CONCLUSION: CAMPURSARI AND JALANAN AT THE SULTAN'S PALACE

Summary

In this monograph I have sought to construct a framework through which to analyse musical performance and social relations as I observed them in early post-Soeharto Yogyakarta. To achieve this, I drew on Bourdieu's concepts of capital, habitus and field, and coun terpoised these with the alternative perspectives of inter-group social capital, musical physicalisation and grounded cosmopolitanism respectively. My wider aim has been to produce a nuanced account of social relations and cultural influences that highlights the roles of music in peaceful inter-group relations in Yogyakarta in the early post-Soeharto period. I now wish to conclude by discussing events at the Sultan's Palace (Kraton), as these serve to bring together the main social groups, musical genres and concepts already addressed.

The Kraton and its Sultan, Hamengku Buwono X, continued to wield great symbolic power following President Soeharto's downfall. This was evident to me in that virtually everyone on the street, from visiting villager to radical democracy activist, spoke positively of Kraton culture and its importance for the stability and progress of the nation. The Kraton is deservedly renowned for its Javanese arts and traditions, with gamelan and wayang kulit being cases in point. At the same time, less widely advertised performances featuring musical genres such as campursari and jalanan characterised several events held in the Kraton grounds. Collectively these involved hundreds of organizers and performers and tens of thousands of spectators, and highlight connections and separations between the social worlds of street workers, community leaders, and other social and political networks.

A central hypothesis running through this book is that the enormous popularity of campursari music was largely confined to certain social groups and contexts. I have identified campursari with lower class becak drivers who plied the inner city seeking fares while maintaining permanent residence in villages, and discussed examples of the genre as performed in settings ranging from kampung to state institution.