Worlding Music in Jogjakarta: Tales of the Global Postmodern

Narratives of globalization are often about coping with inevitable and massive economic, technocultural, and societal change. Similarly, studies of music and globalization tend to be theoretically oriented and focus on large-scale transformation (media, industry, nation, etc.) rather than on local and individual innovation and ingenuity. This essay is a close to the ground ethnography of musicians (two, in particular) from the city of Jogjakarta1, Indonesia and how they participate in and contribute to the larger globalized network of composers, artists, activists, intellectuals, and contemporary music lovers. It interrogates the concept of “world” music as well as the relation between the “local” and the “global.”