for the project was provided by the German expatriate Walter Spies, whose intimate knowledge of Balinese culture ensured that outstanding performances in a large range of genres were documented.

As it happened, at that time Bali was undergoing an artistic revolution. A new musical style known as kebyar was rapidly gaining popularity, and older ceremonial styles were literally disappearing, as their bronze instruments were melted down and reforged to accommodate the new style’s requirements; the Odeon/Beka recordings preserve several musical traditions that were later lost.

Despite the three-minute limitation of early recording equipment, these discs became invaluable archives of Balinese musical heritage; for example, the historically important composition Kebyar ding, once forgotten, was relearned from the recordings by the present generation of musicians, and some records of renowned singers are considered sacred by their descendants, who keep tape copies in family shrines.

These were the musical documents that inspired the young Canadian composer Colin McPhee, who first heard them in 1929. McPhee travelled to Bali in 1931 and remained there for nearly a decade; his activities included making painstaking transcriptions of Balinese pieces. McPhee’s own collection of the 1928 recordings includes most of the copies that are still preserved today, as they quickly went out of print and were discarded due to disappointing sales.

This according to the commentary by Edward Herbst that accompanies the CD The roots of gamelan: The first recordings—Bali, 1928; New York, 1941 (World Arbiter, 1999; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 1999-38076).

Above, a gamelan gong gede group photographed by McPhee in the 1930s (UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive and Colin McPhee Estate).

Below, two of the six discs devoted to Kebyar ding, with archival photographs.

More posts about Bali are here.

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Acehnese aesthetics

Among the people of Aceh, Sumatra, four concepts of space—cardinal directional, upstream-downstream, central-point-in-circle, and geometric—guide dance formations, the making of rapa’i Pasè frame drums, and the colors and associations of  performing costumes and stage decorations.

The upstream-downstream concept, which stems from the tendency to travel upstream for raw materials and downstream for trade, associates upstream spaces with an inward-looking, mystical attitude and downstream spaces with an outward-looking attitude and commercial success. The cardinal directional concept, which is related to the upstream-downstream concept since most rivers in Aceh run between north and south, relates specific colors and metals to the four directions.

The central-point-in-a-circle concept enacts Perso-Arabic models, such as the building of towns around a central mosque, connecting Aceh with its historical links to the larger Muslim world. The dominant geometric concept, which probably dates to before 300 B.C.E., is expressed in straight lines, parallelograms, diamonds, and curved forms including figure-eights, ovals, and leaf and flower shapes.

This according to “Some implications of local concepts of space in the dance, music, and visual arts of Aceh” by Margaret J. Kartomi (Yearbook for traditional music XXXVI [2004] 1–49; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2004-5577).

Below, an Acehnese dance celebrates the winnowing and planting of rice.

Related article: Balinese aesthetics

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Ratoh jaroe and female youth empowerment

The Acehnese dance form ratoh jaroe has empowered young women, especially high school students who are shaping their own youth culture, by taking center stage in Jakarta, one of the largest metropolitan cities in the world.

Young Jakartan women take advantage of the positive reputation of ratoh jaroe there, leveraging perceptions of the genre to channel self-expression and confidence, maintain their physical and mental health, and enrich their social lives, religious identity, education, and future. The genre is a medium for what young female Jakartan students consider success. Furthermore, Jakarta’s cosmopolitan engagement with consumerism and industry, along with the goal-oriented mindset of Jakartan youth, has created a fertile social space for ratoh jaroe’s popularization.

A network of practitioners and the culture of competition drives the circulation and economics of a ratoh jaroe industry, and Jakartan understandings of the dance’s historical roots in Islam promotes its acceptance, allowing young, mainly female, Muslim dancers to maintain their religious identities while performing on a public stage.

This according to “Ratoeh jaroe: Islam, youth, and popular dance in Jakarta, Indonesia” by Maho A. Ishiguro (Yearbook for traditional music LI [2019] 73–101; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2019-20798).

Below, a Jakartan group performs in 2012.

