Book

Gongs and Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia

image of book cover for Gongs and Pop Songs

Scholarship on the musical traditions of Indonesia has long focused on practices from Java and Bali, including famed gamelan traditions, at the expense of the wide diversity of other musical forms within the archipelago. Jennifer A. Fraser counters this tendency by exploring a little-known gong tradition from Sumatra called talempong, long associated with people who identify themselves as Minangkabau.

Grounded in rich ethnographic data and supplemented with online audiovisual materials, Gongs and Pop Songs is the first study to chronicle the history and variety of talempong styles. It reveals the continued vitality of older modes in rural communities in the twenty-first century, while tracing the emergence of newer ones with radically different aesthetic frames and values. Each talempong style discussed incorporates into its repertoire Minangkabau pop or indigenous songs, both of which have strong associations with the place and people. These contemporary developments in talempong have taken place against a shifting political, social, and economic backdrop: the institutionalization of indigenous arts, a failed regional rebellion, and the pressures of a free-market economy.

Fraser adopts a cognitive approach to ethnicity, asking how people understand themselves as Minangkabau through talempong and how different styles of the genre help create and articulate ethnic sentiments—that is, how they help people sound Minangkabau.

See Online Resources for “Gongs and Pop Songs” to access audio examples, video examples, and color images included in the book.

“Novel and creative—a highly original account of the history and significance of Minangkabau music.”

Henry Spiller, professor, Department of Music, University of California, Davis

“This book tells the fascinating story of the transformation of a traditional gong ensemble to a pop genre in Indonesia’s West Sumatra province. Readers are given a glimpse of the musical styles and culture politics that permeate the changing constructs of Minangkabau identity since the 1960s.”

Margaret Kartomi, author of Musical Journeys in Sumatra

Reviews of the book

Collins, Megan. 2019. Review of Gongs & Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia, by Jennifer A. Fraser. Asian Music 50(1): 134-136. doi:10.1353/amu.2019.0009.

Tan, Sooi Beng. 2018. Gongs and Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia, by Jennifer A. Fraser, Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia174(1), 99-100. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/22134379-17401009

Suryadi, Surya. 2017. Jennifer A. Fraser. Gongs & Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia. Asian Ethnology 76 (1): 185-188. https://asianethnology.org/articles/2022

Jimenez, Manuel. 2017. Book review: Gongs and Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia. South East Asia Research. 25(1):100-102. doi:10.1177/0967828X16675240

Wallach, Jeremy. 2016. Review of Gongs and Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia, by Jennifer A. Fraser. Indonesia 102: 121-123. doi:10.1353/ind.2016.0022.

Suryadi, Surya. 2016. “Telisik Ilmiah ‘Gamelan Minangkabau'” Kompas September 3.

Image of Suryadi review in Kompas

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