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Weintraub to Study Dangdut Music in Indonesia

Andrew Weintraub will conduct research in Indonesia during 2006–07 under the auspices of a Fulbright Senior Scholars Award.


Andrew Weintraub and Dangdut superstar Rhoma Irama at the Soneta Records recording studio in Jakarta, 2005.

Weintraub's project is entitled "Dangdut Stories: A Social and Musical History of Indonesia's Most Popular Music."

Weintraub will use the data from this research to write a book about dangdut, a genre of popular music that blends Malay, Arabic, and Indian musical elements with American rock 'n' roll and Latin dance music. The book will illuminate historical changes in musical style and performance practice from the genre’s origins to the present day, and it will show how the genre’s social meanings have changed over the last thirty to forty years.

A study of dangdut music and performance will reveal valuable insights about the meanings of social class, Islam, national identity, and gender in contemporary Indonesia.

Conversely, the study will show how these social categories have shaped the genre into its contemporary aesthetic form. Developed during the early 1970s, an historical treatment of the genre’s musical style and social meanings is long overdue.

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