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Constructions of Nation and the Classicisation of Music: Comparative Perspectives from Southeast and South Asia Author(s): Pamela Moro Source: Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Jun., 2004), pp. 187-211 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Department of History, National University of Singapore Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20072577 . Accessed: 17/12/2013 12:53

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187

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 35 (2), pp 187-211 June 2004. Printed in the United Kingdom. ? 2004 The National University of Singapore DOI: 10.1017/S0022463404000116

Constructions of Nation and the Classicisation of

Music: Comparative Perspectives from Southeast

and South Asia

Pamela Moro

This article compares how elite music was classicised or canonised as part of the

process of constructing national culture in India, Indonesia and Thailand. Issues

examined include the role of the middle class; homogeneity and heterogeneity in

national culture; the rise of mass education and innovative forms of musical trans

mission; the institutionalisation of music theory and music scholarship; dynamic

influences from the West; and transformations in the roles of musician, patron and

audience.

Introductory textbooks in ethnomusicology and record-store world music bins alike

would have us associate particular bodies of music with the bounded units we recognise as cultures. In the case of the Asian musics we call 'classical', such music 'goes with'

the nation in a convenient homology so that, for example, classical Thai music is 'the'

music generally associated with Thailand, while the court gamelan traditions of Bali and

central Java often represent 'the' music of Indonesia. Such homologies are not limited to

the views of outsiders - be they scholars, adventurous listeners or other consumers of

music - but derive in part from the elevation and wide dissemination of particular elite

musics within nations over the last century or more. Elite musics became classical, their

distribution congruent with the boundaries of nation-states (at least in theory) and their

status as high culture deceptively natural.

Provoked in part by critical readings on the history of European music and the con

struction of prestige, and the striking questions raised by the literature on nationalism over the last two decades, this article addresses the process by which elite music becomes

classical, and how classicised music contributes to the imagination of culture within the

Pamela Moro is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon, USA. Her

e-mail contact is [email protected] This work was supported by Willamette University through

a sabbatical leave and an Atkinson Faculty

Development Grant, as well as by a four-month period as an affiliated fellow with the International

Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, the Netherlands. I wish to extend thanks to my colleagues in Leiden

Wim van Zanten, Michael Laffan, Margaret Sleeboom, Clara Brakel, and Dick van der Meij for cheerful

inspiration and scholarly guidance.

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188 PAMELA MORO

nation-state.1 What does it mean when a court-fostered style of music comes to be

disseminated within and representative of the citizenry of an entire nation-state? Or, more to the point, what does it mean when at least some groups within society aspire to

such a place for classical music? Relying largely on secondary sources, this paper is in

part a survey of literature which compares the classicisation of music in India, Indonesia

and Thailand from the first half of the twentieth century during the period of emerging Asian nationalisms, or whenever the classicising of music became prominent. The topic demands consideration of issues which emerge in varying levels of intensity throughout all three cases: the rise of mass education and innovative forms of musical transmission,

including the development of systems of written notation; the institutionalisation of

music theory and music scholarship; dynamic influences from hegemonic powers

(leading to, for example, indigenised use of the Western term 'classical'); the tension

between homogeneity and heterogeneity in constructions of national culture; the impact of print and electronic media, especially in relation to state power; and, always, transfor

mations in the roles of musician, patron and audience. In all cases, the timing and nature

of the growth of a middle class have had a tremendous impact on the position of

classicised music within the nation.

The present work draws upon constructivist approaches, including discourse

centred studies of music by Matthew Harp Allen on India and Jennifer Lindsay on Java,

which pay special attention to shifts in vocabulary and terminology and trace the malle

ability of 'the classical' in music in relation to changing social and political contexts.2

I also rely on Partha Chatterjee's discussion of the process of classicisation in general, as a deliberate and negotiated process of national culture formation. To Chatterjee, a

classicised tradition has been 'reformed, reconstructured, fortified against charges of

barbarism and irrationality', and hence made palatable for the tastes of middle-class

people, with appropriate content for a nationalised cultural identity. This kind of

classicisation is a form of sanitising and systematising, tied to the negotiation of history and a sense of the past, a past he argues is integral to nationalism itself. Fundamental

to Chatterjee's argument is the place of a growing middle class which mediates

between colonial or other power-holders at the top and the poor or oppressed at the

1 The literature on nationalism, national identity and national culture is voluminous within anthropol

ogy and related fields. Useful works, besides those noted in the body of this text, which introduce central

issues related to national culture include Mapping the nation, ed. Gopal Balakrishnan (London: Verso,

1996); Nationalist ideologies and the production of national cultures, ed. Richard G. Fox (Washington,

DC: American Anthropological Association, 1990); and articles in the special issue o? American Ethnologist,

19, 4 (1992). An early forerunner addressing nationalism and folklore is Felix J. Oinas, Folklore,

nationalism and politics (Columbus: Slavica, 1978). Related nodes of scholarship include critical responses

to the ideas of invented tradition (see the survey in Robert C. Ulin, 'Invention and representation as

cultural capital', American Anthropologist, 97, 3 [1995]: 519-27); and authenticity in national culture (for

example, Brackette F. Williams, 'Nationalism, traditionalism, and the problem of cultural inauthenticity',

in Fox ed., Nationalist ideologies, pp. 112-29). In the field of ethnomusicology, Peter Wade, Music, race,

and nation: M?sica tropical in Colombia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) considers some of

the key dilemmas in the nationalism literature at large, with particular

concern for music.

2 Matthew Harp Allen, 'Tales tunes tell: Deepening the dialogue between "classical" and non-"classical"

in the music of India', Yearbook for traditional music, 30 (1998): 22-52; Jennifer Lindsay, 'Klasik, kitsch or

contemporary: a study of the Javanese performing arts' (Ph.D. diss., University of Sydney, 1985).

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION AND THE CLASSICISATION OF MUSIC 189

bottom.3 It is this mediating middle-class consciousness that both imagines and actively constructs the nation, and which proves fundamental to the widespread adoption of

classicised music as 'national music', a point crucial in the present analysis.

My work here was prefigured over two decades ago in a provocative publication by Harold Powers, who launched a 1979 symposium on the status of music in Muslim

nations by exploring the relationship between colonial rule, indigenous patronage and

attitudes towards art music. His work began with a somewhat experimental attempt to define the classical, advancing its case through historical comparison of music in India

and Java.4 There is much to quarrel with in the article, including his application of an

India- and Java-based definition of the classical to the Middle East and his uncritical

acceptance of the essentially 'Hindu' nature of Hindustani culture, an idea that has

since been strongly challenged. Nonetheless, I have been inspired by his linking of

classical music and the processes of nationalism, including shifts in elite patronage and the significance of classical repertory within the nation-state. Working without the

benefit of theoretical reconsiderations of canon, classical music and the nation that

would appear almost immediately after his publication, Powers creatively anticipated what would become some of the dominant analytical concerns of late twentieth-century

ethnomusicology.

India

Among all the nations of Asia, India since the late nineteenth century offers the

clearest example of classicised music in the service of nationalism.5 Music that had been

fostered by the princely courts (and in south India, the temples as well) was embraced by nationalists from the very beginning of the movement, generally dated to the founding of the Indian National Congress in the late nineteenth century. Court-fostered music

-

as well as new compositional forms intended specifically to arouse patriotism - was one

among several aspects of culture which could contribute to a new identity in which a political movement towards nationalism could flourish. The operative goals of such

nationalism were to change over time, however, and the music had to be reshaped some

what before it was suitable for such a project. A number of prominent music scholars and

teachers of the late nineteenth century set out to revitalise what they felt had become

3 Partha Chatterjee, The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 127 (quotation);

on the middle class as mediators, see p. 92.

Chatterjee's discussion bears comparison to several related theoretical notions: Weber's rationalization

(Susan A. Reed, 'Performing respectability: The berava, middle class nationalism, and the classicization of

Kandyan dance in Sri Lanka', Cultural Anthropology, 17, 2 [2002]: 250); Srinivas's Sanskritization; and

Redfield and Singer's Great Tradition/Little Tradition dichotomy. 4 Harold Powers, 'Classical music, cultural roots, and colonial rule: An Indie musicologist looks at the

Muslim World', Asian Music, 12, 1 (1980): 5-39.

5 A number of scholars have addressed the connection between classical music and nationalism in

India; key works include Charles Capwell, 'Marginality and musicology in nineteenth-century Calcutta:

The case of Sourindro Mohun Tagore', in Comparative musicology and anthropology of music: Essays on the

history of ethnomusicology, ed. Bruno Nettl and Philip V. Bohlman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1991), pp. 228-43; Capwell, 'Music and nationalism', in Garland encyclopedia of world music, Vol. 5 (South

Asia, the Indian subcontinent) ed. Alison Arnold (NY: Garland Publishing, 2000), pp. 431-9; Gerry Farrell, Indian music and the West (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 65-76; Jonathan Katz, 'India: History of

classical music: Classical music, the state, and the middle class', entry in New Grove dictionary of music and

musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001-2).

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190 PAMELA MORO

a neglected and tarnished musical tradition.6 At fault were not the British - who were not

particularly interested in South Asian music - but a growing sense of a Hindu classical

past, a Hindu Golden Age of Spirituality, leading to negative valuation of Muslim contri

butions to music during the long period of Mughal patronage and support for the per

forming arts (with the introduction of what these critics perceived as 'alien' or 'secular'

tendencies to music).7 This revitalisation took place through efforts to classicise, in

Chatterjee's sense of the term - for example, by founding schools, inventing systems of

notation, crafting modern music scholarship and historiography (based on the study of

Sanskrit treatises and intended to establish norms for performance), organising music

conferences and instituting the public concert. These points will be taken up in more

detail below.

