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CHAPTER 12 Indonesia

FIGURE 12.9 Rhoma Irama (holding the guitar) pays attention to the members of his dangdut band.

enduring quality and continuing popularity regardless of the latest genre imported from abroad.

Conclusion Though Indonesian music includes hundreds of very localized sounds and genres, gamelan is its best-known sound, and is the sound that the Indonesian government usually selects for representation at formal events for its aristocratic connotations. The Central Javanese and Balinese gamelan sounds that you explored in this chap ter are themselves the best-known representations of gamelan. However, the rich diversity within the two islands of Java and Bali points to many kinds of gamelan and variants thereof, from the bamboo gamelan jegog in Bali to the “voice gamelan” used to accompany shadow puppet stories ( wayang jemblung ) of West Central Java. Most Indonesians easily recognize gamelan as one of the nation’s many musical genres, but all Indonesians recognize dangdut as one of the main popular musi cal styles in the islands. As a genre that transcends regionalism, it is dangdut, not gamelan, that speaks across barriers of language, ethnicity, gender, and even class. PROPERTY OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS