Abstract
In this article, I offer new ways of seeing and hearing Sundanese women singers in modern post-independence Indonesia. I propose a dynamic and historical approach to show how individual female singers shaped new material realities and symbolic meanings of modern Sundanese identity (Sunda modern) from the early 1950s through the mid-1970s. My approach emphasizes difference, uniqueness, and novelty in singers’ public image, on-stage presentation, vocal style, and musical repertoire. I contend that singers’ ability to branch out and cross over – by engaging the national (for example, singing in the national language) and the global (for example, Western-inflected genres) – structured a modern feeling of Sundanese-ness that was emergent (but not possible) during the previous colonial era.
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Recommended Citation
Weintraub, Andrew N.
(2025)
""Sunda modern"; Gendered modernity in Sundanese performing arts,"
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia: Vol. 26:
No.
1, Article 3.
DOI: 10.17510/wacana.v26i1.1803
Available at:
https://scholarhub.ui.ac.id/wacana/vol26/iss1/3