The revitalisation of court music, and its gradual change in performers, can be seen

as part of a larger project of fostering Indian culture (both national and regional) by the

middle class in late nineteenth-century India. Related endeavours included broadening the educational system, cultivating literature in vernacular Indian languages and reviving artisan handicrafts, all efforts connected to an emerging nationalism. Such movements

were especially strong in Bengal, where a distinctive school of nationalistic painting also developed. Critical economic theory developed among nationalists in this period,

documenting English policies that were impoverishing India.

All of these efforts were associated with what was clearly a new and self-aware middle

class. Although still a small percentage of the Indian population as a whole even in the

early 1900s, the number of Indians educated in English rose rapidly in the last decades of

the nineteenth century. They constituted a middle class supported by semi-feudal land

holdings as well as professional work in government service, law, education, journalism and medicine. Especially in Bengal, the nineteenth-century intelligentsia deliberately

modelled itself after the European middle class, 'which, as it learnt through Western

education, had brought about the great transformation from medieval to modern

times through movements like the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment'.8

Similarly, this emerging middle class was to lead the movement towards social reform

and, though it was not articulated until several decades later, independence. That Indian nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

rested in part on a revitalisation of Hinduism by the same middle class has been well

6 However, some observers argue that the music was in fact thriving under the nineteenth-century Indian courts. Having lost much of their political power, rulers and nobles turned financial

resources

towards the arts. 'There was an explosive development of Hindustani classical music and much rivalry and

exchange among the many principle musical centres' of the nineteenth century (Powers, 'Classical music',

p. 23). 7 On the lack of British interest in South Asian music see Farrell, Indian music, p. 59.

8 Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885-1947 (Delhi: Macmillan India, 1983), pp. 67-8. My description of

the middle class and its relationship to nationalism in late nineteenth-century India is drawn from pp. 65

100 of Sarkar's discussion. Raymond Williams has discussed the development of class as a social category

and economic position in Europe and especially Britain; Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 60-9. The European idea of a middle class rose relatively late,

from about the 1840s; the middle class is self-consciously positioned between persons of rank and the

working class, and inevitably sees itself in a position of social distinction. Though I have

not studied

specific documentation of the development of the idea of class in India, one can guess that British usage

had a strong impact.

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION AND THE CLASSICISATION OF MUSIC 191

documented.9 A new vision of Hinduism connected to the growth of various Hindu

reform movements and based in part on Western Orientalist accounts of the mythical Hindu past (now largely debunked), was to have profound effects

on the place of the

former court music and its performers in twentieth-century South Asia. At least some of

these reform movements crafted an aggressive, anti-Muslim as well as anti-British Hindu

identity, early precursors of the Hindu nationalist movements in India today. It was during this period, probably shortly before 1900, that the English word

'classical' began to be used with regard to music in India.10 While such usage owes much

to colonial European categories of thought, it is buttressed by the ancient, indigenous

scholarship of South Asia. The pairing of marga and desi, which originally posited a

similar though not identical dichotomy in music, in the twentieth century has come to

designate the canonical/classical tradition and all regional or localised traditions, respec

tively.11 We can thus begin to see a jigsaw-puzzle pattern in which a Western-educated

middle class, wrestling to find its place vis-?-vis colonial and hereditary elites, generates both classicised music and a Hinduised vision of Indian culture. Both movements

rest in part on middle-class familiarity with Enlightenment and Romantic Nationalist

derived conceptualisations of nation, and rely upon canon construction to secure legiti

macy. Drawing legitimacy from antiquity and an assertion of prior-ness, such a canon

(whether musical or religious) is amenable to systemisation and standardisation and to

'cleaning-up' before being promulgated widely. The placement of music in a classicised view of Indian culture owes much to the

efforts of particularly active individuals. Two figures stand out in the recent English

language scholarship regarding north Indian music of this period, and a comparison of

their visions of the place of music in the emerging Hindu and Indian national culture is

revealing. An early scholar and promoter of this redefinition of music was Sourindro

Mohun Tagore (1840-1914), whose life and work has been insightfully documented by Charles Capwell.12 He set out to establish that the music of the north Indian courts was

on par with that of Europe, demonstrating its rational, scientific status. This was to be

accomplished in part through the adoption of written musical notation, as he attributed

the greatness of European music in part to its notation. In fact, Tagore became a key

9 Sarkar, Modern India, pp. 70-6; Chatterjee, Nation and its fragments, pp. 76-115; Richard G. Fox, 'Hindu nationalism in the making,

or the rise of the Hindian', in Fox ed., Nationalist ideologies, pp. 65-6.

Both Sarkar and Chatterjee also point to efforts to classicize an Islamic past in India. It does seem that

British efforts to educate a small portion of the Indian populace were directed at particular, Hindu

segments of society. These were not strictly upper-caste elites

or traditional literati.

10 Allen, 'Tales tunes tell', p. 50.

11 Ibid, pp. 24-5 traces shifts in meaning within the marga and desi dichotomy over its long period of

existence; see also Carol Babiracki, 'Tribal music in the study of great and little traditions of Indian music', in Nettl and Bohlman ed., Comparative musicology, pp. 69-90, on various dichotomies with regard to

music in India. The legitimacy of Indian music - as classical or art music

- in fact rests in part upon

validation by ancient, authoritative theoretical scholarship or

scriptures, especially the Natya sastra. One of

several Hindi terms for this music, besides the English 'classical', is 'sastriya-sangif (music connected to the

ancient treatises on the arts). See Regula Qureshi, 'India: Art music: Legitimizing criteria', entry in Sadie

ed., New Grove dictionary for discussion of the validation of music, and for additional terms for classical

music.

12 Capwell, 'Marginality and musicology' and 'Music and nationalism'; Farrell, Indian music, pp. 65-71; Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy and Cyril de Silva Kulatillake, 'South Asia', in Ethnomusicology: Historical and regional studies, ed. Helen Myers (Hamdmills, Hampshire: Macmillan Press, 1993), pp. 274-305.

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192 PAMELA MORO

figure in a heated debate about the use of Bengali versus Western-style staff notation,

arguing that as unique cultural products, different musics of the world require their own

notational systems, a position which earned him the label of 'nationalist' at the time.

Taking an intense pride in India's cultural achievements, he combined conservative

Hinduism with a loyalist, pro-British stance. Music was to be raised so that signifying the

glorious Hindu past, it could better connect loyal Indians to the British crown. The posi tion of classicised music as a foundation for a loyalist brand of nationalism was to change

quickly, however, with music instead becoming a vehicle for resisting the British and

marking distinction against the Muslim rulers who had held power for several centuries.

While Sourindro Tagore founded a number of early schools for musical instruction

in India, the figure best remembered for the founding of schools in order to propagate north Indian music is Pandit V. N. Bhatkande (1860-1936). Working some 20 years after

Tagore, Bhatkande's efforts to popularise music more clearly coincide with the goals of

Indian nationalism as it developed in the early decades of the twentieth century, with

independence as its goal. As an historian of music, Bhatkande sought to revive and rede

fine north Indian music by 'Hinduising' it in connection to an imagined classical past. He

actively promoted scholarly gatherings on music in India, and contributed to the crea

tion of standardised texts for use in Western-style colleges of music learning. Another

figure linking music instruction and scholarship to a nationalist agenda was Vishnu

Digambar Paluskar (1872-1931), who also actively promoted the idea of public concerts

and alterations of repertory.13 Later and to international acclaim came Rabindranath

Tagore (1861-1941), though his abundant, highly nationalist compositions in the 1920s

turned away from the classicised tradition and drew inspiration instead from Bengali

regional traditions. The emerging Indian music scholarship of the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries contributed to a standardisation of musical practice -

key to

our definitions of classicisation -

through periodic 'All-India' Music Conferences. These

began in 1916, drawing together scholars and performers mainly from north India, 'with

the primary intent of reconciling regional differences and standardising performance

practices of North Indian classical music'.14 Similar conferences began in south India

in 1928. Bhatkhande himself carried out fieldwork throughout India, and constructed

a comprehensive system of scale types, a microcosm of the effort to standardise and

intellectualise musical practice throughout the nation.

The availability of musical instruction at the newly founded schools meant that

middle-class students, spurred by nationalist feelings and eager to embrace what was

emerging as Indian heritage, could learn music formerly associated with the courts and

leisured class. Music became redefined as a pursuit for middle-class involvement as

connoisseurs and amateur participants, crucially at a time when princes and hereditary landlords were declining as sources of patronage

- though there is evidence for some

princely involvement in the middle-class movement, at least in the late nineteenth

century. Music thus moved from a primarily individual patronage base (individual nobles or elites) to a broader public base, namely the middle class. It is telling that the

13 Capwell, 'Music and nationalism'; Powers, 'Classical music', pp. 24-5. On Bhatkande see Regula

Qureshi, 'Whose music? Sources and contexts in Indie musicology', in Nettl and Bohlman ed., Compara tive musicology, p. 160; and Andrew

Burton Alter, 'Institutional music education: northern area [India]', in

Arnold ed., Garland encyclopedia, p. 444.

14 lairazbhoy and Kulatillake, 'South Asia', p. 278.

