Inul’s Swing and the Decline of Religious Authority

If only King Louis XIV were still alive, he might be proud to have Rhoma Irama as a disciple. Irama is the proclaimed King of Dangdut - the beat-happy folk-pop blend of Indian, Arab and Malay music that is the sound of the lower class in Indonesia. Irama imagines himself as all powerful – at least in the world of Dangdut. 

The King of France was so powerful, he became the inspiration of Montesquieu’s criticism in his book, De L’ Esprit desloix (The Spirit of Laws). Louis XIV said that “state is me, and I am state” (‘L ‘etat c’est moi). The similarity, the reason behind Rhoma’s attack upon the upstart Inul, is that he wants to say that “dangdut is me, and I am dangdut.” The worst part of the drama is that Rhoma, in his arrogance, hides behind the jargon of Koranic verses and conventional morality to attack Inul’s erotic hips swinging. He accuses her as the destroyer of moral values. In doing so Rhoma claimed himself as something of a constitutional monarch in the “institutionalization” of dangdut music.

By empowering such regimes of truth in the dangdut world, Rhoma seems to have given himself the right to determine who is the figure of evil and who instead carries God’s voice. Several verses have been used to justify his action toward Inul: a woman singer who came to Jakarta and took off like a meteor.

Like the SARS epidemic which spread so quickly and widely, Inul’s recording Rules drew the attention of Time, Newsweek, and other famous foreign media far beyond Rhoma’s reach though he has been studied by people like William H. Frederick, Krishna Sen and David T. Hill. The boycott imposed on Inul by Rhoma and the organization, Indonesian Malay Music Artists Unity (PAMMI), indicates the fact that freedom of expression is not merely part of the state’s ideological apparatus anymore but a weapon used in the public arena.

Pium Desidarium

Several times after the controversial meeting of Inul and Rhoma in Depok, Rhoma pronounced a Jihad against the indecent practice of Inul in the public arena. He claimed himself to be the “loud speaker” of Muslim religious scholars which previously criticized Inul, like K.H Mujib Imron from Pasuruan, Aa Gym from   Bandung dan Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI). Rhoma did not merely snarl but bit because he had the support of the MUI against Inul.

Pium desidarium, the desire to perform with a pious attitude is the extension of Rhoma’s declaration in 1973 of himself as the voice of Moslems. With the support of many religious groups, the conflict between Rhoma and Inul is most interesting regarded Ernst Cassirer’s thesis, in An Essay on Man, that within the experience of human history,  harmony and cultural unity have never been reached. Intellectual culture always fights against mystic culture, religious culture constantly fights against the arts.

The polemic between Rhoma and Inul proved that religious Puritanism always deprives the symbol. The authentic, pure religion always works against artistic practices and determines the periphery from where artists perform. Asceticism in the religion works against art, while mysticism welcomes art into the ritualistic dimensions.

Primitive religion accepts art more readily than does organized religion. According to Weber, orgiastic religion tends to develop through songs and music while ritualistic religion tends toward the pictorial arts and religion which suggest a love for poetry and music. Look for instance at the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism in terms of the performing arts! Look at how many traditions in Islam prohibit creating statues and paintings.

Then, how do the religious people realize the esthetic tendency which Herbert Read, in Art and Society (1970) writes is inherent in the human? In this case, Aa Gym suggested that Inul imitate Siti Nurhaliza’s ‘dance’. Similarly, Rhoma did not forbid Inul to dance either, but that she should dance in a way that is “appropriate to religious morality and Eastern value.” Rhoma did not seek to kill the esthetic element, but he put pressure on the aesthetic sense ultimately by an abstract apparatus of rule.

Art and religion are like oil and water. According to Kuntowijoyo (1987), if both phenomenon were exploited by denying the other; then religion and art could never meet. Yet when the religion is built on trust, rationalization, organization and hierarchy emerge. Clifford Geertz in The Religion of Java (1960) for instance, identified the central symbol as being the principle of heirarchical social organization.

Inul doesn’t have any options open to her when she faces the institutionalized religious institutions, like MUI. Rhoma himself experienced this when his films in the 1970s were claimed by the religious institution’s authority as examples of religious commoditization due to the mixing da’wah with love scenes. Thus Weber was right to say that the difference in one’s attitude toward art is due to differences of social class.

Religious institution

Sociologically, religious institutions exist as habits, rituals, prohibitions, attitudes, organization’s structures, and roles related to the supernatural (George A. Theodorson & Achilles G. Theodorson, A Modern Dictionary of Sociology, 1969). In terms of technical definition, the religious institution is an organizational figure which is directs modes of attitude, roles, and relations which tie individuals, one which provides formal authority and legal sanction for the achievement of basic social needs (Hendropuspito, Sosiologi Agama, 1983).

What is interesting in Inul’s case is the symptom of the decline of religious institution’s authority vis-à-vis Inul’s dancing in terms of how the mass culture backed up by the media supported her cause. Her “Drilling swing”-as her dance has been termed by the Indonesian media- is similar to Jaipongan (West Java’s cultural dance), goyang dombret (other kind of swing), and even salsa, as a part of –what is called by Dwight MacDonald— physical political manifestation in the mass cultural industries. Religious institutions have found it difficult to curtail her popularity.

We observed that, before Rhoma’s arrogant attacks on her art, many religious authority or religious institution like MUI of East Java, Yogyakarta,  East Kalimantan had also sought to control her. But, her swinging hips sneaked into the family’s domestic spaces through the television. When her critics were defeated by the power of her fans, some people cried out that the religious authorities’ had become powerless. Thus the attacks led by Rhoma only increased her popularity. The curse of Rhoma instead became free promotion for her.

Rhoma forgot that psychologically, people are naturally more emphatic to the oppressed. Vaclav Havel’s thesis about the power of powerless applies to Inul.  In contrast, Rhoma’s arrogance was responsible for his own loss of power.

Burhanuddin, Editor of Islam Liberal Network (JIL), Jakarta

(Translated by Lanny Octavia, edited by Jonathan Zilberg)