Divine Inspirations Music and Islam in Indonesia

Indonesia is celebrated for its courtly arts, its beautiful beaches, its tourist attractions, and its artisan marketplace. Yet long overdue is a look at Indonesian Islam as the source of and inspiration for the arts throughout the history of its people, and in the dynamic popular performances of today. From the rhythmic grooves of dangdut, the archipelago's tenacious pop music, to the oft-quoted image of the wayang shadow puppet-theater, Divine Inspirations: Music and Islam in Indonesia investigates the expression of the Muslim religion through a diversity of art forms in this region. And from Quranic recitation by teenaged girls and women in Jakarta to the provincial patronage of Sufi arts and Muslim ritual as regional performance, this volume further addresses the ways in which Islam-inspired performance has been co-opted and appropriated for the expression of national culture. Eleven ethnographic case studies by an international roster of specialists in Indonesian expressive culture and performing arts are complimented by an introduction by co-editors David Harnish and Anne Rasmussen, and an epilogue by senior scholar Judith Becker. The collection explores the region's various micro-cultures of music, dance, religious ritual, government patronage, social censorship, tourism, development, and gender roles and relations. This pastiche speaks on personal, political, global, and local levels to the most important question of identity and ideology in Indonesia today: Islam. Divine Inspirations will engage readers interested in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Islam, world religions, global discourse, and music, arts and ritual.

David Harnish is Professor of Ethnomusicology at Bowling Green State University. He is author of Bridges to the Ancestors: Music, Myth and Cultural Politics at an Indonesian Festival (2006) and has recorded and/or performed Indonesian, jazz, Indian and Tejano musics with five different labels.

Anne K. Rasmussen is Associate Professor at The College of William and Mary, where she also directs a Middle Eastern Music Ensemble. She is the author of Women, the Recited Qur'an, and Islamic Music in Indonesia (2010), co-editor of Musics of Multicultural America (1997), a former Fulbright senior scholar, and Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center Research Fellow

Acknowledgements
About the Companion Website
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: The World of Islam in the Music of Indonesia
David Harnish, Anne Rasmussen


Part I Tensions, Change, and Problematic Histories

1 Past and Present Issues of Islam within the Central Javanese
Gamelan and Wayang Kulit
Sumarsam

2 Tensions between Adat (Custom) and Agama (Religion) in the
Music of Lombok
David Harnish


Part II Mysticism and Devotionalism

3 "The Muslim Sisterhood": Transnational Feminism(s) and the
Work of Indonesian Women in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Anne Rasmussen

4 Brai in Performance: Devotion and Art in Java
Matthew Isaac Cohen

5 Self-Defense and Music in Muslim Contexts in West Java
Uwe U. Pätzold


Part III Global Currents and Discourse

6 From "Dust" to Platinum: Global Currents Through the Malay
World of Musical Islam
Charles Capwell

7 "Authentic" Islamic Sound? Orkes Gambus Music, the Arab
Idiom and Sonic Symbols in Indonesian Islamic Musical Arts
Birgit Berg

8 The Discourse on Islam and Music in West Java, with Emphasis
on the Music Group, ath-Thawaf
Wim van Zanten


Part IV Contemporary Performative Worlds

9 "Art with a Muslim Theme" and "Art with a Muslim Flavor"
among Women of West Aceh
Margaret Kartomi

10 Islam, Politics, and the Dynamic of Contemporary Music in
Indonesia
R. Franki Notosudirdjo

11 Morality and its (Dis)contents: Dangdut and Islam in Indonesia
Andrew Weintraub

Epilogue
Judith Becker


Glossary

Index