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION AND THE CLASSICISATION OF MUSIC 193

online New Grove's dictionary entitles a section of its India material 'Classical music, the state and the middle class', so closely tied were the three in late colonial and contem

porary India.15 The official beginnings of Indian nationalism occurred nearly simulta

neously with a sort of 'officialisation' of middle-class patronage and involvement with

music, marked by the establishment of various music societies from 1874, but especially after 1895.16

The identification of north Indian music with the middle class marked a radical

change not only of patrons and connoisseurs but of performers as well. The linking of a

Hinduised nationalism with the classicisation of music had dramatic implications for the

Muslim musicians who had nurtured music under Mughal rule, as argued by Regula Qureshi:

Initiated and articulated very clearly by Bhatkhande, it became the agenda for middle-class

Hindu music lovers for a generation: to take music out of the hands of the Muslim heredi

tary professionals and win it for the Hindu elite through discipleship and devotion... This ... is not only

a communal shift from Hindu to Muslim: it is as much a shift in class, from

the service professional to the bourgeois elite. The most crucial consequence of this shift is

the abolition of the social gulf between patron and performer, since they now share the

same milieu - a

truly remarkable sociomusical development.

Qureshi identifies these changes as the basis for the writing of a particular kind of

history in the emerging Indian music scholarship by Sourindro Tagore, Bhatkhande, Paluskar and others. If history is a means of self-understanding or self-authoring, then

the motivation for writing music history was connected to

the nationalist agenda to define indigenous cultural identity for British India's Anglicised elites. The entire effort led to a remarkable renaissance of music in India, as a renewed,

modernised canonical system, with patronage from state and national elite; today it is an

important component of the new 'public culture' of India.

She adds in a pointed footnote: 'As logically as one may be able to explain this devel

opment, it still continues to amaze that music could assume such an important function in the development of a modern nation-state'.17

Indonesia

In Indonesia as in India, music had a key place in the visions of nationalists from the very beginnings of the movement towards independence in the early years of the twentieth century. However, in contrast to the solid embrace of classicised musical traditions by the Indian nationalist movement and middle class, court-associated forms

15 From the online version at www.grovemusic.com; see also ibid., p. 276; Powers, 'Classical music',

pp. 24-5, discusses the shift in patronage. 16 While Bengal was

a centre for much of the revitalization and redefinition of Hindustani music, it is

significant that the first meeting of the Indian National Congress in south India (in Madras, 1927-8) -

at

which the goal of national independence was

officially stated for the first time -

led to the founding of the Madras Music Academy (Katz, 'India: History of classical music'). The Gayan Samaj was

a middle-class

organization formed to support music and found music schools for youth, founded in 1874 in Poona and

expanding in 1883 to Madras (Farrell, Indian music, pp. 70-4) -

locations quite distant from Bengal. 17 Qureshi, 'Whose music?', pp. 161-2 (long quotations) and 164 (short quotation).

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194 PAMELA MORO

of performance from the region that came to be Indonesia have been subjects of heated

debate.18 In India, two related canonic traditions of music emerge in the classicist dis

course, Hindustani and Karnatak. In Indonesia, despite comparable if not greater musical diversity (due to the geographic vastness of the archipelago), Central Javanese music alone has been most intensely the subject of classicisation as well as of controversy

regarding its place in twentieth-century national culture. The Java-centricism in concep tions of a national classical music is a microcosm of a much larger issue: the status of

Javanese and other regional cultures within the nation. Java as a centre of concentrated

political and military power, economic resources and population has long been in ten

sion with the rest of Indonesia. Countless examples of scholarship address this issue

across a wide variety of topics and disciplines; it has been of enduring concern within

and beyond Indonesia from the colonial period to the present. Whether we look at the

beginning of the twentieth century, the years after independence in 1945, or Suharto's

period of top-down policies towards culture post-1965, the issue of the regional versus

the national has been of overarching concern.

While Indian court music was to pass from the old ruling class to a new, urban

middle class - with relatively little tinkering by the British - in Indonesia the transfer in

question was from Java to the whole new nation, with the Javanese elite at least attempt

ing to hold onto its position as gatekeeper of the arts. The strong interest by colonial

scholars in documenting and promoting certain forms of music in the Dutch East Indies

has played a role in the image of central Javanese gamelan after independence, as have

lingering attitudes towards the elite Javanese of the colonial period. Yet before exploring the controversial place of Javanese music

- and culture - within the nation, let us

examine more closely ideas about the classical in Javanese performing arts.

Jennifer Lindsay offers a study of Indonesian terms for classifying the performing arts, based on a careful reading of Indonesian usage throughout the twentieth century.

Lindsay warns that while much Indonesian writing on the arts during the late colonial

period initially appears to merely translate or Indonesianise familiar Dutch and/or

English vocabulary, in fact 'wide exposure to contemporary discourse shows that this is

not always the case. It is not only the words, but the concepts that the words express which have become Indonesianised'.19 The word klasik is one of several terms currently used to designate the Javanese court arts, an Indonesianised version of the Dutch klassiek

and the English 'classic(al)'. The word is part of a dichotomy, so that kesenian klasik

18 My account of music in Indonesia is based upon the following sources: Judith Becker, Traditional

music in modern Java: Gamelan in a changing society (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1980); Becker,

'Southeast Asia', in Myers ed., Ethnomusicology, pp. 377-91; Lindsay, 'Klasik, kitsch'; Laurie J. Sears,

Shadows of empire: Colonial discourse and Javanese tales (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996);

Sumarsam, Gamelan: Cultural interaction and musical development in Central Java (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1995); Terry E. Miller and Sean Williams, Garland encyclopedia of world music, vol. IV

(Southeast Asia) (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997). Indonesian nationalism is documented in a volu

minous and still-growing scholarly literature, including numerous

unpublished graduate theses. Percep tions of the past in Southeast Asia, ed. Anthony Reid

and David Marr (Singapore: Heinemann Educational

Books, 1979) is noteworthy in its combination of historiography and intellectual history, emphasizing how

images of the past contributed to twentieth-century conceptions of nation in Southeast Asia

- a theme

integral to the present work.

19 Lindsay, 'Klasik, kitsch', p. 37; issues related to contemporary Indonesian definitions of the traditional

arts, including a

study of terminology, appear in ch. 2.

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION AND THE CLASSICISATION OF MUSIC 195

(classical arts, clearly rooted in the royal courts) is contrasted with kesenian rakyat

(popular/regional arts), a term which carries the connotation of village arts, with no

connections to the court traditions.

While this dichotomy appears to highlight a spatial location for classicism, Lindsay notes that the word klasik is also located temporally. Contemporary Indonesian use of

kesenian klasik invariably suggests that the court arts have 'already reached their peak',

conflating court identity, the past and a notion of an optimum or ideal form, expressed

especially in the late-colonial version of the court arts as they were performed just prior to independence. This most 'classical' of time points is significantly closer to the present than that implied in European conceptions of the term, at least with regard to music;

something different might be said of cinema or certain types of pop culture. If the

performing arts of the courts already reached their peak in the past, they cannot be

developed further, and any change away from the optimum means regression or decline.

'Since 1945 ... when the courts themselves ceased to exist as artistic centres and centres of

authority, the arts of the courts have become associated with a past ("klasik") era which

ended with Indonesian independence.'20 Ironically, such a meaning is only possible because of independence, which effectively ended the role of the courts.

During the 1950s and even 1960s, 'klasik' appears to have simply implied 'old' rather

than any sort of golden age or peak form; in fact, writing in Dutch in 1931, the famous

educational reformer and nationalist Ki Hadjar Dewantara used the word 'klassiek'

to designate late nineteenth-century Javanese court music and dance.21 According to

Lindsay, it appears to have been much more recently that 'classical' music and dance in

Java came to specifically refer to the courts just prior to independence, a sure illustration

of how hierarchical cultural distinctions are embedded in the flow of discourse. The vari ous labels by which the performing arts might be classified

- whether classic, traditional, 'kitsch' (an Indonesian category for urban, mass-consumed theatre) or other

- have

profound implications for the amount of innovation performers might explore, the

institutional support they might receive and their relationship to their audiences, at least

during the time of Lindsay's research.

Further evidence that Javanese music has been subject to a classicist discourse can

also be seen in the word karawitan, a term originally applied to all high or refined arts and

later referring exclusively to the court tradition of gamelan. The word is derived from the root rawit, meaning 'intricate'; while officially it can refer to any kind of indigenous

music in Indonesia, in everyday usage it is a Javanese word for Javanese arts, especially gamelan music. It underscores the refinement and respectability of an art. While the

word began to be used in print in the late nineteenth century, it was not widely known or

used until it appeared in the names of government schools for the arts in the 1950s and

1960s.22

Another term frequently used to designate the highest level of former Javanese court

arts returns us to the controversial place of those arts in twentieth-century Indonesia, and

20 Quotations from ibid., p. 47.

21 Ibid. 22 Sumarsam, Gamelan, p. 125; on the term karawitan see R. Anderson Sutton, Traditions of gamelan music in Java: Musical pluralism and regional identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),

p. 5.

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196 PAMELA MORO

to the ultimately political significance behind categories of cultural distinction. This is

the term adiluhung, translated evocatively by Nancy K. Florida as 'the beautiful sublime'.

Originally a Javanese term emphasising the Javaneseness of an art form, it has entered

Indonesian as kesenian adiluhung, a label for Javanese court arts, tightly linking such arts

to the traditional ceremonial identity of the courts.23 Hence the term can be used for

either praise or derision, depending on how one views the old courts. In a scathing and

somewhat humorous account of all that adiluhung implies, though focusing on classical

literature and not on the performing arts, Florida connects a sort of mystique of

adiluhung among the general populace in Java to, not surprisingly, the Dutch colonial

tradition of philology. Colonial scholars posited a golden age of literature significantly earlier than that discussed above for music. To them, classical Javanese literature lay in

the distant precolonial past, even prior to the coming of Islam and the influence of the

Arabic language in the Indies. 'This means', Florida notes, 'the flower began its long wilt

some 500 years ago.'24 As with the British in India, it was in the Dutch (and at one point, the British) interest to treat Islam as an invasive and alien force in the East Indies.

