Music is where Indonesia’s cultural contradictions are most audible. The nation does not have one sound; it has a thousand.
Indonesian entertainment and popular culture is not a single wave; it is a complex tidal system. It is the 90-year-old playing dangdut on a cassette player next to a teenager watching a Rich Brian music video on an iPhone. It is the sinétron actress who does a live stream selling face cream for ten hours. It is the horror movie that makes you check under your bed while also making you think about economic inequality.