That's entertainment

That's entertainment

Peter Keppy's fascinating book charts the cultural impact of the Jazz Age in colonial-era Southeast Asia

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

When we invoke the term "Jazz Age", we tend to think of the US in the 1920s and 1930s. But while its impact was felt most keenly Stateside, this major cultural movement was a global phenomenon.

In Tales Of Southeast Asia's Jazz Age -- Filipinos, Indonesians And Popular Culture, 1920-1936 (National University of Singapore Press), Peter Keppy documents how jazz music and the various associated dance crazes took hold in this part of the world. This fascinating book, which was published last October, goes into great detail on the development of popular culture, what he calls "pop cosmopolitanism", in colonial era Indonesia and the Philippines at a time when it seemed like the whole world was consumed with dance crazes and partying.

The author focuses on the rise and fall of the pioneering Filipino vaudeville-trained jazz musician Luis Borromeo in the first part of his book and then introduces the "world-famous" Javanese opera singer Miss Riboet, who shook up Malay opera and theatre.

Borromeo, whose suave portrait features on the book's cover, had a fascinating career. Born into an affluent family on the island of Cebu, he went to the US to study piano in 1915, eventually winning a contract to perform piano on the Orpheum Circuit, playing with dancers and singers in theatres in Chicago, New York and San Francisco. Keppy notes that Borromeo had to "pretend" to be Chinese to perform with D'avigneau's Celestials.

In 1921, he returned to the Philippines and created one of the first jazz bands there. His music was eagerly adopted by the entertainment industry, and he was often called the "King Of Jazz". He set up his own troupe and his shows featured acrobats, magicians and various kinds of acts. He was, in fact, creating a local hybrid version of vaudeville -- that he is said to have called "bodabil" -- and the name of his own show was Borromeo Folies.

Miss Riboet's Orion was a theatrical group active in the 1920s and 1930s from East Java. It was established in 1925 by Chinese businessman Tio Tek Djien and his wife Miss Riboet. Drawing on the influence of bangsawan theatre and komedi stamboel, Tio changed the structure of Malay theatre, introducing original scripts, shortened scenes, kroncong songs and plenty of swordfighting. The troupe became very popular and toured widely.

Miss Riboet began to merchandise her "brand", with a variety of products that even included wristwatches. But perhaps most interesting is the fact that, to supplement their income, they made many gramophone recordings for the German Beka label. This properly launched Miss Riboet's career, making her the first recording star of the Dutch East Indies and one of the biggest stars of the region.

Miss Riboet also shook up the establishment with her original dance moves, which resulted in attacks on her in the press but didn't dent her popularity a bit. (You could perhaps draw a line from this controversy to the current-day one involving dangdut star Inul Daratista's "drilling" dance.)

Keppy weaves the narratives of these two cultural icons into a discussion about how pioneering cultural practitioners like Borromeo and Miss Riboet brought together art and modernity, foreign and local traditions and created a new popular culture -- something neither highbrow nor banal but rather something that spoke to an emerging and multi-ethnic middle class. Keppy calls this kind of phenomena an "in-between culture", revitalising an idea that goes way back to the early work of the late Professor Stuart Hall.

There is a view that popular culture is a lowbrow activity -- cheap entertainment of little social value. This is not a view that I share. Nor does Keppy; he leaves the reader with the impression that popular culture isn't just something fed to the masses by elites and their companies. It's far more important than that. And as his absorbing book shows us, the Jazz Age, as it manifested in Southeast Asia, enabled social critique and emancipation to feature in songs and shows.

Tales Of Southeast Asia's Jazz Age is an entertaining walk-through and analysis of an important cultural period, when innovation and experimentation were the order of the day.


John Clewley can be contacted at clewley.john@gmail.com.

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