Contemporary philologists had by the 1980s rethought this position, yet Javanese literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries continued to be viewed in two

contrasting ways, according to Florida. Either it was an embarrassment, a self-indulgence of the elite class of the past, or it was (especially in its actual paper form, as manuscript) an icon of high culture which 'many modern Javanese appreciate

as the super refined

sublime heights and profound depths of Javanese Culture with a capital "C"'.25 In this

latter case, however, the golden age posited by the Dutch colonial scholars has been

moved forward in time to the nineteenth century, when elites had scant opportunity to

exert power except through patronage of the arts.

[T]he early response of the Javanese elite to European conquest

was to save what they

could by denying the foreigners culturally while conceding to them politically. This reac

tion brought a flowering of Javanese high culture, but it also made that style of life seem

increasingly remote and irrelevant to the problems of the time.26

This dilemma which was to haunt the court arts even a century later.

The classicisation of music in Java thus began in the context of European introduced ideas about high culture, the past, fluidity or change and sources of prestige. It mirrors the larger project of constructing

a national past using the 'scientific' findings of colonial historians themselves.27 Yet Western ideas about the past and the nature of

culture in Southeast Asia were never adopted unproblematically. Gamelan performer and scholar Sumarsam has carefully documented the impact of Western ideas on ways of

thinking about music in Java, and identifies a number of tensions or contradictions

posed for the Javanese who wanted to broaden the place of music in society. Dutch

23 Lindsay, 'Klasik, kitsch', p. 45; 'the beautiful sublime' is from Nancy K. Florida, 'Reading the unread in

traditional Javanese literature', Indonesia, 44 (1987): 1-15.

24 Ibid., p. 1.

25 Ibid., p. 2.

26 Ruth McVey, 'Taman Siswa and the Indonesian national awakening', Indonesia, 4 (1967): 128-49.

27 See the introduction to the section on 'New nationalisms' in Reid and Marr ed., Perceptions of the past,

p. 263.

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION AND THE CLASSICISATION OF MUSIC 197

scholars had asserted the concept of 'high culture' in the Indies, not incompatible with a

pre-existing cultural hierarchy reflected in Javanese vocabulary (such as the recognition of halus or refined styles) which could be established objectively through scientific

study.28 Jaap Kunst's business-like characterisation of Javanese and Balinese music as

'high culture' was based, for example, on the presence of tonal scales with fixed intervals, a feature which fitted into the evolutionary paradigm of the era. Theodore G. Pigeaud utilised a dyad of Volkskunst and hofkunst to distinguish folk and court arts in Java,

though his own work in the 1930s verified empirically that there was considerable con

tinuity between the two realms.29 Even so, the high cultural status of the court arts needed to be bolstered through such rational efforts as the development of written notation and the standardisation of repertory

- projects in which Javanese leaders gladly engaged, as

we will see below.

Another tension lay in the Javanese elite's desire to preserve what they thought of as a very precious traditional culture, at risk of being lost in the onslaught of colonial culture. However it was a decidedly European idea to preserve old things that might be in danger of dying out just as according to the Dutch philology and historical inquiry

popular during the colonial period, the 'true' Javanese culture -

Hindu-Buddhist,

ultimately Indie in nature - had been obscured by a shallow overlay of Islam.30 Out of

such desires to underscore or lift the status of music and other performing arts, and to preserve them, came the first schools and experimental methods of transmission intended to propagate the Javanese high arts beyond the courts.

Kridha Beksa Wirama, the dance school founded in 1918 by two sons of a Javanese sultan (both of whom were involved with early nationalist groups), was ground-breaking in these respects. The school was connected to Budi Utomo, the first nationalist

organisation in the Indies, and initially taught students from the organisation's youth branch (Jong Java). The school thus marked the first effort to modernise the arts in the sense of making court dance and music less 'feudal' and more 'democratic'.31 Yet because Budi Utomo was composed largely of aristocratic Javanese, we can see the old elite retain

ing their custodial position over the arts. Dutch administrators and culture enthusiasts were altogether pleased because the school marked an effort to modernise as well as to protect the traditional arts from Western infiltration. Graduates from the Kridha Beksa Wirama eventually taught in the Taman Siswa schools, an educational system founded in 1922 that linked education and experimental pedagogy to the goals of Indonesian nationalism.

28 See the discussion in Sumarsam, Gamelan, especially ch. 3. The colonial bias in favour of'high' culture

appears to have dovetailed with a similar bias among highly educated Javanese; Margaret Kartomi, '"Tradi tional music weeps" and other themes in the discourse on music, dance, and theatre of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 26, 2 (1995): 372.

29 Jaap Kunst, Music in Java: Its history, its theory, and its technique, rev. edn (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973).

The information on Pigeaud is from Clara Brakel (personal communication). 30 Sears, Shadows of empire, p. 23 mentions the perception of Islam as a threatening

menace to Dutch colonial rule; see also Karel Steenbrink, Dutch colonialism and Indonesian Islam: Contacts and conflicts, 1596-1950 (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1993). 31

Lindsay, 'Klasik, kitsch', p. 16. A short account of the founding of Budi Utomo is included in Benedict

Anderson, 'A time of darkness and a time of light: Transposition in early Indonesian nationalist thought', in Reid and Marr ed., Perceptions of the past, pp. 220-2. The organization was founded in 1908 by teenage Javanese students and drew members from upper-class Java and the culturally similar islands

within close proximity (Bali and Madura). Anderson describes the organization as 'the earliest Indonesian

attempt to cope with the colonial condition in Western ("modern") ways' (p. 221).

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198 PAMELA MORO

The founder of the Taman Siswa schools was Ki Hadjar Dewantara, an educational

reformer and nationalist of aristocratic Javanese background who utilised Western

models of pedagogy and attitudes towards the arts to support a passionately anti

European stance. His schools incorporated systematic attempts to teach music theory and gamelan in classroom settings. Dewantara's complex visions of the arts in an emerg

ing Indonesia acknowledged the importance of non-Javanese regional cultures, yet were

often biased towards Java. He believed that Javanese court arts were truly on par with

European classical music, yet he also accepted the golden-age notion that true Javanese culture had ended with the Mataram kingdom and the beginning of Dutch control in the

eighteenth century. He was aware of the zeal among some Europeans (whom Lindsay

calls the 'Dutch officials and Java-Instituut culture-buffs') for Javanese and Eastern cul

ture, and tried to use their enthusiasm to lend prestige towards indigenous arts, which

had come to be looked down upon by some Western-educated Javanese. In this milieu,

'the way to strengthen Javanese culture, and to ensure its future, was to label it "national"

culture'.32

The Kridha Beksa Wirama and the Taman Siswa schools attempted to make

Javanese court music and dance available to a wider public through pedagogical experi ences that systematised and standardised, conforming to the pattern of classicisation

motivated by nationalism that we have encountered in South Asia. Classicisation implies a simultaneous movement towards standardisation at a 'high culture' level (advancing

prestige while enforcing conformity) and democratising or at least selectively spreading

opportunities for participation among a new social constituency. This joint movement

of classicisation similarly occurred in Indonesia through the founding of a school for

wayang, the shadow theatre which is one of the most important contexts for music in

Java and throughout Southeast Asia. Laurie J. Sears argues that the Padhasuka school

founded in 1923, while intended to erase differences between court and village styles,

essentially had the opposite effect, creating a distinct and highly standardised court

version of wayang as a response to Dutch scholarly attitudes and the preferences of

Dutch-educated Javanese. Sears similarly traces to 1923 the belief among Dutch

educated Javanese that the wayang tradition 'needed to be cleaned up, the stories needed

to be organised, and correct versions of them needed to be taught'.33

Concern about the preservation and promotion of Javanese performing arts reflects

the wider debate about the relationship between Java and and the rest of the Dutch East

Indies, and about the place of Western culture in what would eventually be a new, inde

pendent nation. During the early twentieth century, the first nationalists simply advo

cated culture that was not European, and a Java-based national culture was proposed

as an alternative to Western culture. It was initially unclear how much 'Westernisation'

should or would occur, either because it would be inevitable or because it could help

32 Lindsay, 'Klasik, kitsch', pp. 24 (culture-buffs) and 25 ('national' culture). The Java-Instituut

was one

of several learned societies that sponsored meetings, publications, lectures and performances, with mem

bership including Dutch-educated elite Javanese and Dutch Javanologists who admired what they

deemed

traditional culture. Dewantara's life has been well documented in his own writings as well as by scholars;

see Lindsay, 'Klasik, kitsch', pp. 20-6; McVey, 'Taman Siswa'; Savitri Prastiti Scherer, 'Harmony and disso

nance: Early nationalist thought in Java' (M.A. thesis, Cornell University, 1975), ch. 2; and Sumarsam,

Gamelan, ch. 3.

33 Sears, Shadows of empire, pp. 150-1 (quotation from p. 151).

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION AND THE CLASSICISATION OF MUSIC 199

prepare for independence. The elite-founded Budi Utomo naturally enough turned to

the Javanese court arts as something worthy of promotion. They were the most familiar

thing at hand that could be labelled as high culture, and it was not yet entirely possible to

envision an Indonesian national culture woven from threads of the entire East Indies.