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Filed under Asia, Dance, Women's studies

Angklung and modernity

The musical style associated with the bamboo frame rattle called angklung embodies the egalitarian cooperation so essential for the agriculture that sustained Sundanese people in West Java for centuries. In the early twentieth century, Indonesian nationalists reimagined the sound of the angklung to index a connection to a distinctly Sundanese modern identity rooted in rural values.

The kind of angklung ensemble now popular in Indonesian schools and universities, which was designated an item of intangible heritage by UNESCO in 2010, is an elaboration of the innovations of the Sundanese music educator Daeng Soetigna. Current incarnations of angklung ensembles feature large numbers of performers, often playing arrangements of classical and popular hit songs as well as well-known Indonesian songs.

Angklung’s persistent appeal to Sundanese citizens has much to tell us about the relationship of humans to the places in which they live, the social structures that sustain them, and the strategies they concoct to remain grounded in a changing world.

This according to “From the rice harvest to Bohemian rhapsody: Diachronic modernity in angklung performance” by Henry Spiller, an essay included in Making waves: Traveling musics in Hawaiʻi, Asia, and the Pacific (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2018, pp. 19–38; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2018-51723).

Above, a children’s angklung ensemble; below, Queen’s Bohemian rhapsody.

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Filed under Asia, Curiosities, Instruments

Bali remixed and revisited

In May 2019 Songlines Magazine and the PRS Foundation launched a competition to find the best remix of David Attenborough’s recording of a performance of Balinese gendér wayang, a style of Indonesian gamelan that features a quartet of ten-keyed metallophones. Among the reactions of gamelan enthusiasts was concern that the unnamed musicians (or their descendants) were receiving neither recognition nor royalties for this reuse of their work.

The music and instruments in the recording were instantly recognizable to people who knew the repertoire of the village of Teges Kanginan; the gamelan set is presumed to have belonged to this village for at least 100 years.

Soon after the competition was announced, the U.S. ethnomusicologist Edward Herbst met with the village leader, his staff, and local musicians, and listened to the original recording as one of the current players tapped out the basic melody on one of the historic instruments. All the pitches matched, and everyone agreed that the recording was of the Teges gamelan, and that the royalties should go to that village.

Herbst presented the royalties to the village leader, and all were elated that the royalties would provide seed money for restoring and reviving this legacy gamelan, and that Teges could regain its heritage.

This according to “Bali remixed and revisited” by Edward Herbst (Songlines 150 [August–September 2019], pp. 50-53).

Above, Herbst (center) with the gathered villagers; below, the original recording (the relevant excerpt begins at 1:05) followed by the award-winning remix.

More posts about Bali are here.

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Çudamani and postmodernism

Çudamani, a sekaa (a communal club under the auspices of a ward) and a sanggar (a more tightly governed and broader arts organization) in the Balinese village of Pengosekan, is committed to studying and teaching Balinese music and dance; it is also a transnational arts phenomenon.

Çudamani is first a traditional sekaa, in the sense that it is committed to its local community, and one of the main missions of the troupe is to ngayah, or perform voluntary performance service at temple festivals. The original troupe was initiated in the late 1990s; today, the organization includes at least four different sub-groups (including children’s clubs).

The group is postmodern because of the transnational basis, the neotraditionalism, the mixing of new and traditional musics and the play of genre, the fluidity of local and global identities, and the fact that the troupe seems to defy preconceived notions of sekaa or sanggar and to transcend some principles upon which such organizations have been established. While its international notoriety distinguishes this group from most others, Çudamani’s global participation and embrace of neotraditionalism illuminates growing trends within Bali and provides a case study of circulating, 21st-century ideation on cultural representation and the role of the arts.

This according to “Between traditionalism and postmodernism: The Balinese performing arts institution Çudamani” by David D. Harnish, an essay included in Performing arts in postmodern Bali: Changing interpretations, founding traditions (Aaachen: Shaker Verlag, 2013, pp. 257–77).

Below, a performance in 2022.

More posts about Bali are here.

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