Standardizing and Exoticizing the Main Jo’oh: The Tourist Gaze and Identity Politics in the Music and Dance of the Indigenous Mah Meri of Malaysia

This article explores how the Mah Meri have standardized and exoticized the music and dance performance of the Main Jo’oh in response to the “tourist gaze” and identity politics in Malaysia. A comparison of the form, texture, melody, dance choreography, and costume of the Main Jo’oh in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries shows that the Mah Meri have transformed the Main Jo’oh in various ways, including (1) reducing the time and length of the performance, (2) sustaining traditional acoustic sounds, and (3) self-indigenizing and exoticizing. Playing to the gaze of the tourists, the Mah Meri sustain and innovate the Main Jo’oh by creatively exploring their improvisatory skills, traditional weaving and carving skills, and resources from the depleting mangrove forest on Carey Island, their ancestral territory and home.