Yet even within the Javanese elite there was no uniformity of opinion regarding the

promotion of the Javanese performing arts as part of a new national culture, particularly as the nationalist movement progressed. By the 1920s and 1930s, those envisioning national independence operated in an environment of hot intellectual debate. Promo

tion of an essentially Javanese nationalism began to diminish in favour of a more inclu

sive Indonesian identity, exemplified by the choice of Malay (which became Bahasa

Indonesia) rather than Javanese as the language of Indonesian nationalism and eventually the official language of the Archipelago. The late 1930s witnessed the Cultural Polemic, a lively exchange of views

- largely in print

- among nationalist intellectuals.34 Some felt

that Indonesians should search their own history for values and achievements on which

to base a national culture, evoking the past in the belief that cultural unity existed among the various indigenous polities prior to colonialism, an idea possible at least in part because of the Dutch-constructed images of the Hindu-Buddhist past in the Indies.

Some still asserted the primacy of a Java-based nationalism, resting on the supremacy and inherent worth of Javanese civilisation. Others criticised anything connected to

the Javanese courts as feudal and colonial in nature, sometimes extending skepticism towards any regional expression of culture, even from beyond the island. Within Java

itself, there was no uniformity of opinion, with individuals not connected to the courts or those from East Java (an area with its own rival court cultures) wary of potential

hegemony by those from the central region. Questions related to regionalism continued to affect the place of music and other

performing arts in post-1945 Indonesia. The sources of a national culture, and the

relative place of regional versus national forms of expression, were a significant concern

for the drafters of the Indonesian constitution, as painstakingly considered by Philip

Yampolsky. Little was done systematically until the 1970s to deal with the support and integration into the nation of regional cultures. From that time, however, the

government began a massive effort of cultural engineering, with a heavy emphasis on the

traditional (i.e., not pop or commercial) performing arts. The aim of much government intervention between the 1970s and 1990s, under Suharto, was to upgrade artistic quality through enforcement of standards for, as Yampolsky puts it, respectability.35 Such

movement has often strayed into display and spectacle, with an eye towards the self

representation of the nation for outsiders, for example through tourism. While in general such movements are subtly disparaged by scholars, Jennifer Lindsay has argued that

34 Mary S. Zurbuchen, 'Images of culture and national development in Indonesia: The Cockroach Opera', Asian Theatre Journal, 7, 2 (1990): 136 cites a collection of articles from 1935-9 selected from this famous

debate, first published in 1948: Achdiat K. Mihardja, Polemik kebudayaan (Jakarta: Pustaka Jaya, 1986 reprint). Some of the issues remain unsettled, and the Jakarta Arts Council held a symposium revisiting the

cultural polemic theme in 1986 (Zurbuchen, p. 148). 35 Philip Yampolsky, 'Forces for change in the regional performing arts of Indonesia', Bijdragen

tot

de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde [henceforth BKI], 151, 2 (1995): 711. Sutton, Traditions of gamelan is a

book-length examination of music and regional identity on Java, with a focus upon the diversity of musical

traditions in East Java and the implications of government arts policies.

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200 PAMELA MORO

government intervention and control of the arts in Indonesia do not constitute an

aberration, but rather are rooted in a long-standing cultural tradition, documentable

throughout Southeast Asia.36

Thailand

There is no doubt that the court tradition of music and related performing arts in

Thailand is classical in the senses developed in this article. Indeed, the current Website

of Thailand's own Office of the National Culture Commission invokes a familiar

dichotomy, separating 'Classical Music' and 'Classical Performance' from 'Folk Music'

and 'Folk Performance' in a succinct presentation of the nation's arts heritage.37 Yet while

the path to 'classical' status leads to many of the same issues we have seen in India and

Indonesia, it diverges in intriguing ways due to Thailand's atypical experience with

nationalism in the Asian context. The most striking difference is that court tradition

music, while classicised in many of the ways seen in earlier examples, was not embraced

as an emblem of nationalism. It was, in fact, studiously set aside in favor of highly Westernised musical forms until the last decades of the twentieth century, when it caught

the attention of a nostalgic, identity-seeking urban middle class.

During the period when Indian and Indonesian independence movements struggled over the place of the court arts in modern society, Thailand wrestled with tension not

between coloniser and colonised but between the monarchy and an increasingly power ful bureaucracy. This tension ultimately led to the coup d'?tat of 1932 and the change to

constitutional monarchy. Since that time, the former court arts have retained strong associations with monarchy and past-oriented constructions of identity, which postulate a sort of High Culture of Old Siam.38 In order to understand the belated embrace of

classical music by the Thai middle class, it will be helpful here to examine just what was

different in the emergence of Thailand's modern national identity. 'The central twist to the plot of most Thai historical narratives revolves around the

simple fact that the country was never formally colonised by a European power', writes

David Streckfuss, pointing out the common notion that Thailand has had an unbroken

history, untainted by colonial powers, and thus never had to wake up to the idea of itself

as a nation.39 Yet the kingdom has been intensely concerned with the construction of

national identity and the extension of hegemony through a centralised culture, a move

ment first found under the nineteenth-century kings and again -

strongly - under

both the twentieth-century monarchy and parliamentary government. Thailand's sense

36 Jennifer Lindsay, 'Cultural policy and the performing arts in Southeast Asia', BKI, 152, 2 (1995):

656-71. On tourism see Heidi Dahles, Tourism, heritage and national culture in Java: Dilemmas of a

local community (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001); and Tourism, ethnicity, and the state in Asian

and Pacific societies, ed. Michel Picard and Robert E. Wood (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997),

pp. 181-214.

37 See www.culture.go.th 38 Penny Van Esterik, Materializing Thailand (Oxford: Berg, 2000), p. 125; Benedict Anderson, 'Studies of

the Thai state: The state of Thai studies', in The study of Thailand: Analyses of knowledge, approaches, and

prospects in anthropology, art history, economics, history, and political science, ed. Eliezer Ayal (Athens, OH:

Ohio University Southeast Asia Programme, 1978), p. 227.

39 David Streckfuss, 'The mixed colonial legacy in Siam: Origins of Thai racialist thought, 1890-1910', in

Autonomous histories, particular truths: Essays in honor of John R. W. Smail, ed. Laurie J. Sears (University of

Wisconsin: Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, 1993), p. 123.

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION AND THE CLASSICISATION OF MUSIC 201

of nation developed through avoiding colonialism; instead, it 'learned' territorial nation

alism through boundary disputes with its British and French colonial neighbours and the encounter with European conceptions of geography and the new technology of

mapping.40 The Bangkok-based dynasty, founded in 1782, was its own colonial power in the

nineteenth century, drawing neighbouring peoples around its periphery into its sphere. Reminiscent of the strategies of early Indian and Indonesian nationalist writers, the

elite sought legitimacy through constructing its past in progressively earlier and earlier

periods. Siamese rulers from the mid-nineteenth century collected ancient manuscripts and inscriptions, in order to craft 'the concept of a specific "Thai" or "Siamese" people

who had dominated the Chaophraya Plain for centuries and who had a tradition of king

ship extending back to the beginnings of their history'; the specifically racial or ethnic nature of such a conception has been asserted by Streckfuss.41

What resulted was the idea of a single linear tradition of kingship from the thir

teenth century, extending hegemony over the various ethnic minorities and smaller

kingdoms which dotted the territory. Other nineteenth-century attempts to build the

nation included centralisation of Buddhist institutions, standardisation of the newly

emerging school curriculum and promotion of a standard Thai language. The late

nineteenth-century kings, Mongkut (Rama IV, r. 1851-68) and Chulalongkorn (Rama V, r. 1868-1910), gradually removed ritual and ideological barriers which had separated the monarchy from the people, intensifying the concept of nation as a people living

together within a defined geographic space under one king.42

Perhaps most significantly, given the changes that were to come in the twentieth

century, the absolutist state promoted by Rama V rested on a newly created bureaucracy. While the top levels of the bureaucracy as well as the military were filled with members

of the aristocracy (a sizeable population, actually, due to the prodigious numbers of children fathered by the nineteenth-century kings), in the early 1900s the bureaucracy expanded rapidly. This growth was fed by the emergence of Western-modelled schools

whose students initially were of royal blood but grew to include affluent Chinese families -

who had begun to prosper under changing economic conditions in nineteenth-century Siam - provincial nobility and eventually families of lower status. The power of this new

bureaucracy was unchecked by any legislature or judiciary, and held enormous prestige from its royal patronage and aristocratic core.43

It was under the monarchy-based nationalism of King Vajiravudh (Rama VI, r. 1910-25) and the Western-modelled visions of Prime Minister Phibun Songkhram shortly after the 1932 revolution that music and other performing arts enter the picture

40 Craig J. Reynolds, 'Introduction: National identity and its defenders', in National identity and its

defenders: Thailand, 1939-1989, ed. Craig J. Reynolds (Clayton: Monash Centre of Southeast Asian Studies,

1991), p. 22 (boundary disputes); Thongchai Winichakul, Siam mapped: A history of the geo-body of a nation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994.) 41 Streckfuss, 'Mixed colonial legacy'; the quotation is from Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker, Thailand: Economy and politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 233. 42 Ibid., p. 234. Standardization and propagation of Central Thai as a national language

were furthered

considerably in the 1930s and 1940s; Anthony Diller, 'What makes Central Thai a national language?' in

Reynolds ed., National identity, pp. 87-132.

43 Pasuk and Baker, Thailand, pp. 235-9.

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202 PAMELA MORO

prominently. Rama VI escalated earlier extensions of a high culture oriented towards

Bangkok and the Central Thai language. Fascinated with ancient India and its texts, he paved the way for younger scholars to look towards a Sanskritic past, and himself

connected the Indian sage Bharata Rishi (credited with receiving classical dance positions from the deity Shiva) to the Thai musicians' most important deity, Old Father (Phau Kae, Phra Pharotr?si, Phra R?si).u

Vajiravudh's reign is considered a sort of golden age for performers of the court arts, and today's musicians fondly take a nostalgic view of the king's patronage and devotion.

