Pop Melayu vs. Pop Indonesia: new interpretations of a genre into the 2000s

This chapter presents the rise to national fame of the pop Melayu band, Kangen Band, as an example of reclaiming of the derisive term kampun- gan. In it, I argue that this reclaiming represents an interesting case of genre manipulation, and consider what this can reveal about how Indonesian pop genres are constituted, what they ‘are’ and what they ‘do’. In so doing, I seek to rework existing scholarship relating to Indonesian pop genres and modernity, as well as interrogate some broader theories of genre.
The chapter extends the argument that Indonesian pop genres are not purely technical categories, they touch on myths of class and nation (Wallach 2008; Weintraub 2010; Yampolsky 1989). As we shall see, in the New Order period, pop music genres reached out to these myths by posi- tioning themselves variously vis-à-vis the capital city, Jakarta. Such posi- tioning, achieved through use of the terms gedongan (a term that strives to infer refinement by stressing the non-masses’ central position in the urban environment) and kampungan (a term that strives to enforce sub- alterns’ marginal position in relation to the metropolis, see also the previ- ous contribution by Weintraub), continues to haunt the constitution of genre in the post-New Order period, but in novel ways. These novel ways, I argue, may be seen to result from industrial transformation and new systems of knowledge production.