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Based On Ethnographic Fieldwork spanning twenty years, Power Plays is the first scholarly book in English on wayang golek, the Sundanese rod-puppet theater of West Java. It is a detailed and lively account of the ways in which performers of this major Asian theatrical form have engaged with political discourses in Indonesia. Wayang golek has shaped, as well, the technological and commercial conditions of art and performance in a modernizing society. Using interviews with performers, musical transcriptions, translations of narrative and song texts, and archival materials, author Andrew N. Weintraub analyzes the shifting and flexible nature of a set of performance practices called Padalangan, the art of the puppeteer. He focuses on "superstar" performers and the musical troupes that dominated wayang golek during the New Order political regime of former president Suharto (1966-98) and the ensuing three years of the post-Suharto period. Studies of actual performances illuminate stylistic and formal elements and situate wayang golek as a social process in Sundanese culture and society. Power Plays includes an interactive multimedia CD-ROM of wayang golek. Power Plays shows how meanings about identity, citizenship, and community are produced through theater, music, language, and discourse. While based in ethnographic theory and methods, this book is at the center of a new synthesis emerging among ethnomusicology, anthropology, and cultural studies. Its cross-disciplinary approach will inspire researchers studying similar struggles over cultural authority and popular representation in culture and the performing arts.
"This volume is brimming with interesting material. I know of no other study of contemporary performing arts in Indonesia that goes so deeply into the politics of meaning within such a complex genre."
| Defining wayang golek | p. 27 |
| Cultural policy and canons of performance | p. 55 |
| Superstar Dalang | p. 81 |
| Challenging the new order with entertainment | p. 107 |
| The spectacle of sound | p. 128 |
| The cassette culture of wayang golek | p. 165 |
| Televisual mediations | p. 189 |
| Mediating the nation in post-Suharto Indonesia | p. 208 |
| The politics of performance | p. 229 |
| Biographies of four Dalang | p. 241 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9780896802407
ISBN-10: 089680240X
Series: Research in International Studies: Southeast Asia Series
Audience:
Professional
Format:
Book with CD or DVD
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 320
Published: 22nd November 2004
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Dimensions (cm): 21.6 x 15.2
x 1.7
Weight (kg): 0.435
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