He drew musicians and other court performers into the bureaucracy by creating a

centralised Department of Royal Entertainments and spent large amounts of revenue in

support of the arts, for reasons very much connected to the propagation of elite court

traditions as part of a unifying national culture.

The King purposefully centralized all royal entertainment and dramatic activities around

his own person in order to use them, not only for his own

pleasure and entertainment...

but more so for his political schemes and ideas, and as a means to

strengthen and glorify the

institution of the absolute monarchy and to propagate concepts of national unity and

patriotism with a great pride in Thai cultural heritage.45

It was during the time of Vajiravudh that Nation, Religion and King became linked so

strongly that disloyalty to one was disloyalty to all three, an ideology that has persisted

throughout the last century. While for financial reasons lavish royal support for the court arts diminished under

Rama VI's successor, King Prajadhipok (Rama VII, r. 1925-35), the crucial change in the

position of classical music in Thailand did not come until after the 1932 revolution. The

embryonic middle class had been particularly hard hit by the world economic crisis of

the 1930s, and resented the king's monopoly of power; a small group of anti-royalists seized control of the country, though stopping short of abolishing the monarchy.46 In

1934 the parliamentary government moved former court performers to the new Depart

ment of Fine Arts, headed by the highly influential nationalist figure and composer of

Western-style patriotic music, Luang Wichit Watakarn. As Deborah Wong points out,

this major change of patronage from court to civil service turned authoritative teacher

performers into administrators, as highly respected musicians and dancers became

bureaucratic division heads, though she also shows that the symbolic and ritual relation

ship between the royal family and musicians has remained essentially unchanged to

this day. Both the Department of Fine Arts and its associated training academy,

44 Deborah Wong, Sounding the centre: History and aesthetics in Thai Buddhist performance (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 241. Sulak Sivaraksa, 'The crisis of Siamese identity', in Reynolds ed.,

National identity, p. 44, mentions Vajiravudh's fascination with India. Of the many works on this period,

Walter Vella's account of nationalism under King Vajiravudh is considered standard: Chaiyol King

Vajiravudh and the development of Thai nationalism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1978). The

articles in Reynolds ed., National identity, deal with the period from the Phibun government up through the 1980s.

45 Mattani Rojdara Rutnin, 'Politics of Thai classical dance-drama during the reign of King Rama VI',

Ratthasat san, S, 2 (1982): 126-55; quoted in Wong, Sounding the centre, p. 239.

46 Charles F. Keyes, Thailand: Buddhist kingdom as modern nation-state (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987),

pp. 61-3.

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION AND THE CLASSICISATION OF MUSIC 203

the Wittayalay Natasin, were located under the Ministry of Education, and thus the train

ing of musicians and dancers in the court traditions came under the authority of the

government.47

The performing arts became a focal point in top-down efforts to create a modern, national Thai culture under the leadership of Prime Minister Phibun, especially during his first government (1938-44). Phibun implemented extensive programmes for build

ing national identity but, significantly, did not draw upon the court traditions of perfor mance. Rather, his cultural reform programmes set them aside, to be preserved as part of

national heritage.

In fact, both court and regional traditions were more or less ignored in preference for

Western invented traditions - rather like the Thai preference for building a new temple instead of restoring

an old one. Phibun's nationalism was intended to erode the traditional

hegemony of the monarchy... and thus it is not surprising that he should not look to the

court traditions for unifying cultural symbols.48

Dance and theatrical forms came under close scrutiny of the government, and were

subjected to a number of controls through efforts to modernise and standardise per formance, all conceived by Department of Fine Arts administrators with backgrounds in Western theatre.49 A new form of social dancing, modelled on Western styles, was

popularised, accompanied by music with patriotic lyrics.

Presenting the life of one of the most renowned musicians in twentieth-century Thailand, Deborah Wong provides a glimpse of the impact of Phibun's policies on the

former court music. In 1940, Montri Tram?te was appointed the first head of the Thai

Music Division within the Department of Fine Arts. While an outstanding performer of

Thai music, Montri also had a background in Western music. He had an official role as a

government censorship officer, and took part in a committee charged with standardising Thai vocabulary for Western music terms. A prolific composer in both Western and Thai

styles, during the Phibun period Montri composed a set of'historical' or 'archaeological'

pieces representing past eras of Siamese history, as well as pieces in the styles of other

nations. Revered and recognised as a National Artist near the end of his very long life, in the 1990s Montri still commanded profound respect from other musicians and the

nation. Wong observes that

Montri was essentially a classical Thai musician fortunate enough to have other talents

during a difficult period of Thai history... I have never heard any criticism of the decisions

he made [during the Phibun era.] Many performers' careers were ruined during those

years, and those who weathered the period were considered lucky. Most returned to,

or

tried to revive, traditional performance practices once it was all over.50

47 Mattani Mojdara Rutnin, Dance, drama, and theatre in Thailand: The process of development and

modernization (Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies for Unesco, 1993), p. 189; Wong, Sounding the centre, pp. 204-8.

48 Van Esterik, Materializing Thailand, p. 101; the Phibun era is summarized, with an emphasis on

gender, on pp. 100-7. See also Charnvit Kasetsiri, 'The first Phibun government and its involvement in World War

II', Journal of the Siam Society, 62, 2 (1974): 25-88.

49 Mattani, Dance, drama, pp. 190-2; Suraphon Virulrak, 'Likay: a

popular theatre in Thailand' (Ph.D.

diss., University of Hawaii, 1980), pp. 90-7.

50 Wong, Sounding the centre, pp. 189-91.

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204 PAMELA MORO

She also recounts the story, familiar to musicians today, of the composition entitled

'Heavy Thoughts' by Luang Pradit Phairau, perhaps the most illustrious composer of

the twentieth century. The piece was intended as a lament for the state of classical music

under Phibun. While the work's lyrics are drawn from an old Thai epic, its meaning is made unmistakable in Luang Pradit Phairau's collected works, where it is printed

overlaying a photograph of Phibun.51

In sum, the nationalist projects of the Phibun era were efforts to strengthen and

unify (or uniform-ise) the Thai nation - to mask cultural heterogeneity, to regulate

foreign influences and colonial threats and to control the image of the nation abroad -

rather than attempts to overthrow colonial rule or a Western power. Thailand does not

show either the whole-hearted embrace of court music by the middle class characteristic

of India or the attempt by elites to widen participation in former court arts in Indonesia

(accompanied by lively intellectual debate about national culture, and about the place of

old centres of power, whether in Java or Europe). Rather, the Phibun government took a

top-down approach to culture change, fashioned after the mandates which formerly came from kings, using the West as a model. We nonetheless find in post-1932 Thailand

many of the features of classicisation associated with the examples of music in India and

Indonesia. The move to train performers through a modern school curriculum at

Wittayalay Natasin campuses that eventually came to be located throughout the nation,

signals an opening of the arts to the general public. To Mattani Mojdara Rutnin this

meant a transfer 'to the hands of a new middle-class elite', though the extent to which any

genuine middle class actually became involved with the former court arts at mid-century

is debatable.52

Phibun's efforts to standardise and create norms for the theatre arts suggest the kind

of cleaning-up and 'normalising' described as part of classicisation by Chatterjee. Intel

lectual projects connected to Thai music during this period conform to a familiar pattern

as well. The Thai Music Manuscript Project was a well-organised attempt to record

classical music with Western staff notation between 1930 and 1942, and involved a com

mittee of highly placed musicians active in both Thai and European music, all connected

to the Department of Fine Arts; the project and its sociohistorical context have recently been documented by Panya Roongruang. The project

was spurred by the idea that Thai

repertory was being lost under the pressure of Western influences, a perception largely

based on study of an Ayutthaya-era list of repertory titles (that is, repertory from the

time before Bangkok became the capital with the founding of the current dynasty).53

A number of Thai writers -

again leading figures connected to the Department of Fine

Arts such as Prince Damrong, Luang Wichit Watakarn and Phra Chen Duriyanga, a key

figure in the introduction of European music to Thailand -

began writing short works on

Thai music during this period as well, often in English and based on Western analytical

models.

As was true in India and Indonesia, language provides a strong indication of the

classicisation of music in Thailand. Historiography of vocabulary relating to Thai music

51 Ibid., pp. 310-11 note 62.

52 Mattani, Dance, drama, p. 250.

53 Panya Roongruang, 'Thai classical music and its movement from oral to written transmission,

1930-1942: Historical context, method, and legacy of the Thai music manuscript project' (Ph.D. diss.,

Kent State University, 1999), p. 152.

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION AND THE CLASSICISATION OF MUSIC 205

is incomplete, and at this time one can only make educated guesses regarding the devel

opment of various terms designating the court tradition of music. Nonetheless, language reveals both an elevation of musical status and an emblematic identification of court

tradition music as Thai music, in opposition to a universal or global music. The most

general term for music is 'dontri?, while the word cphleng' can refer to a single com

position or musical work or appear as part of the designations for various commercial

or folk musics. Both of these terms are standard vocabulary and musicians use them on

an everyday basis. However, more elegant Sanskrit- or Pali-derived terms are sometimes

substituted for dontrii to refer specifically to classical music, especially in print, for

example in the titles of books or on recordings: 'sangkhiit' and 'duriyaang, along with

the verb 'hanleeng (to perform). These words are noticeably of'ancient Indian' origin, and suggest the location of high musical status in ancient Indie civilisation. One can

speculate that these high-status words possibly were attached to music during the reign of King Vajiravudh, who gave resplendent-sounding Sanskrit- and Pali-derived names

-

often making reference to musical sounds and skills - to the musicians of his time, and

whose interest in ancient Indian texts has already been discussed. While there is no genu ine body of European colonial scholarship to draw upon in Thailand, the word 'khlassik'

occurs occasionally, and 'Thai classical music' is used by Thai speakers of English.54 Other vocabulary hints not at the classicisation of Thai music but at its emblematic

role in connection to identity. Most commonly, classical music is referred to as 'dontrii

Thai' or 'Thai music', signifying a correspondence of this very music with Thai-ness.

