Southeast Asia Mediated, v.4. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014. xi, 353 pp. (Illus.) US$162.00, cloth. ISBN 978-90-04-25609-5.
Recollecting Resonances: Indonesian-Dutch Musical Encounters combines musicological, historical, and anthropological approaches to productively explore an array of musical interactions between Indonesians and Dutch, tackling a legacy of Dutch colonialism by taking the reader, through its fourteen chapters, to different parts of what is now Indonesia, the Netherlands, and Suriname; examining an impressive variety of musical genres and other forms of performance; and exploring musical encounters that have spanned centuries. As the editors Bart Barendregt and Els Bogaerts write in the first chapter, “Recollecting Resonances: Listening to an Indonesian-Dutch Musical Heritage,” their aims include “broadening discussions on colonial and postcolonial migration and its legacies and the role culture, more specifically musical encounters have played in all of this” (26). They highlight the importance of studying music in this endeavour, and emphasize that in understanding colonial life “[m]usical practices cast a light on the customs of both colonizer and the colonized, and the very fabric of everyday life in those days; matters that otherwise might be difficult to untie” (1). They also recognize the unequal power relations that characterize many of the musical encounters explored in the volume (5).
Indeed, unequal power relations between Dutch and Indonesians underpin many of the issues addressed in the volume. In chapter 2, “Photographic Representations of the Performing Indonesian,” Liesbeth Ouwehand analyzes photographs of Indonesian musicians, instruments, and dancers “taken between 1870 and 1910” primarily by Europeans for scholarly or commercial purposes (31–32, 57), taking on issues of race, representation, and authenticity. The next three chapters explore processes of localization and hybridization by examining the impact of Dutch music on Indonesian music as well as how and why Indonesians have made sense of Dutch music in their own ways, effectively both reinforcing and resisting Dutch power. Gerard A. Persoon considers the history of the Dutch national anthem in Indonesia in chapter 3, “‘Queen Wilhelmina, Mother of the Mentawaians’: The Dutch National Anthem in Indonesia and as Part of the Music Culture of Siberut” (an island off the coast of West Sumatra). In the fourth chapter, “Past and Present Issues of Javanese-European Musical Hybridity: Gendhing Mares and Other Hybrid Genres,” Sumarsam examines “‘marching’ gamelan pieces” (gendhing mares) in central Java, a genre that incorporates European drums and brass instruments, and relates this type of music to other hybrid genres such as tanjidor and campursari (87). Miriam L. Brenner examines the impact of Dutch music on the island of Buton (off the coast of Southeast Sulawesi) in chapter 5, “Drummers of the Sultan of Buton: The Lasting Influence of the Dutch East India Company on Local Music Traditions,” starting in the 1600s with the arrival of the Dutch East India Company and the military music they brought (111–112).
Chapters 6 and 7 investigate hybridity in the realms of twentieth-century art music, discussing some of the ways Indonesian and Dutch composers synthesized elements of Western art and Indonesian musics. R. Franki S. Notosudirdjo analyzes the contributions of Indonesian composers—as well as their nationalist ambitions—and Dutch composers living in the Indies in the creation and development of Indonesian art music (musik seni) in chapter 6, “Musical Modernism in the Twentieth Century.” In chapter 7, “Constant van de Wall, a European-Javanese Composer,” Henk Mak van Dijk (translated by Wim Tigges) considers Indisch classical music, a type of music composed by Dutch composers who had lived in the Indies, focusing on the work of Constant van de Wall (1871–1945) (151, 153).
The next two chapters probe encounters between the Dutch ethnomusicologist Jaap Kunst (1891–1960) and Indonesian individuals. Chapter 8, “A Musical Friendship: The Correspondence between Mangkunegoro VII and the Ethnomusicologist Jaap Kunst, 1919 to 1940” by Madelon Djajadiningrat and Clara Brinkgreve (translated by Aletta Stevens-Djajadiningrat), centres on Kunst’s relationship with the Javanese prince Mangkunegoro VII through their letters to each other. Chapter 9, “Encounters in the Context of Inspiring Sundanese Music and Problematic Theories” by Wim van Zanten, explores Kunst’s relationship with “the Sundanese music teacher and scholar Machjar Kusumadinata (1902–1979)” (203). Together, these chapters demonstrate the different but intersecting social worlds that Kunst and his consultants inhabited, their shared concerns with musical preservation, and the impact that their work together has had upon subsequent specialists of Indonesian music.
The remaining chapters investigate a further assortment of artistic encounters, and continue to explore the cultural results of movement and migration related to a history of Dutch colonialism in Indonesia. In chapter 10, “Indonesian Performing Arts in the Netherlands, 1913–1944,” Matthew Isaac Cohen “surveys the Indonesian performing arts ‘scene’ in the Netherlands” and its social, cultural and political implications, examining a variety of activity and forms of performance, including “Javanese dance and music associations, Indies drama, kroncong [a form of Indonesian popular music] clubs, touring professionals and pan-Indonesian student groups” (232). Lutgard Mutsaers examines Dutch contributions to the development of kroncong in the next chapter, “‘Barat Ketemu Timur’: Cross-Cultural Encounters and the Making of Early Kroncong History.” Chapter 12, “Tradition and Creative Inspiration: Musical Encounters of the Moluccan Communities in the Netherlands,” by Rein Spoorman and chapter 14, “Kollektief Muziek Theater’s Repositioning of Moluccan Issues” by Fridus Steijlen, discuss the arts of Moluccan communities in the Netherlands. Annika Ockhorst analyzes theatre in Suriname in chapter 13, “Multicultural Encounters on Stage: The Use of Javanese Cultural Elements by the Surinamese Doe-Theatre Company.”
Recollecting Resonances is a worthy contribution to a number of fields, including Southeast Asian studies and ethnomusicology, for its subject matter, scope and interdisciplinarity. While it is likely to be of particular interest to specialists of Indonesian culture, it has much to offer others with interests in the affects of colonialism on expressive culture and how people use expressive culture in colonial and postcolonial contexts. The essays are clearly written and the photographs and other illustrations bring the material to life. I very much look forward to using this book in future research, in teaching, and in thinking more about the important issues and histories that the authors of the volume bring to the fore.
Christina Sunardi
University of Washington, Seattle, USA
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