Meet the American Cataloging Indonesia's Endangered Indigenous Music

It was a job as an English teacher that brought American Palmer Keen to Indonesia. But it was the archipelago's music that kept him here.

Keen has spent the last two years cataloging the country's local, indigenous music, instruments, and traditions for his blog Aural Archipelago. The result is an approachable, plain-spoken account of his time with musicians like the beluk yodelers of Tasikmalaya, the feku flautists of North Central Timor, and the gule gending drummers of Lombok.

He calls his blog "armchair ethnomusicology"—an attempt to strip away the stuffy style of academic writing that's typically associated with this kind of work in order to reach a wider audience. The website has been, for most of Keen's time in Indonesia, a passion project he had to find time to tackle on the side.

But, at least for now, it's his full-time gig. Keen quit his job teaching English earlier this year and embarked on an epic six-week motorbike journey that snaked through the island of Java, Bali, and Lombok. VICE Indonesia's Stanley Widianto caught up with Keen at the end of his trip to hear what he found.

VICE: You just got back from a long trip. Any good stories from the road?
Palmer Keen: One of my favorite moments was in Banyuwangi, East Java. I was driving into the area from the west, hoping to set up base for a few days and search for this amazing frame drum music called kuntulan. Right when I entered the area, a pickup truck with a bed full of kuntulan musicians pulled out in front of my motorbike. The band was playing as they drove along, collecting money for their mosque in a practice that's called arak-arakan. It's pretty rare to just chance upon music like that—usually it takes a lot of searching.

After asking permission, I ended up following them as they slowly patrolled nearby villages, driving with one hand on the accelerator and the other holding my recorder ahead of the motorbike.

You were out there traveling alone. Does it ever get lonely on a solo tour like this?
My travels are often a solitary experience in the sense that I'm usually traveling by myself, but other than the long stretches of road, I'm almost never alone. As soon as I get to a new site, I am surrounded by musicians and their friends and families. These are often areas where few foreigners go, and the locals have never met a foreigner who can speak Indonesian. I usually end up spending hours and hours chatting with new friends to the point that I end up dreaming of those solitary moments on the open road when I can just be with my thoughts instead of taking hundreds of selfies with people and explaining that yes, Americans do eat rice.

Yeah, and I guess Aural Archipelago is also largely a solitary project.
By and large, Aural Archipelago is a project that I undertake on my own. I'm something of a control freak, so I get comfort in being in control of all aspects of the operation. But still, nothing I do would be possible alone—it's all a product of collaboration with the musicians and the communities that I work in, not to mention the countless locals who have acted as guides and fixers for me over the years.

You wrote on your blog that we're living in an age of "armchair ethnomusicology"—that today is a time when anyone, anywhere can pull up a video or a field recording of a type of music that, in the past, would've required a lot of travel or digging to discover. Do you feel like this ability to expose other people to these kinds of music is part of what drives your work?
Look, I'm the first to admit that I am a total fanatic when it comes to this world. But I'm not the kind of gatekeeper fanboy who only wants a select few to enjoy this stuff. Especially when it comes to endangered musical traditions, nothing but good could come from a wider audience enjoying this music. I take this stance on amateur ethnomusicologists too—how great would it be if hundreds of people were blanketing this country recording and researching this music as well? I always suggest that people interested in my project should head out into the world and do it themselves. Why not? I'm just a curious guy with a recorder and a camera. Anybody could do it.

What do you mean by 'endangered musical traditions'?
Musical traditions, just like species and languages, can be endangered. When it comes to music, it means that nobody is playing the music anymore or that there is no new generation to continue the tradition. Some people see this as an inevitable element of the churning of history, but I see it as a danger to cultural diversity and to the idiosyncratic ways different cultures express themselves. I've come to find that Indonesia is truly the most musically diverse country on the planet, but maybe not for long. A huge portion of the country's rich musical heritage is at risk of extinction.

Because this heritage is mostly passed down, generation to generation?
Right. Musical traditions are traditionally passed down from generation to generation, but starting in the Suharto era, rapid changes in Indonesian society have meant that the younger generations live in a vastly different world than their parents and grandparents. Musical traditions that were vital to those generations simply aren't relevant to many younger Indonesians. It's an understandable situation, but I like to think it doesn't spell inevitable doom for these traditions. Communities just have to think creatively about how to maintain and sustain their musical cultures.

So why is there a disinterest? Is it just too old?
I think it's complicated. With the effects of globalization and urbanization, traditional music can often be labeled as kampungan, or literally village-like. Any Indonesian knows that it's something of a bad word. People want to be worldly and modern, and traditional music is seen as the antithesis of that. The key then is for people to come to understand that these musics are living traditions, and the way they fit into our modern world is totally up to them.

Do you ever felt like you're out there trying to save these musical traditions alone?
Well, I don't want to sound like a guy with "White Savior Complex" coming in and saving the day for the poor helpless natives. That's certainly not the case. But, ideally I think having accessible documentation can be one factor in helping a musical tradition to survive. Musical traditions—their songs, melodies, and stories—are usually stored in the minds of the people who play and listen to them. But just like with language, if these people die and there's no documentation, the tradition can die with them. With documentation, there is at least a chance of reconstruction. I hope it doesn't come to that. A better utility for my recordings is just awareness. It's about letting people from inside and outside Indonesia learn about, and fall in love with, these musical traditions.