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From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-rev...@lists.h-net.org>
Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 9:01 PM
Subject: H-Net Review [H-Asia]: Bayona on Keppy, 'Tales of the Southeast
Asia's Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians and Popular Culture, 1920-1936'
To: <h-rev...@lists.h-net.org>
Cc: H-Net Staff <revh...@mail.h-net.org>
Peter Keppy. Tales of the Southeast Asia's Jazz Age: Filipinos,
Indonesians and Popular Culture, 1920-1936. Singapore National
University of Singapore Press, 2019. xiii + 269 pp. $36.00 (paper),
ISBN 978-981-3250-51-2.
Reviewed by Jorge Bayona (University of Washington, Seattle)
Published on H-Asia (June, 2020)
Commissioned by Bradley C. Davis
Peter Keppy is a senior researcher at the NIOD Institute for War,
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, where he studies revolutions and
nation building in the twentieth century. While some of his previous
work has focused on issues of compensation for war victims in
Indonesia and the Philippines, he has also written previously on
matters of popular music in Southeast Asia, having co-authored
_Popular music in Southeast Asia: Banal Beats, Muted Histories_
(2017) alongside Bart Barendregt and Henk Schulte Nordholt. In _Tales
of Southeast Asia's Jazz Age_, Keppy brings to bear an impressive
amount of primary source research in a remarkable array of languages
to craft a narrative of the trajectories of two major characters in
popular music and theater in maritime Southeast Asia: Luis Borromeo
in the Philippines and Miss Riboet in Indonesia. Meticulously sourced
and clearly presented, Keppy's book gives an insight into how his
protagonists articulated a popular culture that engaged with some of
the political and social issues of the day until their ultimate
eclipse as a result of the Great Depression, competition from
"talkies," and political developments surrounding nationalism.
Keppy frontloads the theory in his book, presenting the concepts of
pop cosmopolitanism (a socially broad taste for international pop
culture), popular modernity("modernity" as advanced by non-elite
sectors of society), and participatory pop (whereby audiences play an
important role in the shaping of popular culture). Making use of
these foundations, the author argues that "Luis Borromeo and Miss
Riboet were pivotal actors, who helped create a pop cosmopolitanism
and popular modernity in their respective colonial societies, but
whose social cultural positions and significance were misunderstood
and ignored by contemporaries in the metropolises of America and
Europe" (p. 8). In this sense, they both participate in the shaping
of an "in-between culture" (p. 7). Although the ensuing chapters do
not engage in further theoretical disquisitions, the theoretical
guideposts established by Keppy early in the book continue to inform
his writing throughout. Thus, while the inclusion of the word "tales"
in the title may suggest a collection of amusing--yet perhaps not
altogether momentous--stories, Keppy's book does have a point to make
about the trajectory of pop culture in a colonial context in
continuous flux.
Although Keppy seeks to compare and connect the trajectories of his
two main characters, rather than organize his book around thematic
chapters in which specific aspects of both are contrasted, he instead
dedicates separate chapters to each. Chapters 2 to 6 focus on Luis
Borromeo, a Filipino vaudeville musician and impresario who in the
1920s and 1930s successfully created an in-between kind of popular
theater that blended American musical styles with local tastes and
patriotic desires. Chapters 7-10 are dedicated to Miss Riboet, an
Indonesian opera singer who, together with her husband Tio Tek Djien
Jr., became a popular icon by innovating in the genre of vernacular
theater by introducing topical commentary, and eventually bringing it
colonial respectability at the cost of losing its nationalistic
appeal. The result of this organization of the book is a clearer
trajectory for each character, which could have become muddled in a
more comparative approach. Although the structure is mostly
narrative, his writing is inflected by the questions he asks of one
case on the basis of previous scholarship on the other; he uses
discussions of cultural hybridity originating from scholarship on
Indonesia to interrogate the case of Luis Borromeo, and conversations
of cultural appropriation and resistance arising from scholarship on
the Philippines to interrogate the case of Miss Riboet.
Keppy's research is built upon an impressive variety of primary
sources. Not only has he consulted periodicals from numerous cities
in the Philippines and Indonesia, he has also studied audio
recordings and musical scores from the time period to draw
conclusions on the kinds of musical influences that were in play.
This enables him to present a data-rich, almost blow-by-blow account
of the trajectory of the cohort of musicians, producers, and fans
that emerged in the time period he studies. His work with primary
sources in at least five different languages (English, Spanish,
Tagalog, Indonesian, and Dutch) is especially commendable, and one
can only hope that he will continue to take advantage of his
multilingual proficiency to explore these kinds of transnational
histories in his future scholarship.
Given its narrative approach, _Tales of Southeast Asia's Jazz Age_ is
an ideal book to assign to undergraduate classes focusing on cultural
history of Southeast Asia or the world at large. Chapters 5 ("The
Biggest of Noise") and 10 ("Approbation and Alienation") are
particular standouts inasmuch as they paint a broader picture of
popular culture during this time period in the Philippines and
Indonesia respectively. The former explores the ambivalent ways that
jazz and African American popular music was incorporated into
Filipino pop culture, ranging from scorn from the colonial elite to
its hearty acceptance on the part of the numerous patrons of dance
halls and local composers; additionally, it delves into matters of
the Manila Carnival and the gendered way Manileños participated and
gives some clues regarding the longevity of the Southeast Asian
stereotype of the Filipino as a natural musician. The latter chapter
traces the ways that popular theater troupes interfaced with rising
nationalist consciousness in Indonesia: while Miss Riboet gained more
artistic legitimacy in the eyes of European and Eurasian elites as
she toned down her commentary on social issues, a rival
company--Dardanella--aroused the interest of intellectuals seeking to
pin down a national culture that could serve the cause of
emancipation from the Dutch.
Although _Tales of Southeast Asia's Jazz Age_ does put its two cases
in comparative perspective in its introductory chapter and its brief
epilogue, as well as in brief references to each other in the
chapters in between, it could have perhaps benefited from the
inclusion of a chapter that switched from the narrative to the
comparative. It would have been interesting to see Keppy move from
his primary source-focused approach to one in which he could
foreground his interpretation of the implications of the comparison
between both cases. Also, an earlier explanation for the inclusion of
the title "Miss" in Riboet's name could have helped the reader
understand why she is referred to as such in the book and how it in
itself was important--according to Keppy, the use of this Anglo-Saxon
term signaled an artist's "modern and cosmopolitan orientation," and
Riboet was the trendsetter who sparked a succession of "Misses" in
the Indonesian stage (p. 188). In this sense one can wonder to what
degree some of the same mechanisms were or were not in play in the
transformation of Luis Borromeo into the more anglicized "Louis
Borromeo" (or "Borromeo Lou") that appears in some of the
illustrations included in the book. Was he also signaling a "modern
and cosmopolitan orientation" as a pop musician, or was it simply
part of a wider trend to adapt Spanish names to their Anglo cognates?
These minor quibbles notwithstanding, with its clear presentation and
rich archival research, students and scholars interested in Southeast
Asian cultural history and the spread, propagation, and adaptation of
popular culture worldwide will find _Tales of Southeast Asia's Jazz
Age_ a worthwhile read.
Citation: Jorge Bayona. Review of Keppy, Peter, _Tales of the
Southeast Asia's Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians and Popular
Culture, 1920-1936_. H-Asia, H-Net Reviews. June, 2020.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54879
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.
--
Best regards,
Andrew Stewart
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