While listening to Rice Records' latest compilation of dangdut queen Elvy Sukaesih, I started doing a little browsing on Indonesia's favorite brand of homegrown pop. Dangdut, an amalgam of Arabic, Indian, Indonesian and contemporary pop influences, is--get this--often compared to salsa! Sometimes I wonder why we bother to attempt writing about music at all. Tell you what, just listen to some dangdut hits to get the idea.

Like any form of pop with staying power, dangdut started in the working class and was bashed, then embraced by the middle class. Like French hip hop, the genre presently is said to reflect the frustrations of male muslim youth--according to Wikipedia, the self-proclaimed king of dangdut, Rhoma Irama, "proclaimed himself as an Antichrist" two Christmases ago. Will it belong before the CIA employs ethnomusicologists? (Nah, way too creative, that.)

But dangdut isn't an inherently political genre--it's Indonesian party music. You can get a peek at the future of the genre in this article on "dangdut trendy"--the type of stuff pumping in the Jakarta club world.