Williams-9-22-23-12

In this chapter, we will explore these subjects:

• The rich cultural history and religious diversity of the Indonesian islands

• The development of gamelan music in Java

• The development of gamelan gong kebyar in Bali, and how it differs from the Javanese style

• How Indonesian popular dangdut music evolved

Located in Southeast Asia (mostly) below the equator, Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world, with over 270 million inhabitants who speak a total of several hundred local languages. It lies southeast of China and northwest of Australia, and it is a nation comprising over 9,000 islands (with some reports listing over 18,000!). It is as large as the United States, but rather than being all land, it is nearly all ocean (Figure 12.1). If you stretched a map of Indonesia over the United States, you would find that the farthest islands to the east coincide with Maine, and the farthest island to the west—Sumatra—would extend beyond Seattle. This basic map includes only the major islands; for our pur poses, however, you may wish to focus specially on the islands of Java—the long island to the left of the center—and Bali, the small island to the right of Java. Keep in mind, though, that there is exciting and noteworthy music on every inhabited island, and that relatively few things unite a very large and scattered population in terms of their specific interests, needs, and musical styles that they enjoy. In its location on the Pacific Rim “Ring of Fire” (in which the coasts of all the Pacific nations include volcanoes and seismic activity), Indonesia is home to seventy-six volcanoes. Its islands are rich in natural resources such as palm oil, metals, bamboo, petroleum, and rubber. They are also rich in their diversity of wildlife—from Komodo dragons and birds of paradise in the East to elephants and orangutans in the West—and that diversity has made it a focus of international PROPERTY OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS FIGURE 12.0 Gamelan ensemble at the sultan’s palace in Yogyakarta, Java.

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