ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights how Nusantara popular music artists and their music are received beyond the shores of the region. It lays the foundations to study the global impact of Nusantara popular music and its artists in the international recording industry and music festival circuits. Therefore, the global reach of Nusantara artists demonstrates a degree of musicality aligned with global, Anglo-American popular music trends and they have adapted their desired styles in songs for local audiences. During the period of the late 1980s and into the 2000s, there was a postcolonial Nusantara renaissance with the inclusion of indigenous music amongst musicians from the region and globally, who were attempting to rediscover their “roots”. In the 1980s, Nusantara artists and groups had started experimenting and fusing local instrumentation and sounds whilst searching to create a national identity for themselves and their respective nations.
