Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music
ISBN: 9781501765230
Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Cornell University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Asian History;

Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music showcases the breadth and complexity of the music of Indonesia. By bringing together chapters on the merging of Batak musical preferences and popular music aesthetics; the vernacular cosmopolitanism of a Balinese rock band; the burgeoning underground noise scene; the growing interest in kroncong in the United States; and what is included and excluded on Indonesian media, editors Andrew McGraw and Christopher J. Miller expand the scope of Indonesian music studies. Essays analyzing the perception of decline among gamelan musicians in Central Java; changes in performing arts patronage in Bali; how gamelan communities form between Bali and North America; and reflecting on the "refusion" of American mathcore and Balinese gamelan offer new perspectives on more familiar topics.

Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music calls for a new paradigm in popular music studies, grapples with the imperative to decolonialize, and recognizes the field's grounding in diverse forms of practice.


Andrew McGraw is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Richmond. He is the author of Radical Traditions .



Christopher J. Miller is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Music at Cornell University. His essays have appeared in several volumes, including Producing Indonesia .

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