It is not pop music that is 'Thai' (and yet clearly it is, and there is abundant evidence

for this in print usage and in the electronic media, including the World Wide Web), but

rather the government- and school-patronised former court music that holds pride of

place. By oral accounts, it was during the Phibun era that the less common phrase 'phleng Thai doem arose; cdoem is a word meaning original and previous. This term for the

'older', 'original' Thai music - the court tradition of music

- contrasted with 'phleng Thai

saakon, the newly created and commercially disseminated songs in Western style, origi

nally connected to the Thai film industry. The word 'saakon (sometimes transliterated

sakol) became prominent in a variety of contexts during the 1930s and 1940s, conflating 'universal' and 'Western', hinting at the modern, the new. Of the Phibun period, Sulak

Sivaraksa has noted that 'indeed anything sakol (universal) meant Western'.55 The stark

contrast between the universality of things Western - as promoted by Phibun's mandates

- and the specific, local rootedness of Thai classical music, could not be clearer.

Over the past few decades, the classical music of Thailand has continued to be

supported by a variety of government departments and offices, including the prestigious

Department of Fine Arts. Since the 1960s, the Ministry of Education, the Office of the

Prime Minister, the National Culture Commission and the National Identity Board have

treated court tradition music as part of the tool-kit of national identity, often through

externally oriented presentations of culture. These offices have issued various serial

54 European observers did not neglect music in Thailand, however. See Terry E. Miller and Jarernchai

Chonpairot, 'A history of Siamese music reconstructed from Western sources, 1505-1932', Crossroads,

8, 2 (1994) (special issue) for discussion of Western sources on Siamese music over four centuries.

Vajiravudh's creation and conferral of names on civil servants was a kind of personal hobby; see Pamela

Myers-Moro, 'Names and civil service titles of Siamese musicians', Asian Music, 19, 2 (1988): 82-92.

55 Sulak, 'Crisis of Siamese identity', p. 51.

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206 PAMELA MORO

publications popularising the notion of a cherished Thai civilisation -

underscoring the

role of the monarchy as custodian of what is dear and shared by all Thai - and often

include articles on classical music.56 Since 1985, Thailand has recognised National Artists

annually, including musicians. The extension of classical music and Bangkok-generated

high culture has continued through the newer Wittayalay Natasin campuses, which by the 1980s were located in all regions of the nation.

However, alongside this top-down inclusion of classical music in the national imagi nation, a most remarkable change of patronage has occurred. Beginning haltingly in the

1970s but gaining momentum strongly in the 1980s and 1990s, a movement developed in

the urban middle class to embrace Thai classical music, treated now very much as a high art, a canon distinctive to the Thai. The education system has emerged as the primary

patron; by the 1990s it provided musical training not only through the Wittayalay Natasin but through numerous university programmes, graduate degree programmes and ubiquitous ensembles in children's schools, both public and private.57 Middle-class

families now often expect their children to become proficient in a Thai musical instru

ment and/or classical dance, frequently alongside training in Western or 'global' music, and some middle-class adults play Thai music recreationally. My own research in 1992

on musical instrument manufacturing discovered a profusion of instrument factories as

well as independent artisans, surprising even to my musician friends who had thought that the craft might be in decline. Instrument manufacturers

- especially those who

operated wage-labor factories -

invariably attributed the great demand in instruments to

the new school music programmes. Many observers within and outside Thailand credit

Crown Princess Sirindhorn with stimulating interest in classical music as both patron and performer; however, it is likely that her participation is part of, rather than directly

responsible for, the middle-class turn of interest.

The growth of a significant middle class did not begin in Thailand until after 1950,

generated by the expansion of occupations in trade, banking, manufacturing and the

bureaucracy. Furthered by the economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s, a middle-class

identity coalesced through such factors as college education, studying in the United

States, reading the same periodicals, settlement in Bangkok's new housing developments and shared leisure activities.58 It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the classicised, court tradition of Thai music was only marginally connected to national identity until

56 Reynolds, 'Introduction', in Reynolds ed., National identity, pp. 14-15; in a related research project,

I hope to survey the treatment of music in these publications. 57 Deborah Wong describes how the shift of patronage

to the educational system radically alters the

relationship between teachers and students of music, especially in terms of the wai khruu rituals enacted

by musicians (Sounding the centre, p. 211).

58 Keyes, Thailand: Buddhist kingdom, p. 170. While Western-style college education in Thailand initially

prepared graduates to enter the bureaucracy, this had changed by the mid-1980s, when the workforce

required training for technical and professional occupations. The rapid expansion of tertiary enrollments

provides a clear picture of how the middle class grew. In 1961, there

were about 15,000 students enrolled

in five state universities, but by 1990 over 360,000 students were enrolled in 30-40 state and private univer

sities. The middle class is particularly concentrated in Bangkok, where by the mid-1990s more than half

the city's population was considered middle or higher income; Kevin Hewison, 'Emerging social forces

in Thailand: New political and economic roles', in The new rich in Asia: Mobile phones, McDonald's

and middle-class revolution, ed. Richard Robison and David S. G. Goodman (London: Routledge, 1996),

pp. 144-5, 151.

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION AND THE CLASSICISATION OF MUSIC 207

the emergence of a sizeable and economically powerful middle class. This thoroughly

globalised and self-conscious group has reached back beyond the Phibun era, actively

seeking an identity in Siamese royal culture.

Thus music has become part of the tool-kit of national identity, in the sense offered

by Orvar L?fgren, along with high and/or regional cuisines, elite Siamese fashion, tradi

tional painting and decorative ornamentation and -

particularly as practised by young females - dance.59 The Thai global diaspora has undoubtedly played

a role in drafting these icons, just as participation by Thai-Americans in international beauty pageants has

shaped conceptions of gender and beauty back in Thailand.60 One young, Bangkok-born woman told me in the early 1990s, "When I went away to college in the U.S., I realized I

had better learn some Thai classical dance because I would be asked to perform," for

example at university multicultural celebrations and international fairs. Finally, tourism

emerged as a profoundly significant part of the Thai economy during these same decades,

creating both literal and figurative stages for presentations of the Thai nation through the

classicised performing arts.

Concluding thoughts One of the goals of the present work has been the development of a model for

the comparison of the process of classicisation in the performing arts. This explicitly

comparative approach deserves some comment. My own field of anthropology and its

sister disciplines have suffered a somewhat checkered history with the comparative method, and during the last few decades of the twentieth century comparison seemed

to have largely fallen out of favour. However, recent critical reassessments suggest a revival of comparative work in anthropology, or at least cautious recognition that

comparison never really died out.61 Newer perspectives on comparison, however, do not

seek to revive the HRAF-style holocultural studies of the 1950s, or the stage theories of

evolutionism - the two most prominent earlier comparative approaches. Andr? Gingrich makes a plea, instead, for a methodology of'self-reflexive, controlled macrocomparison':

self-reflexive in its inclusion of elements from the researcher's own society, controlled

in its careful selection of examples to be compared under identified conditions and

'macro' in its examination of cases beyond the most immediate, local level.62 Gingrich's

macrocomparative perspective, like my own here, is of a medium range, with cases

drawn from not-too-distant time periods or sociocultural milieu. I share his aim for a

qualitative comparison that can both illuminate local cases and potentially enrich our

understanding of theoretical issues.

That the cases of classicised music in connection to nationalism in India, Indonesia

and Thailand can profitably be compared is hopefully clear. I would like to raise the

possibility of extending such comparison to other Asian examples, and leave the reader to

consider in what ways these processes might help us understand (or, provocatively, not

59 Orvar L?fgren, 'The nationalization of culture', Ethnologia Europaea, 19, 5 (1989): 5-24.

60 Van Esterik, Materializing Thailand, pp. 148-50.

61 Anthropology, by comparison, ed. Andr? Gingrich and Richard G. Fox (New York: Routledge, 2002); Laura Nader, 'Comparative consciousness', in Assessing cultural anthropology, ed. Robert Borofsky (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), pp. 84-94.

62 Andr? Gingrich, 'When ethnic minorities are "dethroned": Towards a methodology of self-reflexive,

controlled macrocomparison', in Gingrich and Fox ed., Anthropology, by comparison, p. 233.

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208 PAMELA MORO

understand) processes of musical change in other parts of the globe. Several nations

might illuminate different facets of this inquiry. While music has figured in China's

revolutionary nationalism, the quest in twentieth-century China has been to establish a

national musical canon, but not one based on classicisation. It is possible that something similar to what is explored here may have been in operation in pre-modern China, in

connection with a different type of nationalism.63 In the Philippines, efforts to develop a national musical identity have been relatively recent; institutional support largely fosters Western art music (including a Philippine identity within that tradition). Late nineteenth-century intellectuals who advocated sovereignty and an independent

Philippine identity recognised the usefulness of national culture as a means of forging

political unity, but music held a problematic position. Most forms of music in the region were syncretic, reflecting the long period of Spanish and later US colonialism. The

interplay of acculturated musical forms, region-specific musics, colonial knowledge and

Philippine nationalism of the Spanish and American periods should yield interesting similarities and contrasts to the themes identified elsewhere in Southeast Asia.64

Another South Asian example comes from Pakistan, where the relationship between

music and national identity is shaped overwhelmingly by the assertion of Muslim iden

tity and the negation of anything identified with India, placing the shared, classicised

musical tradition of north India in an ambivalent position. In the mid-twentieth century Radio Pakistan was the major cultural institution, disseminating a new kind of national

music (a choral song genre based on Urdu verse); the Sufi genre qawwali has had long

popularity as a kind of grassroots national music and during the 1990s burst into interna

tional prominence in the world music scene. There have been efforts to reinterpret musi

cal history based on the ancient Indus Valley civilisation, and on West Asian and Islamic

influences,65 which hint at parallels to the sort of past-oriented constructions encoun

tered in our primary examples. Clearly, some of the same ideological processes are at

work in Pakistan, even though the classicised tradition shared with north India has most

emphatically not been embraced as music representing the nation.

