ABSTRACT
An enormous variety of musical expressions have been disseminated through broadcast and recording media in Indonesia. Dominating the mediated musical landscape have been the many genres of Indonesia's secular popular music, but this domination is not absolute. Some genres, notably dangdut, occupy an ambiguous position as often but not always secular in theme. A growing number of genres, styles, and songs identified as “Muslim” are widely represented in the popular media—audio cassettes, audio compact discs, video compact discs, public and private radio, national and private television, commercial films (such as Ayat-ayat Cinta [Qur’anic “Verses of Love”] and Laskar Pelangi [“Rainbow Warrior”]), as well as the internet. 1 Genres range from traditional gambus (Middle Eastern stringed instrument, ‘ud) and qasidah (vocal music with frame drum) to recent nasyid (choral singing) and the more idiosyncratic music of Emha Ainun Nadjib's Kiai Kanjeng, which combines Javanese gamelan instruments with Western pop and Arabian percussion instruments. 2 In addition to genres and groups routinely associated with Islam, some basically secular groups, such as the long-standing and hugely popular rock group Gigi, are now producing songs or albums that are overtly Islamic in message and, it could be argued, in “style.” This chapter offers an overview of the Muslim music and related performance (Qur’anic recitation, sermons, spoken advice) that are available in the commercial media. My intentions are to provide an idea of the variety of materials in the marketplace and to identify common threads shared among many of these diverse forms of expression—both in textual message and in musical style. Some of the questions underlying my inquiry are as follows: What topics are prevalent in the song texts of music identified as “Muslim”? What topics seem to be avoided? Is there a dominant “Muslim sound” in Indonesia, even if primarily derived from the music of other Muslim countries? Is there an “Indonesian Muslim sound” unique among Muslim musics of the world? To what extent do Indonesia's myriad regional traditions seem to color the mediated musical expressions that are marketed as “Muslim”? What of the inevitable tensions between the opposing forces of musical austerity and musical sensuality? I will also suggest that an analysis of Muslim music in Indonesia may help to elucidate the dynamic inter-relations between Islam in Indonesia and elsewhere.
