Tari Gending Sriwijaya

Audio 8.1: Audio Example 1 in Chapter 8 of book: Margaret Kartomi, ‘Musical Journeys in Sumatra’, Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. “Gending Sriwijaya” and its accompanying dance “Tari Gending Sriwijaya” were created in 1945 by a team of artists in war-time Palembang in support of the Indonesian Independence movement against colonial rule. In the late 1970s, “Gending Sriwijaya” became South Sumatra’s official identity symbol, and was subsequently adopted and adapted many times by artists from all over Indonesia, becoming one of the country’s best-known regional songs. By the early 21st century, the song had become a synthesis of South Sumatran, Malay, Javanese and Western musical styles, played in a variety of performance contexts and on a variety of instruments and ensembles. In this excerpt, recorded in August 2008, a piano arrangement of the song by Mochtar Embut was played on the piano by Margaret Kartomi. Duration: 3 min. 39 sec. Recorded at Monash University, Australia. Copyright 2008. Margaret J. Kartomi.