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The Colonial Musical Inheritance in the Netherlands
An in depth study of the musical inheritance of the former Dutch colonies
Indonesia, Surinam and West Papua in the Netherlands from the beginning of
sound recording until their independence and in case of West Papua until the
Indonesian occupation. After an inventarisation of the recordings in the Dutch
audiovisual, ethnographic and university collections and taking into consideration
the existing publications on the music history of the above mentioned areas
it was decided to split the study in four different parts:
The wax cylinder recordings of Jaap Kunst
These recordings were made by Jaap Kunst and a number of his collaborators
in Indonesia in the 1920’s and 1930’s with the aim to collect
in sound an overview of all the different music styles, orchestras and instruments
that were in use in this area. A kind of building blocks for a music geography
of Indonesia which eventually, Jaap Kunst envisioned, would contribute to
developing an universal theory of of human music making. Also he wanted to
preserve musical styles that were threatened by extinction and promote the
at that period little known musics from Indonesia. The wax cylinders not meant
for publication but as study-aid and they only circulated among a small group
of experts, although transcriptions in western notation were published by
Jaap Kunst in his books and articles. Jaap Kunst’s plans to publish
60 discs with an overview of the musics of Indonesia in collaboration with
the Nirom were indefinitely postponed because of the Second World War and
the subsequent independence struggle in Indonesia. The wax cylinders Jaap
Kunst recorded were partly kept in the Berlin Phonogramm Archiv and in the
Royal Tropical Institute. The collection of Berlin Phonogramm Archiv was dispersed
after the Second World War and only reunited after the German Unification.
Recently both collections have been for the major part digitised and thus
most recordings of Jaap Kunst are after more than half a century available
again for study and publication. The IMS will publish a description of all
the tracks on the digitised wax cylinders together with a short biography
of Jaap Kunst. A selection of the recordings based on sound quality and the
historical importance will be restored and published as a CD.
Direct disc recordings made just after the Second World War in mainly the Moluccan Islands of Indonesia.
These recordings are the most important collection of early recordings from the Moluccans. It contains as well traditional genres as the local popular music from the era. Many of the songs in the Hobbel collection are still known and played by Moluccan musicians in Indonesia and in exile in the Netherlands. It makes the Hobbel collection an important witness of the musical development and the recent history of the Moluccans. The IMS will restore the collection in its entirety, publish an in depth description of the collection and issue a series of CD’s.
West Papua
An overview of the history of music recordings made in West Papua from the
early twentieth century until the Indonesian occupation in 1963. The main
corpus of recordings made in West Papua can be found in archives and private
collections in the Netherlands. Only two short tracks of these recordings
have ever been published before the IMS started its study. The West Papua
part of the colonial musical heritage project will result in an extensive
description of the recordings in the Dutch archives and of the context in
which these recordings made accompanied by biographies of the people who made
these recordings. A selection of the archival recordings will be published
in a CD series ‘Anthology of music from West Papua’. Two such
CD’s have already been published: Muo Reme, with a selection of the
recordings the linguist Anceaux made in the 1950’s in the Northern coastal
area of West Papua, and Dema, a selection of the unique recordings of the
Marind Anim music genres of South-East West Papua which Jan Verschueren made
in 1962.
Surinam
An overview of the music recordings of this country from the Herskovits wax
cylinder recordings from the 1920’s till the independence of the country
in 1975. The focus will be on field recordings and less on commercial recordings
as the last are rarely found in Dutch public archives. Apart from the Herskovits
recordings all other recordings were made after the Second World War. An important
part of them are the recordings made by anthropologists and linguists in the
1950’s and 1960’s as part of a larger scientific research programme
aimed at documenting the different languages, cultures and ethnic groups of
Surinam. Although one can find references to these recordings in several articles
and books only Peter Kloos published a selection of his recordings of the
Maroni River Caribs on LP – later reissued on CD. Another quantatively
important part of the recordings was made by journalists for radio broadcasts
and movie documentaries. Especially visits from the Dutch royal family formed
an occasion for journalist to record and broadcast Surinam music.
The IMS will publish an inventarisation of Surinam music in Dutch public archives
and a number of archives in mainly the United States that have important collections
of Surinam music. Also a number of CD’s will be published.
Instituut Multiculturele muziek Studies (IMS)
Elisabeth Wolffstraat 14 huis
1052 RR Amsterdam
Netherlands
srgales@ziggo.nl
Tel. ++31 (0)20-6124378