From Agricultural Tool to Identity Symbol: Musical and Socio-Political Change in the Pestle-and-Mortar Music of the Natuna Archipelago, Indonesia Available to Purchase

For centuries the Islanders in remote Bunguran played pestle-and-mortar music with cosmological associations to lighten the chore of stamping husks off rice grain. Different villages developed their own musical syntax, terminology, and repertoire to play at domestic celebrations. Discovery of natural gas in the 1960s led to weakened communal life, while the subsequent stamping of corn and seeds instead of rice required less group energy for music-making and new secular associations. In 2004 Natuna Regency chose the pestle-and-mortar music as a Malay identity emblem which will help it survive, with domestic participatory performances continuing alongside presentational performances for government, corporate and tourist audiences.