Word: daratista
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...rest of Indonesia knows little?and seemingly couldn't care less?about the fear in Aceh. In the mass media, dangdut dancer Inul Daratista's gyrations, the 2004 elections and the improving economy all featured far ahead of news about Aceh until virtually the day the campaign began. At the outset, television viewers saw some dramatic footage from Indonesian reporters embedded with the t.n.i. showing both sides of the conflict. But two days into the campaign, Aceh's military commander Major General Endang Suwarya flatly told the embeds that they were barred from using GAM statements. "I want all news...
Trying to get into an Inul Daratista show is like trying to storm the ramparts of Helm's Deep?it's musty, dark, smoky, crowded and the mob seems possessed by a demonic, or at least lascivious, force. The young men have traveled many kilometers to the one-mosque town of Pelaihari in Indonesia's South Kalimantan province to see the country's hottest and most controversial dangdut singer. They're rowdy, they're eager and, in clear defiance of the laws of physics, all 10,000 of them want in, now, through the soccer stadium's single narrow entrance...
...Like her spiritual kin Eminem, Inul Daratista is whatever you say she is. Her singing would make Simon Cowell cringe, but she regularly packs concerts and performs on national television. She hasn't released a single recording, but one critic estimates that some 3 million pirated VCDs of her performances have been sold in Indonesia. Muslim clerics denounce her bump-and-grind dancing, attempt to ban her concerts, even pray for rain to keep impressionable fans away from her shows, yet politicians are lining up to recruit her support for the 2004 elections. She's become the live wire connecting...
...then few dangdut performers have reached Inul's level of national popularity, and none so quickly. Inul (her real name is Ainul Rokhimah; Inul Daratista means "the girl with the breasts") was born poor in the East Java village of Kejapanan, Gempol. She started her performing career as a rock singer at age 12 but soon switched to dangdut, the beat-happy folk-pop blend of Indian, Arab and Malay music that has long been the sound of rural Indonesia. Originally the music of the lower class, complete with bawdy lyrics and sexually suggestive dancing, dangdut was cleaned...
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