This book delves into the largely unexplored intersection of missionary activities and local music in Indonesia. It examines the complex relationship between missionaries, anthropologists, and Indonesian musicians, revealing both collaborative efforts and instances of suppression of local musical traditions. The book uses diverse sources, including archival materials, recordings, and visual media, to provide a nuanced understanding of this historical interaction. It challenges traditional narratives by highlighting the contributions of both missionaries and local musicians, fostering a more inclusive and decolonized perspective on music history. The book's interdisciplinary approach offers valuable insights for scholars and students across various fields, including anthropology, ethnomusicology, history of missions, and world Christianity.
Although the history of Indonesian music has received much attention from ethnomusicologists and Western composers alike, almost nothing has been written on the interaction of missionaries with local culture.
Missionaries, Anthropologists, and Music in the Indonesian Archipelago (U California Press, 2025) represents the first attempt to concentrate on the musical dimension of missionary activities in Indonesia. In fourteen essays, a group of distinguished scholars show the complexity of the topic: while some missionaries did important scholarship on local music, making recordings and attempting to use local music in services, others tried to suppress whatever they found. Many were collaborating closely with anthropologists who admitted freely that they could not have done their work without them. And both parties brought colonial biases into their work. By grappling with these realities and records, this book is a collective effort to decolonize the project of making music histories.
Byung Ho Choi is a Ph.D. candidate in the History and Ecumenics program at Princeton Theological Seminary, concentrating in World Christianity and history of religions. His research focuses on the indigenous expressions of Christianities found in Southeast Asia, particularly Christianity that is practiced in the Muslim-dominant archipelagic nation of Indonesia. More broadly, he is interested in history and the anthropology of Christianity, complexities of religious conversion and social identity, inter-religious dialogue, ecumenism, and World Christianity.
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