LAUSR

This book is a valuable addition to our knowledge of Southeast Asia and, in particular, the study of its popular culture during the late colonial period of the 1920s and the Great Depression. Studies of the various forms of popular culture during this period are quite rare, and this study by Peter Keppy significantly overlaps with and expands upon Matthew Cohen’s pioneering work on popular theatre in the Dutch Indies, while breaking new ground with its discussion of jazz and Vod-A-Vil in the Philippines. After an opening chapter which charts the study’s theoretical ambit and provides historical context, chapters 2 to 6 provide an in-depth discussion of the rise of new forms of popular entertainment in the Philippines such as jazz and vaudeville. These chapters highlight the fact that these forms were hybridised genres blending American and Philippine elements, drawing interest from diverse audiences including members of the Filipino elite, but also attracting sustained controversy and debate due to moral panic surrounding the seamier aspects of dance hall operations and fear of loss of ‘native culture’. Central to much of Keppy’s account in these sections is the figure of Luis Borromeo, son of a well-placed Cebuano elite family who gained experience on the US vaudeville circuit before returning to the Philippines and earning praise and a large following as the most prominent promoter of Philippine jazz. Following Borromeo’s meteoric 1920s rise and precipitous decline in popularity in the mid-1930s Depression era allows the author to examine the cultural innovations of the Philippine ‘jazz age’ as well as the ways in which social and economic conditions both enabled and limited such an energetic period of cultural change. Chapters 7 through 10 turn to the Netherlands East Indies and an examination of popular theatre during roughly the same period as Borromeo’s era of stardom in the Philippines. In these chapters Keppy’s main foci are a group that came to be known as the foremost progressive Malay Opera company of the late 1920s, Miss Riboet’s Orion, and its more nationalist-oriented rival, the Dardanella company. Led by Chinese-Indonesian entrepreneur and playwright T.D. Tio Jr. and his wife Miss Riboet, the diva of stage and the recording industry, Miss Riboet’s Orion blazed a trail of entertaining but socially relevant theatre. This was largely achieved through Miss Riboet’s topical singing, dongengan, in which she opined about social and moral issues of the day, but also through the greater realism of many of the company’s plays. Keppy looks at the ways in which Miss Riboet and her company captivated audiences and gave birth to an enthusiastic fandom that included, and was spurred Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 51(4), pp 630–650 December 2020. 630