Cosmopolitanism in the Malay Popular Music of the Gramophone Era in British Malaya

Abstract

The British inculcated an Anglicized vision of the Malayan in the minds of the locals through education, propaganda, radio, censorship and culture in the colonial era (Tim Harper 2001). Nevertheless, colonial construction of the Anglophone Malayan provoked challenges from the various communities including performers and musicians particularly in the 1930s till Independence in 1957. They debated their own visions of nationalism and decolonization through newspapers, popular culture and organizations that they had set up.

This paper addresses the different ways in which Bangsawan or Malay opera musicians in Malaya appropriated western technology, media and music; and reworked genres, texts and languages to create their own popular Malay music that was modern and cosmopolitan. Yet this new popular music was different from Anglo-American pop. The musicians were performing their own type of local cosmopolitanism, which they experienced as they travelled around and lived in the urban colonial port cities. This local cosmopolitanism was open to the transnational exchange of culture, crossing boundaries of class and ethnicity. It was characterized by what Appiah (1997, 2006) defines as universality plus difference, in which people from different locations and faiths interact with mutual consideration. This form of vernacular cosmopolitanism was based on cultural difference, multiculturalism, self-advancement and a sense of connection with all humanity through values (Appadurai 2011).