The concept of “Nusantara” is historically associated with the Javanese Thalassocratic Majapahit empire that spans a geographical cultural area in maritime Southeast Asia. First surfaced in a classical Javanese text in the fourteenth century, the word is said to derive from two Sanskrit words nusa, which means “island” and antara, referring to “in between” or “including”; and can also be translated as “other islands.” Over the centuries, Nusantarahas adopted many meanings in political, literary, cultural, and religious circles. In Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music, the editors insightfully conceptualised Nusantara as an inclusive sonic mediated space, intimately connected through shared cultural, historical, and political heritage. As part of the Routledge Global Popular Music “Made in” series, the edited volume explores various contemporary popular music cases in the present nation-states of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, written by scholars and practitioners working in the region.
The editors provide a short discourse on the concept of Nusantara and a brief overview of the social history of popular music in the Nusantara region, with examples of musical practices that underscore the continuous exchanges and interactions of musical affinities within the region. Where geopolitical borders stand today to demarcate the present nation states, this volume earnestly demonstrates how popular music in Nusantara escapes the fixed definition of borders, challenged consistently through various socio-cultural and aesthetic contents. The conceptualisation of Nusantara in this volume is also an attempt to decolonise the borders which emanated from colonial legacies in the region, despite acknowledging colonialism’s pivotal role in shaping popular music in Nusantara. Thus, this conceptualisation proposes Nusantara as an “inclusive epistemological approach to considering a shared space of cultural expressions and interactions” (3) and as a means to decentre exclusive hegemonic associations of the term used in Malaysia and Indonesia.
The volume is organised into four thematic parts, each of which is composed of four essays. Part I: Issues in Nusantara Popular Music opens with a discourse by Santaella, serving as a conceptual foundation for the understanding of popular music’s fluid interactions in maritime Southeast Asia. His chapter proposes a continuum of degrees in which popular music in Nusantara can be broadly analysed from “popularising the indigenous” to “indigenising the popular,” asserting that such practice is “inherently Nusantara.” The essays in Part I trace musical practices from colonial to post-colonial nation-state developments in the Philippines and Malaysia while elucidating the predominant powers of global trends in the direction of local music industries and music education.
Part II: History presents readers with a historical approach to popular music in Nusantara. The essays consider the influences and effects of colonialism through hybrid forms of musical practices and underscore the importance of technological developments in disseminating popular music in the twentieth century. Such technological developments are noted as significant for the development of comparative musicology (known today as ethnomusicology), as uncovered by yamomo in Chapter Six on early phonographic sound recordings made in the Nusantara.
Part III: Artists and Genres offers distinct case studies that consider the contestations and negotiations of artists and musical genres with national culture, politics, religion, and cultural identities. From national icons (Adil), power play in dangdut koplo (Raditya), DIY scene (Azmyl) to nasyid kontemporari or Islamic songs (Raja), essays in Part III infer a thematic thread that articulates Malay and/or Islamic identities intertwined with national sentiments.
The four chapters in Part IV: National vs. Local Industries examine how post-colonial nation-states in Nusantara grapple with the meaning of modernity while asserting their national and/or ethnic identities through the production and consumption of popular music at and across national and regional (local) levels. Interrogated through the respective musical examples, Part IV invites readers to consider the concept of modernity in Nusantara “as a discursive concept for emergent social formations” and to “call for different trajectories of modernity than those of Europe and North America that have provided the standards of modernity” (173). And once again, readers are also reminded of the transcultural musical flows and fluid genres that defy national ideals exemplified in Chapter Sixteen of Ellorin’s study of the nomadic sea-faring ethnic minority Sama-Bajau’s Sangbai performance.
The Coda and the Afterword: Bercerita (Sharing Stories) demonstrate Nusantara’s popular music engagements with global and transnational trends. The reflections and the conversations with various local artists from Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines draw readers to further explore the ambiguous meaning of the term “Nusantara” and its implications on musical practices in the region.
Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music is an essential contribution to the field of popular music studies in the region and globally. Conceptually, the volume provides a fresh take on Nusantara supported by examples in the respective essays, and establishes a new praxis in the study of popular music in maritime Southeast Asia. With resources such as a spread of pictures featuring artists and album sleeves, a collection of selected bibliography, and an extensive index, both scholars and students in popular music and across the interdisciplinary studies of social sciences will not only find this volume insightful but also enjoyable to read. Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music is definitely one of the few edited volumes dedicated to the study of popular music in maritime Southeast Asia and for that reason, I hope that it will inspire many more similar works that explore other different issues in popular music in the intricately connected and the often-contested shared cultural space of the region.