Comparative perspectives What do we learn by examining the classicisation of music in India, Indonesia,

and Thailand? Examining the three cases together, it is impossible to make sweeping

63 Sue Tuohy, 'The sonic dimensions of nationalism in modern China: Musical representation and trans

formation', Ethnomusicology, 45,1 (2001): 107-31; Frank Kouwenkouen writes of ancient China's attempts to reinforce social and political cohesion

across a vast geographical area: c[M]usical emblems of China and

Chineseness were used by the authorities to project an

image of cultural and political unity upon the entire

nation, even if part of the music was created in interaction with foreign cultures and foreign tongues'; Frank Kouwenkouen, 'Barbarian pipes forever: Some thoughts

on Chinese culture and nationalism',

Chime, Newsletter of the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research, 10-11 (1997): 4.

64 Ricardo D. Trimillos, 'Philippine music as colonial experience and national culture', in The age of

discovery: Impact on

Philippine culture and society, ed. Belinda A. Aquino and Dean T. Alegado (Manoa:

University of Hawaii Centre for Philippine Studies, 1992), pp. 17-24; Trimillos, 'Cultural identity, preser

vation, and conservation in the Philippines: Research encounters with past colonial and present cultural

policy', in 'Lux oriente': Begegnungen der Kulturen in der Musikforschung: Festschrift Robert G?nther zum

65. Geburtstag ed. Klaus Wolfgang Niem?ller et al. (Kassel: G. Bosse Verlag, 1995), pp. 71-7. See also

Jos? Maceda, 'Music in Southeast Asia: Tradition, nationalism, innovation', Cultures (Unesco), 1, 3 (1974):

75-94.

65 Regula Qureshi, 'Pakistan: Music, the state, and Islam', in Arnold ed., Garland encyclopedia, pp.

744-50; Qureshi, 'Pakistan: Music and nationality', entry in Sadie ed., New Grove dictionary.

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION AND THE CLASSICISATION OF MUSIC 209

generalisations about the relationship between classicisation and emergent nationalism.

There is no single 'kind' of nationalism even within any single nation we might examine, and historical particularities keep the positions of classicised music in India, Indonesia

and Thailand distinct. Yet if we stand far enough back, we can see broad issues consistent

in all the examples, features that if not identical still have been in motion and have been

fluid in some way. In all three examples, a process of classicisation is noticeably consistent. Music and

other performing arts once patronised by royal courts are subjected to a set of regulari

sing, systematising means. These include the creation of rational models of analysis based

on Western-style scholarship, so that authoritative musical knowledge rests on scientific

theory rather than contemporary musical practice such as that inherited from gurus. Transmission through Western-modelled schools and curricula, the invention and use of

musical notation and the dissemination of notation through print media are all related

phenomena. All of these processes involve the indigenisation of colonial or other external

knowledge - as evidenced in vocabulary regarding music

- which never comes without

ideological baggage. To a greater or lesser degree in the three cases, court tradition music

came to be considered 'degraded' and in need of 'elevation' through these processes, in

order to assert its worth in comparison to European musics. In all our examples, primary

patronage of music moved away from royal courts, and music was bureaucratised under

the civil government and/or modern educational system. With some variations among the three cases, new audiences rose through, for example, public concerts, music confer

ences and tourism. In all cases, though the precise timing of these changes and the degree to which they remain contested varies, classicised music became an emblem of national

identity, whether or not it had - or perhaps precisely because it had not

- shaken its

symbolic associations with elite power-holders. What accounts for the similarities among our three cases? To note that the three

share certain features and that India was the earliest and most compact example in terms

of the complete embrace of classicised music by the nationalist movement is not to

suggest that the phenomena studied here spread from India across Southeast Asia, as

in historical interpretations of old. On the other hand, Asian countries did not exist in

geo-historical vacuums during the colonial period, and the various nationalist move

ments of the region (or even globally) were aware of and to some degree inspired by one

another. A better answer probably lies in the globalisation of the late nineteenth century,

paradoxically operating at the same time as the localising visions of nationalism. Borrow

ing an idea from Carol Breckenridge, Maurizio Peleggi writes of how Western-derived

transnational trends such as capitalism, colonialism, ideological constructs (such as

the idea of progress) and technological inventions (like photography) contributed to

unifying a global cultural elite; he traces the effects of such movements in late nineteenth

century Siam, especially on the image of the monarchy.66 It is likely that the set of

ideas and institutional changes we are calling classicisation were part of this global flow, including the ironic mixing of Western-derived phenomena with constructions of a

classical Indie past in India, Indonesia and Thailand.

66 Maurizio Peleggi, Lords of things: The fashioning of the Siamese monarchy's modern image (Honolulu:

University of Hawaii Press, 2002).

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210 PAMELA MORO

It is informative as well to look at what differs among the examples. Two key factors

might account for some of the differences in the three cases. First is the nature and timing of the appearance of a sizeable urban middle class, and its relationship to nationalism.

Such a class arose early in India, adopting classical music and propelling the indepen dence movement. There was no comparable class in Siam at the time, and the move

away from absolute monarchy was carried out by a small circle within the bureaucracy. Indonesia's middle class likewise grew late in the twentieth century yet has apparently not

turned to court tradition music to assert national identity. The Indonesian situation is

complex, in that the central state supports classicised Javanese culture, and some elite and

would-be elite Javanese still use the court tradition music to uphold status, but there has

not been a substantial middle class turn towards the music.67 Despite the extensive cul

tural engineering of the late twentieth century, tension between centre and periphery in

Indonesia is still too intense for Javanese music -

bearing the imprimatur of old Javanese

power and Dutch patronage - to become a genuinely middle-class and pan-Indonesian

phenomenon.

The effect of colonial support for a classical art form brings us to the second major factor which might account for the particularities of our three examples, and that is

the position of colonial power-holders and/or old elites vis-?-vis emerging nationalism

and twentieth-century national culture. The hegemony of the colonial-era Javanese elite

and the Dutch, both promoters of Javanese high culture including court music - even in

connection to emerging nationalism -

has complicated the position of Javanese music

in contemporary Indonesia. In India, the British had taken relatively little interest in

Indian music. The intellectuals and middle-class adopters of music were interested

in crafting a specifically 'Hindu' nationalism, shaking music loose from its 'degraded'

position under Mughal leaders (at least in north India); this is why it was necessary for

music to be 'raised' and 'improved' through Western-modelled changes in performance,

scholarly analysis and instruction. The music emerged without being stigmatised as elite

culture. Those who promoted the classicisation of music in connection to Indian nation

alism were, eventually, separating themselves from both the British and the previous

power-holders.

In Thailand, the anti-monarchical civil government after 1932 favored Western

modelled nationalistic music, consistent with the overall plan for modernisation. Having no use for classical music to validate their own position as power-holders, they bureau

cratised music, continuing a process which had actually begun under the Siamese kings,

especially Rama VI, just as - in slightly different ways

- the monarchy had been increas

ingly basing its legitimacy on Westernisation. The profound growth of the Thai middle

class in the late twentieth century has occurred at the same time as the rehabilitation of

the Thai monarchy in the eyes of the public and nation, with the royal family excelling in

what Peleggi calls 'moral capital'.68 The Thai middle class is very happy to share this royal

style, including participation in classical music.

67 Barbara Hatley, 'Constructions of "tradition" in New Order Indonesian theatre', in Culture and society

in New Order Indonesia, ed. Virginia Matheson Hooker (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1993),

pp. 48-9; John Pemberton, 'Musical politics in central Java (or how not to listen to a Javanese gamelan)',

Indonesia, 44 (1987): 17-29; Zurbuchen, 'Images of culture', p. 137. On the middle class see Richard

Robison, 'The middle class and the bourgeoisie in Indonesia', in Robison and Goodman, eds., New rich in

Asia, pip. 79-104.

68 Peleggi, Lords of things, p. 166.

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CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATION AND THE CLASSICISATION OF MUSIC 211

As presented here, the concept of classicisation necessarily implies a vision of the

past, a past which is authoritative. Thus classicised music makes sense not just as a badge of nationality (like flags, foods and folk dances) but as a means of validating power and status for elites, would-be elites and the rising middle classes. Cris Shore has noted that elites mobilise history, tradition and heritage 'to shroud themselves with the veil of legiti

macy and to define the social and political boundaries of inclusion and exclusion'.69

Classical performing arts - similar to standardised language and centralised religious

institutions - have been means to simultaneously validate social position and to extend a

centralised culture within national boundaries. They are not invented traditions, but they most certainly can serve as cultural capital.70

69 Cris Shore, 'Introduction: Towards an anthropology of elites', in Elite cultures: Anthropological perspectives, ed. Cris Shore and Stephen Nugent (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 16.

70 The invention of tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

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