Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country as general descriptions of the nation that celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1995 often state. Yet scholarship, including that on music, has often drawn attention away from the prominence of Islam in Indonesia to such things as spirit cults of the abangan culture of the countryside or the traces of Hindu-Buddhist influence in court-derived priyayi culture. Of course Islam in Indonesia, particularly in Java, is comparatively reticent when compared to its more assertive expression in neighboring countries, but this should not obscure its fundamental presence and importance. In this paper, I will report on my ongoing exploration of gambus, an Indonesian performance complex of Yemeni derivation with a prominent place in Indonesian Islamic culture.
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