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Dangdut Popular Music

Dangdut Popular Music Dangdut (pronounced “dahng-dūt”) was once the popular music of Indonesia’s urban poor. With lyrics celebrating the concerns of ordinary people, the genre has a distinctive sound, rhythm, and instrumentation. The name derives from the sound of two different strokes on the (Indian) tabla drum: dang and dut (though there are more drum sounds connected with the genre). In the decades since its original development in the 1970s, it has gone through a number of changes that mirror the contextual shifts of American folk and blues sounds (Weintraub 2010). From street corners to weddings and mainstream political rallies to the Indonesian equivalent of the television show The Voice , dangdut continues in popularity and engages the musical preferences of millions of Indonesians (Figure 12.8). Dangdut has its roots in the 1950s, spurred by the simultaneous growth of Malay dance band music ( orkes Melayu ), the denouncing of Western popular music by Indonesia’s President Sukarno in 1959, the welcoming of Indian musical films (with their catchy soundtracks) in the mid-1960s, and the increasing importance of Islam after the mid-1960s. It was a musical hybrid of sounds that drew from, and appealed to, Indonesians with connections both in the local and the global: Malaysia, India, Europe, China, and the Middle East. By the 1970s the genre had a name, and bands proliferated in Indonesia’s urban areas, particularly in the cap ital city of Jakarta. As Indonesia’s political system changed over time, rock music (and its trappings) became yet another influence both on the sounds and the per formers. Song lyrics referenced the conditions and concerns of the poor (i.e., not

having enough money, experiencing heartache, difficulties at home), and the genre and its per formers established an enduring musical niche. Three primary instruments are connected with dangdut: the pair of single-headed tabla drums (drawn from the soundtracks of Indian films); the flute (from the orkes Melayu ensemble); and the guitar (from both Western popular music and Asian lute sounds). As dangdut has evolved, so has its collection of “normal” instruments; it now might include a synthesizer, electric guitar and bass, mandolin, local barrel-shaped drum, and others. The diversity of instruments, together with the all-important dangdut rhythm and the Indonesia-focused lyrics, speak to the genre’s dangdut—popular dance music derived from Indian film music PROPERTY OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS FIGURE 12.8 Dangdut performance by Maya KDI in Surabaya, East Java.