MUSIK ISLAMI IN THE CONTEXT OF WEST JAVA

The concept of musik Islami in West Java is contested through various meanings following social political changes in the region. Regional autonomy is one factor that has given a political resonance to many

The lawfulness of music in contemporary Indonesian debate 367 aspects of society in the post-Reform era.

A striking example for this contestation is found in the Institute of Indonesian Arts and Culture (Institut Seni Budaya Indonesia/ISBI) Bandung. I discovered some paradoxical views regarding the term. Some scholars and musicians tended to avoid Arabic symbols in their art works, and considered Islam as an inspiration in producing their creative works, opening their works to local traditions as a result. In this case, they would prefer for example tembang Sunda (Sundanese classical music) as Islami, claiming that it is Islami because of its substantive meaning rather than its external meanings or surface symbols.

Furthermore, the controversial case of the West Java governor and jaipong dance mentioned in the introduction exemplifies tension between Islam and performing arts.

Those people dedicated to the preservation of traditional genres, such as my colleagues at ISBI Bandung, believe that traditional values of Sundanese in arts are in accordance with Islamic values, and as such can be called Islami. This is what can be found in tembang Sunda, as far as Yus Wiradireja (tembang Sunda singer and the founder of Ath-Athawaf group) is concerned. He argues that tembang Sunda songs contain Islamic values, such as human relationship with God (hablum minallah),

human relationship with others (hablum minannas) and human relation­ships with the environment.^[1294] This statement is also strengthened by the fact that tembang Sunda was created in an Islamic environment; its performers, audiences and patrons are all considered to be Muslim.^[1295]

However, according to the categorisations created within Sundanese music, tembang Sunda cannot be categorised as musik Islami because no specific Islamic idioms are used; furthermore, the work is not intended as ‘Islamic’ or ‘to be Islamic’. In this way, Islami in music need to register in any kind of Islamic symbols, including those displayed visually on stage. This is the reason why Yus Wiradireja was motivated to form the Sundanese Islamic music group ‘Ath-Thawaf’. He argues that he needed to express his tembang Sunda inspiration, which he believes still has contextual meaning in the present era, through another medium of expression. By doing this, this inspiration could be recognised by the younger generation for whom tembang Sunda might no longer be attractive.^[1296]

Yus Wiradireja transferred the spirit of tembang Sunda to a new form of musical expression called musik etnik Islami or ethnic music inspired by Islam, a form that combines traditional and modern idioms of music in his musical works: Ath-thawaf.

This example brings more clarity to the use of the term musik Islami in Sundanese music. Users of this term use it not in order to confront other traditional musics as non-Islami, but rather to differentiate it from Arabic music (musik Islam). They use the term musik Islami not to reject another kind of music, but rather to differentiate it from other Islamic (Arabic) music idioms. For example, shalawat, rebana, barzanji and kasidah are

The lawfulness of music in contemporary Indonesian debate 369 musik Islam, while various forms of Islamic-pop songs including con­temporary nasyid and Islamic-traditional songs are musik Islami.^[1297] When Yus made a new form for his musical expression, Ath-Thawaf, he did not mean to oppose it to the tembang Sunda of his musical background, but rather to use it as a reference in his creative processes. For these reasons, tembang Sunda is not to be categorised as non-Islami music because of the absence of Islamic symbols; at the same time, this traditional music is also associated with Islam in its general values.

VI.