Musical worlds in Yogyakarta is an ethnographic account of a vibrant Indonesian city during the turbulent early post-Soeharto years. The book examines musical performance in public contexts ranging from the street and neighbourhood through to commercial venues and state environments such as Yogyakarta’s regional parliament, its military institutions, universities and the Sultan’s palace. It focuses on the musical tastes and practices of street workers, artists, students and others. From street-corner jam sessions to large-scale concerts, a range of genres emerge that cohere around notions of campursari (‘mixed essences’) and jalanan (‘of the street’). Musical worlds addresses themes of social identity and power, counterpoising Pierre Bourdieu’s theories on class, gender and nation with the author’s alternative perspectives of inter-group social capital, physicality and grounded cosmopolitanism. The author argues that Yogyakarta is exemplary of how everyday people make use of music to negotiate issues of power and at the same time promote peace and intergroup appreciation in culturallydiverse inner-city settings. Max M. Richter is director of the Monash Asia Institute and lecturer in Anthropology at Monash University, Australia. He has published in international journals and edited book collections, and has given presentations on Indonesian music and society in several countries and forums. His current research focuses on local-level music performance, intellectual/power-broker gatherings and centre/region identities in urban Indonesia.

The third annual ParkinSound Performance also included widely participatory other worlds dancing at Kridosono. The audience steadily increased through the afternoon, by ten o’clock in the evening numbering well over a thousand. Many were university students and their friends, including many visitors from Jakarta. The average age was around 20 years, with many dressed self-consciously in secondhand or homemade clothing; and almost half was female, an unusually high proportion for evening public entertainment in Yogyakarta City. The most outstanding feature in common among the 18 bands was that, unlike most techno music and performance in the West, here the practices of sampling, drum machines and DJ scratching were in almost all cases combined with musicians playing standard pop/rock instruments.

While the generally subtle and expressionistic musings of several of the groups received appreciative applause and gentle swaying from among the audience, the appearance of ‘Teknoshit’ heralded a phase of overtly political messages and anguished onstage other world physicalisations. Following them, Marzuki the organizer urged the audience to get up from their seats, prompting hundreds to descend from the stadium seating to the floor and dance to the pumping beat. Soon practically everyone in the hall, including young women in red and other brightly coloured jilbab (Muslim headscarves), was now dancing. Covering the floor from one end of the hall to the other, the dancers threw their arms high into the air and stepped in time to the pounding beat while facing the stage, swinging their heads from side to side for half an hour.