A floating tempo principle inherited from traditional sundanese music played with Calung (a bamboo tube xylophone from the west Java), blended with soft MIDI tambourine and drums, give to these tracks from indonesian superstar Darso a specific and titillating sound that makes me feel highly grateful to my wise friend Makiko who kindly brought me the original tape back from her last travel here.
Trying to dig Darso's impressive career that goes from the 70s - with more psyche-related material - to recent karaoclips that remain full of unexpected ingredients, a search on the insanely completistMadrotter blog for more will lead you to this creme de la creme synthy jewel piece of him featuring Detty Kurnia. So good and underrated that I can't resist to include an excerpt:
Covering, remixing, recycling: the whole story of indonesian dangdut is inhabited by these elements in a frenetical way. Being in itself an original adaptation and upgrade of traditionnal elements into a pop format, it developped in the 80's an industrial interest in adapting an impressive amount of foreign sources and western billboard hits to local sound and instrumentation.
One of the biggest indo hit, Kopi Dangdut("Coffee Dangdut"), and its 90s version by Campur Dki is actually an adaptation of venezuelian Hugo Blanco's "Moliendo Cafe", a 1961 #1 hit in Argentina. Remaining absolutely unknown in Europe, this version also became a success in Japan, probably due to the work and reputation of producer Makoto Kubota, member of Sandii & Sunsetz, probably responsible of the tr-808 catchy miami-style inserts.
Although the local songs' fate is quite the same (don't expect to ever overview the countless versions of Mabuk Janda) this habit dangdut has to cover international hits sometimes lead to amazing cheerfull high realms of nonsense, like this "Hotel California" version that brings us very far away from the american landscapes and atmosphere, also thanks to an amazing accent.
(check the amazing Journey of dangdut database for similar more or less successfull cover attempts)
Nowadays, the recent trancy dangdut / dugem club production, keeping alive that commercial pop tradition, looks like a steam factory declination of a few beats and loops exactly in the same way as baile funk or reggaeton. More than covers, these tunes are related to a certain piracy remix tradition quite common in a club field: here again, foreign hits get inserted and mashed-up into the local groove, as you will notice in those examples, one latin hit adaptation alongside another tune including a huge sample you'll easily recognize ...
For this radio mixtape made on demand for both french magazine Telerama radio and french blog Le Musicassette, Gangpol & Mit took the opportunity to pay tribute to music and people who were influential in the making of their new record, subjectively united here under the temporary banneer of international music exchanges, mutant folkloric reappropriations, western/eastern connexions and carefully traded exoticisms in what I imagine as an old-time open international noisy harbour.
For such a legal podcast, I allowed myself to include or quote more classically celebrated bands than usual, that maybe will sound quite obvious to you. Howere, I hope that the thread will make sense, from mambo electronics to dangdut upgrades, blended traditionnal sources, and an occasional anglo-saxon tiny spoon of lyrics.
In many ways, Batak music seems to be a very generic keyword recovering various sides of music from North Sumatra: some of them being very traditionnal, others having more to do with popular songs full of midi orchestrations.
Even on the traditionnal side, you'll find many variations in styles and band composition, as a reflect of the huge diversity among Batak people: linguistic differences, as much as specific music styles, will then allow you to locate wether they come from the North, the East ... All of them having in common the celebration of adat.
Marsada band is a Toba-Batak indigenous group of musicians blending both traditionnal elements with slightly more modern arrangements (incorporation of western acoustic guitar): it's dance music, pleasing our appetite for metronomic percussions and slightly detuned flavors of wooden instruments.
An album, Pulo Samosir, was released and still avalaible here. In many ways, it is odd how much those productions can be related to the peruvian ones, as if they developped symetrically at differents points of the globe (check theTecno San Juanitos post as an example). Besides, many other bands are worth having a look at and starting a transe:
Last up-to-date branch of the indonesian popular music style identified as Dandgut, the nowadays club disco Dangdut quickly turned into a powerfull idiom, able to federate in the party places of Jakarta, therefore fullfilling its modern floklore function in the most typical way: deliver entertain on the edge between a sound immediatly recognizible and neverending personnal declinations, reinjected in the format.
Although the crazily hardcore feminist team of Cartilage Consortium selected here extremely reasonnable material, you could notice that "Beginning in 2003, dangdut became the focus of a national controversy in Indonesia over religion in public life and images of sexuality in media in response to performances by singer Inul Daratista that religious conservatives described as "pornography".
And this sonic anedote might be seen in many ways as a reflect of both indonesian society's evolution, where countless nuances on the religious questions may be observed in public opinion , and of Dangdut's evolution in itself through the years: indeed, way before the speedy digital beats, there is of course an original Dangdut that raised in the 70s, and settled the basis of the style: use of tablas and flutes, crossover incorporating indian, arabian and malay elements...
Although the theory of a clash between two generations appears way too simplist, if there maybe was at least a conflict on the question of public morality, it was made sharper by the fact that Inul Daratista actually covered tunes by Roma Irama, considered as Dangdut's godfather, who was directly responsible in the 70s of its modernisation and rescue against western music imperialism, injecting both fuzzy electric guitars and coranic respectful quotations into the old folkloric form.
So how should we in the end consider this speedfull booty-shaking disco, often soundtracking videos dedicated to girlfriends or boyfriends surrounded by doves and sparle explosions ?
Dangdut being rich of more than 40 years of recordings, as there would be no point in attempting to summarize such a production, what else can you do for a substantial view but go and ruin your nights on the Journey of Dangdut ?
Total killer archival blog, fullfilled with treasures like these ones, all directly numerized from the tapes:
