ABSTRACT
In a 1979 article published in the music magazine Aktuil , cultural critic and poet
Emha Ainun Nadjib (Emha) admonished Indonesians for losing their collective
‘dangdut soul’ (Emha, 1979). Dangdut, a genre of Indonesian popular music
associated with urban underclass audiences, was often represented in the pages of
Aktuil and other popular print media of the period as backward, hickish, and
unsophisticated (kampungan).1 Writing for an educated middle class and elite
readership hailed by Western narratives of modernity (modernitas), Emha noted that,
despite their desire to progress (maju), all Indonesians are ‘very dangdut’ (dangdut
sekali). As transnational products flooded the Indonesian market, Emha asked, ‘what
are we if not a bunch of brown-skinned western clothes-wearing people with a
dangdut mentality?’
