Heavenly nymphs and earthly delights: Javanese female singers, their music and their lives.

Abstract

The solo female singer, pesindhen, who performs with the Central Javanese gamelan ensemble, occupies a particularly ambivalent position in Javanese society. She exists uneasily in the gap between the respectable, dispassionate ideal of Javanese womanhood and the enticing, rapturous pull of the flamboyantly dressed prostitute. The Javanese pesindhen, facing conflicting attitudes about how she should behave, cultivates two contrasting personae. On stage, she appears desirable, seductive, and available to her almost exclusively male audience. Off stage, she is under pressure from husbands, acquaintances and some dhalang (puppeteers) to enact the role of the proper Indonesian woman. As a result, who she really is is something of a mystery, and this mystery is the key to her allure. My focus is on the life stories and musical styles of three pesindhen from three different generations. Using the life history methodology, I explore connections between their musical styles, their dress and the stories they tell about themselves. I have tried to present the lives of these musicians in as vivid a manner as possible so that my readers can become acquainted with them as individuals, not merely as types. The pesindhen's vocal style and social role have changed significantly during the past twenty years. As developments in vocal pedagogy and the recording industry have pushed the pesindhen into a star role, her music has become more vaned, ornate, flashy and faster-paced. Her manner of dress, her song lyrics, and her comportment with audience members and dhalang reveal an increasing focus on the pesindhen as a sexual object. Although pesindhen play a crucial role in gamelan music, they have rarely have been the focus of scholarly inquiry. This study opens new ground in two ways. While most previous investigations of gamelan music have focused on the music and its social contexts, this study celebrates the achievements of a few individual musicians. Most research in Javanese music has privileged the elegant, philosophical formulations of theorists and male musicians in positions of power. This project focuses on the experiences of Javanese women musicians, struggling and yet succeeding in a predominately male musical tradition.Ph.D.BiographiesCommunication and the ArtsCultural anthropologyMusicSocial SciencesWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/130154/2/9712116.pd