Rosa de Jong has written the first version of the first chapter, and is now working on the second chapter and an article. The research has been severely hampered by the COVID pandemic. Planned research trips to Curaçao, Suriname and Jamaica proved impossible in 2020 and 2021. Instead, she studied the large stock of primary sources she had already collected, as well as the interviews already conducted. Rosa has also earned a prestigious fellowship at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the USHMM. During the first eight months of 2022, she study highly relevant material in Washington DC.

This project analyzes the interplay between the production of popular music, the articulation of modernity, and the emergence of new audiences, lifestyles and related processes of social differentiation in 20th century (pen)insular Southeast Asia. Empirically, we focus on pioneering creative artists who straddle conventional categories of ethnicity, religion, gender, generation and class, and their audiences. Mobilizing cultural resources and networks, and exploring technological and entrepreneurial possibilities, these artists are at the forefront of popular cultures production and redefinition. By calling into question the conventional and articulating what is modern, they co-produce new audiences and contribute to new processes of social differentiation. In this project, covering the 1920s-1950s and 1970s-2000s, we focus on decisive historical junctures where technological innovation, human agency, the consumption of new musical styles and the rise of new audiences came together within particular Southeast Asian urban localities. The cultural transformations and contestations taking place in these localities are intertwined with expressions of modernity. The project aims to capture these processes in three subprojects: (1) The Jazz Age (1920-1950s), (2) New Cassette Traditions (1970s-1980s), and (3) Pop, Politics and Piety in the Digital Era (1990s-2000). More broadly, these projects encompass two major political transitions-from the late colonial state to recent nation-states (subproject 1); from the heyday of authoritarian rule to emergent democracies (subprojects 2 and 3). The main applicant will write a synthesising volume at the projects conclusion. Theoretically, we engage the debate on modernitys articulation in non-Western contexts within a comparative, historical framework. Our innovation lies in situating this debate in relation to the making of popular music and the rise of new audiences and concomitant lifestyles.