Dance of Life: Popular Music and Politics in Southeast Asia

Introduction

ix Introduction You have made your home In the streets of life You’ll take whatever . . . will come . . . Then you put on your shoes of blue And you immediately dance Dance of life . . . So you follow this song. Malaysian rock group Kembara, 19841 This book explores the connection between popular music and politics in Southeast Asia over the past five decades, with particular emphasis on Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia/Singapore. An examination of Southeast Asia constitutes part of a larger analysis of the relationship between popular music and politics throughout what is often rather imprecisely termed the “Third World.” In another study I address the subject matter in non-Asian contexts such as Jamaica, Trinidad, Chile, Brazil, Nigeria, and South Africa.2 Considerable attention is devoted in both works to the relationship between popular music and politics generally (including the expression of political protest and commentary), the role of the singer or musician as a political actor, and the way certain of these performers have used music as a weapon or tool— even sometimes as a call to arms—with the goal of changing, challenging, or overthrowing governments or socioeconomic systems that they consider unjust. The studies also examine their songs to determine the sort of messages they are trying to convey and the specific issues that preoccupy them. x INTRODUCTION In recent years anthropologists have been encouraged to more systematically address issues of popular and mass culture.3 Historians, including those specialized on Southeast Asia, have generally neglected popular music and other mass-mediated cultural developments, even perhaps the crucial role of mass communications generally, in their writings on the twentieth century. The scholarship on sociopolitical change in Southeast Asia also tends to ignore the role of popular music and culture—unlike the literature on countries such as Jamaica, Trinidad, and Brazil.4 A major goal of this study is to rectify that lacuna. Popular music can generally be distinguished from other types of music by two essential features: It is disseminated largely by the mass media, and it is the by-product of the mass basis for marketing commodities . But the role that popular music plays in the modern world is a subject of considerable debate. There is no agreement as to who ultimately controls the production of popular music, and consequently, depending on your answer, whether it can actually play a significant role in society. A study focused on Southeast Asia can help to answer several relevant questions in this hitherto essentially Western debate. For example, does popular music have (or possess the capacity for) a potentially revolutionary and liberating influence, empowering or stimulating or educating people to reflection or action? Or, contrarily, does it largely play a conservative, institution-maintaining role in the sociopolitical order, diverting or pacifying them so that they accept the status quo? Does popular music chiefly challenge or reaffirm the social order? Or is it simultaneously challenging and supportive? Is heavily commodified and commercialized popular music essentially a matter of pure resistance by the people or of clear superimposition by corporate and other elites? Or do both the elites and the public influence the music? Should it perhaps be seen as an arena for negotiation and expression of societal conflicts and patterns? Is music a doubleedged sword, both escapist and dynamic?5 These questions are challenging and not easily answered, even if some themes are becoming clearer. Various students of mass-mediated culture have analyzed its role as a mirror of society. For example, sociologist I.C. Jarvie wrote that the Hong Kong film industry “is not of interest because of contributions to the art of film. Its interest is sociological: what the films and their industry tell us about the society in, and for which, they are made.”6 Cinema has also been viewed as a major vehicle for the creative expression of cultural identity , not the least in major filmmaking Asian nations like China, India, and Japan.7 Likewise, literature is the product of social process and hence cannot be separated from society and politics; perhaps the same claim can be made for music. Most popular music also derives from déclassé origins and consequently offers a proletarian appeal, allowing us to use it as a vehicle in studying “history from the bottom up.” INTRODUCTION xi Some observers doubt that popular music any longer plays a progressive role in Anglo-American society—if it ever did...