Cosmopolitan Musical Expressions Of Malay Indigeneity In Singapore
Authors:   , Zakaria Umar 
Published: January 2025

<p><strong>Over the past ten years, the activities of Malay composers with backgrounds in traditional music has been steadily increasing within the Malay traditional music community of Singapore. These activities have included self-produced concerts of original music, recordings of original music, the composition of original material for various Malay traditional music ensembles in Singapore, and participation in residency and mentorship programs specifically set up for the development of Malay composers. This thesis explores how the activities of Singapore’s Malay traditional music community and its composers circulate Malay indigenous knowledge and create experiences of Malay indigeneity through performances of Malay music and discourses of Malay performance, including discourses of affective knowledge. Building on ethnographic fieldwork including participation in traditional music through the learning of traditional instruments, collaborative compositional projects, and performance with local Malay ensembles, the thesis weaves together ideas from scholarship on value, affect theory, and cosmopolitanism. In terms of value, it examines the activities of Singapore’s Malay traditional music community in the context of theories of value and circulation by Appadurai, Graeber, Taylor, and Tsing to demonstrate the Malay traditional music community’s awareness and negotiation of local structures of value in Singapore. It also discusses Malay concepts of affective awareness, knowledge and expertise such as lembut (gentleness) and jiwa (soul), situating lembut as a possible frame through which to understand Malay perspectives in contestations between the Singaporean state and its Malay-Muslim minority population. Building on notions of syncretism, naturalisation, and localisation within existing literature on Malay culture and particularly Malay music, it introduces the concept of “cosmopolitan indigenisation” as a mechanism through which new ideas may be incorporated into Malay cultural and creative expression as well as to reconstitute fragmented pathways to musical mastery through the adoption of epistemologies from various musical traditions. The thesis also provides an analysis of the political economy of arts funding in Singapore, an ethnographic snapshot of my participation in Orkestra Melayu Singapura (Singapore Malay Orchestra) as a double bassist, and observations of a number of traditional Malay music events including the 2018 and 2024 iterations of the Gemadah Traditional Malay Music Festival, as well as a 2023 concert titled Dendang Warisan, performed by the Malay traditional ensemble Gendang Akustika. Investigations of musical projects and specific compositions by Malay composers Azrin Abdullah, Riduan Zalani, and Syafiqah Adha Sallehin show how compositions by Malay composers circulate value and contribute to the continued refinement and transmission of Malay musical knowledge. Their cosmopolitan agency as creators of musical experiences skilfully construct new forms of Malay expression through the composers’ command of seniority, signification, and spectacle. Taken together, the work of Singapore’s Malay traditional music community and its composers result in a reclamation of affective space, a revitalisation of affective awareness, and, perhaps, the gradual reconstitution of indigenous ways of being for Malay communities in Singapore.</strong></p>