Word: indonesia
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...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 Indonesia's still nascent freedom...
...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 up in the late 1970s and '80s when it was popularized by singers like Rhoma Irama, who diversified the music and turned the lyrics safely sweet. Cynical politicians began using dangdut musicians...
...East Java may have seen enough of Inul, but Jakarta was about to feel her heat. In January, Inul came to Jakarta and performed on Warung Tojedo, a national television program. Virtually overnight, Inulmania swept Indonesia, and within weeks, Inul was bumping and grinding on the cover of major national magazines and appearing on television more often than the country's President. Inul's concert fees rose dramatically, to anywhere from $1,100 to $1,700 per show. TV programs in which she appeared consistently drew 14 share points, well above the norm for music shows. Indonesians snapped up copies...
...Such sudden and vertiginous popularity was bound to provoke a backlash, and in Indonesia it came not from teens who discovered a newer, hotter idol but from Muslim clerics condemning a false one. In a country obsessed with thy neighbor's morality, Inul's dancing was deemed pornographic. In early February, the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI), concerned that Inul's performances encouraged lustful acts, declared that her dancing and costume were circumscribed by its July 2002 fatwa against pornography. Authorities in devout Yogyakarta banned Inul from performing, fearing that she would "degrade the morality of the highly civilized and educated...
...meet a glad-handing official for lunch in Pelaihari, Inul appears spent after a night of "drilling," as her dance has been termed by the Indonesian media. Yet one mention of her detractors is enough to energize her. "Write this down," she commands. "The MUI should realize that Indonesia is not a Muslim country, it's a democratic country." Inul, who says she prays daily, insists that her art doesn't clash with her Islamic beliefs and suspects the religious hierarchy castigates her because the real threats to Indonesia's fragile morality, particularly corrupt officials, are too dangerous to attack...