No soner do I mention nutters belly-dancing to Indonesian music, than I get mail from the land of applied surrealism.
Quoth Roger:
Congratulations, yours is the 1st blog I've read. Still feels a bit like you left your diary lying around and I peeked.
Anyway as for your observation (A woman in an almost-belly-dancing outfit - the first time I've seen someone belly-dance to Indonesian music; I wonder what you call that kind of cultural crossover? Fusion dancing? Like a restaurant.)
Writing from Jakarta, this does not seem quite so strange.
Belly dancing is catching here on both as an exercise and as nightclub/restaurant entertainment.
The nightclub version is to dangdut which is the really popular music here, a sort of arab-indian-indonesian fusion with a touch of reggae if that makes sense. It is frowned upon by the middle classes, loved by the rest.
Of course Jakarta is not Indonesia; London is not England, etc. Tummies probably remain concealed in Yogjakarta where a frown from the Sultan would probably stifle the first outburst of dangdut.
If the Regents Park bellyrina was gyrating to traditional Javanese or Balinese music, gamelan and all, that?s another matter and one to be marvelled at."
So now I know. This is great; I can just wonder aloud on here about where to get unfarmed fish in North London, how to find a real job, what next season's colour is going to be, and some expert will crawl out of the woodwork and mail me. Fabulous.
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