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" Nostalgia for modernity: Brass bands and the making of Minahasa, Indonesia "
Jennifer Hepzibah Munger
K. M. George
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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53199
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| Doc. No
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TL23153
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| Call number
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3367396
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| Main Entry
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Jennifer Hepzibah Munger
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| Title & Author
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Nostalgia for modernity: Brass bands and the making of Minahasa, Indonesia\ Jennifer Hepzibah Munger
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| College
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The University of Wisconsin - Madison
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| Date
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2009
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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2009
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| Page No
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312
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| Abstract
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A growing body of literature is reexamining the colonial period with an eye to understanding the ambiguity of categories of colonizer and colonized. Those persons of ambiguous status who benefited from power and success in the colonial era but were left behind in decolonization are subject to nostalgia for their loss of status and active participation in the construction of colonial society. In Minahasa, Indonesia, this nostalgia is performed through the medium of homemade brass bands called musik bambu , which, like colonial modernity itself, invokes the west, values novelty in technology and expression, and produces showy displays of power and prowess. People created the ensembles based on the bands of their Dutch colonial masters; the bulk of the repertoire and the dancing it accompanies are still drawn from the west. Currently the bands perform in two different contexts: at village parties with a "classic" repertoire of waltzes and marches and in public and privately sponsored competitions with arrangements of new songs. The competitions, often sponsored by government offices, encourage creativity in instrument building and musical arrangement, which requires that successful groups be large, loud, attractive and well organized. In sum, I examine the ways in which modernity is actively constructed outside the metropole both in the colonial past and in the present, allowing me to move beyond theoretical approaches that treat modernity as a unitary external force and people's actions as only acquiescence or resistance. My findings spring from five bodies of historical or empirical data: written observations of the colonial era in Indonesia, the development of brass bands in Europe, the memories of participants in the world of music; the material record of the changing forms of Minahasan-produced instruments and current musical practice. I argue that the competitive production of musik bambu gives Minahasans the means to re-enact their former involvement with colonial modernism at the same time as they engage themselves in the post-colonial state through a globalized music scene.
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| Subject
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Communication and the arts; Social sciences; Modernity; Identity; Cultural production; Music; Material culture; Brass bands; Minahasa; Indonesia; Cultural anthropology; 0326:Cultural anthropology; 0413:Music
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K. M. George
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The University of Wisconsin - Madison
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