CULTURE-INDONESIA:
Anti-porn Bill Dangles on 'Dangdut' Dancer
Kalinga Seneviratne
JAKARTA, May 7 (IPS) - It is not often that a single individual occasions an act of parliament. But ‘dangdut' star Inul Daratista's vigorous pelvic gyrations are propelling Indonesia's anti-pornography bill.
Inul Daratista (the name translates as 'she of the breasts') oozes pulchritude as does her brand of dangdut, the onomatopoeically throbbing, folk-pop blend, understandably deemed ‘haram' (forbidden) by Indonesia's conservative clergy.
Right now, the bill is under review by a committee charged with the unenviable task of deciding what constitutes pornography and whether it should include Inul's trademark dance style, dubbed ‘drilling' for its approximation of the sexual act.
The difficulty, for the committee, arises partly from its sheer popularity and partly from the fact that Inul has drawn heavily from a traditional Javanese dance form, known as ‘Goyang Ngebor', which the former rock artiste has skilfully modified to suit the MTV age.
Inul resents the fact that she is being cited as the inspiration for the anti-pornography bill. "Government wanted someone (to justify the bill) and I was chosen to be the trigger, not any other model or singer," she told IPS in an interview at her luxury villa in the city.
To be fair to Inul, there is no dearth of pornographic material on the streets of Indonesia that seem to have escaped the notice of secular authorities or the clergy.
But whether Inul's bump-and-grind routine, called 'Goyang Inul', is acceptable to everyone is debatable. "This dance can be interpreted as containing sexually arousing material,'' says Ade Armando, a member of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission. ''It should not go on national television-the bill should say where it can be performed, not stopped.''
Inul, a middling pop singer who switched to dangdut in the early 1990s, owes her meteoric rise to stardom to a video cassette disc (VCD) made of her stage performances by an amateur videographer that sold by the thousand on the streets. She was soon on national television but, before she began producing her own VCDs, an estimated three million pirated copies of her VCDs were sold.
Inul's vast appeal, especially among Indonesia's common people, may have to do with her image as ‘the village girl who made good'. The 27-year-old singing sensation, born Ainul Rokhimah in the small village of Gempol in East Java, began her singing career at the age of 12, performing from one village to another for a meagre 3500 Rupiah (about 40 US cents) a jig.
Sought after by politicians, especially as a crowd-puller at election time, and photographed in the company of the rich and influential, she lives in a posh Jakarta suburb among Indonesia's elite.
"Dangdut is known as kampong (village) music because of the people who patronise it," explains Inul. "It is considered cheap and they (the entertainment industry) did not accept me at first. But, when I became a phenomenon, dangdut's stock moved up too.''
More to the point, perhaps, dangdut lyrics voice the frustrations of a generation of young people grappling with moral issues and life in an economy that is yet to overcome the catastrophic Asian meltdown of the late 1990s.
Bawdy lyrics and the fact that it is used in sleazy dance clubs may have given dangdut a disreputable image among conservative Muslims -although these have not diminished its popularity with youth, ever attracted to the forbidden.
In recent years, dangdut music has been able to penetrate the upper echelons of the Indonesian entertainment industry, especially evening peak hour television. Every night, one network or another broadcasts dangdut shows.
The leading national television channel TPI has been conducting, on Saturday nights, a two-hour ‘Kontest Dangdut Indonesia' show based on the ‘American Idol' competitions. People from across the country get to vote over SMS to select the best dangdut singers.
Having achieved fame for herself and raised single-handedly the popularity of dangdut, Inul has been gradually gravitating towards respectability.
Wahyutama, a member of the ‘Say No To Pornography Community,' an Islamic group, agrees that Inul has toned down her routine. "At first she was wearing very tight trousers, looked like she was trying to seduce men, inviting them on stage and dancing like trying to perform sexual intercourse," he told IPS. "But, once she became popular she made many compromises (to satisfy community standards). She has changed her dance style quite fundamentally and she is now trying to entertain people, not doing obscene acts.''
According to Wahyutama, the real problem today is with ‘wannabe' singers who have made dangdut truly vulgar in order to become popular and make money quick. "Private stations are trying to promote dangdut as music for all people, not only villagers," he observes. "To attract audiences, most stations use sensual dangdut dancers".
Inke Maris, a former television presenter and spokeswoman for the Muslim sisterhood ‘Salimah', argues that the television industry has a huge interest in opposing the anti-pornography bill because they want to use "sexually suggestive" material such as dirty dangdut dancing to attract audiences to their shows. "Such shows should be allowed in night clubs only, or it should not be shown until midnight on television," she told IPS.
Dangdut's wide audiences owes to the fact that it is a heady mix of many strains. On a base of Javanese and Malay music it has dollops of Indian film music thrown in as well as ingredients ranging from Arabic pop to Reggae. Like Latin American Salsa it is popular at weddings and at entertainment venues across a vast region.
Dangdut has the potential of becoming the dance music of the East, like Salsa or Lambada and this is what the legislators should consider, says Inul. ''When I performed in Hong Kong, people liked it. And they danced like I did.'' (END/2006)
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