White Shoes & the Couples Company: A Motley Crew of Indie Pop Indonesians
By: Chandra Drews If there’s one thing Indonesians of my generation (born anytime between 1978-1988) most have in common, it’s the love for the melodies of pop...
Asia Afrika Soundsystem: Indonesia’s Premier Reggae Soundsystem
By: Chandra Drews Think about reggae and Indonesia and the image to most likely pop into your head would be the rows and rows of Bob Marley posters and paraphernalia...
Dangdut: Indonesia’s Blue Collar Dance Movement
By: Chandra Drews Anybody ever visiting a village wedding will have witnessed it: Dangdut. An often female singer, for Indonesian standards quite scantily dressed,...
Indonesian Rock – A Documentation of Change
By: Chandra Drews The story of the development of rock music in Indonesia is tightly related to the cultural and political changes the country faced in the last 50...
Keroncong: An Overview & Obituary to Gesang
By: Chandra Drews Keroncong is a form of Indonesian music brought to the Indonesian shores by the Portuguese. Based on Portuguese fado, the music had its heyday...
Indo-Rock: An Indo-European Hybrid
By: Chandra Drews Never mind Elvis Presley and Bill Haley, the Tielman Brothers and their fellow Indo-rockers really rocked Europe in the 1950s. Pretty much forgotten...
Diaspora power
The main cry of the second Indonesian Diaspora Congress was ‘hidup diaspora!’ – long live the diaspora. It rang out in session after session in Jakarta from 18 to...
Floating World
Indonesian cruise ship service workers have a kind of cosmopolitan experience at sea. They seem to be good candidates for the development of a cosmopolitan outlook. They...
Impossible ideal?
Cosmopolitanism might appear to be a concept tailor-made for Indonesian conditions. Diverse peoples have lived side by side in the region for ages. Linguistic difference...
Subaltern cosmopolitans, Riau Islands
When people think of cosmopolitans, they think of jet-setting elites or the chattering classes, flitting between countries and consuming the ‘global’ through food,...
