Content area
Full text
Abstract: This article outlines the trajectories of three genres of Indonesian popular music-kroncong, stambul songs, and gambang kromong-from the nineteenth century into the twenty-first century. Each was prominent in commercial recording and radio in the colonial era before World War II but subsequently slid to the margins of media activity; and each underwent great shifts in social context and audience composition over time. The article traces what is known of these genres before the advent of mass media, how they fared in the media embrace, and what happened to them after media attention shifted elsewhere.
Artikel ini menguraikan riwayat tiga jenis musik populer Indonesia-kroncong, lagu stambul, dan gambang kromong-dari abad kesembilan belas sampai dengan abad kedua puluh satu. Ketiga jenis musik tersebut pernah menonjol di media massa (rekaman dan radio) pada zaman kolonial tetapi kemudian terpinggirkan, dan semuanya mengalami perubahan besar dalam hal konteks sosial dan penggemarnya. Artikel ini menelusuri ketiga jenis tersebut sebelum munculnya media massa, perkembangannya dalam pelukan media, dan riwayatnya sesudah sorotan media bergeser ke jenis-jenis lain.
Introduction
The trajectories of three genres of Indonesian popular music are presented here as case histories in the larger story of the interaction of media and mu- sic in Indonesia.1 I envision the basic plot as follows: Various genres of mu- sic existed in the Dutch East Indies (DEI)-in the cities, in the villages, in the courts-before any electronic mass media had come on the scene. Then, at the opening of the twentieth century, the first of those media, commercial recording, began to appear, embracing certain of the existing genres but not others. Thirty years later another medium, radio, was introduced, partly de- pendent on commercial recording but also able to accommodate other genres that had not been recorded. And then, as time went on and the great changes of the twentieth century took place, the genres initially selected and pro- moted in media lost their mainstream appeal and were supplanted by others.2
Where was the audience in all this, and where were the musicians? They had less power in the colonial period than they would have later on, when technologies of recording and dissemination became more widely available and affordable. In the early days, particularly before the advent of radio, it was...