Jaap Kunst Legacy: A Site of Forgetting, Remembering and History-Making

Abstract

This study investigates and reconfigures the disclosing project of heritage by an ethnomusicologist, Jaap Kunst. Jaap Kunst recorded a lot of Indonesian music while staying in Indonesia from 1919 to 1934. He enacted the sound recording and his research experience to be the basis of teaching material and the development of ethnomusicology concept as a knowledge. Now, after nearly 100 years, Musicology Department of University of Amsterdam is initiating the opening of Jaap Kunst’s legacy that has not yet been published. Since the heritage is closely related to Indonesian cultural history and memory, University of Amsterdam collaborates with academics from Indonesia and undertakes to gain support from Indonesian government. This study introduces philosophical approaches for reflection: critical, hermeneutic, and phenomenological, revealing the dynamic relationship between Jaap Kunst’s heritage as a historical artifact and a site of forgetting, remembering, and history-making. This study examines how the memory and identity stored in Jaap Kunst’s materials were reinterpreted in the postcolonial era and how ethnomusicology addresses this matter related to shaping the colonial knowledge into the various subject positions. The author implemented retrospective approach in which samples were taken from the individuals and information about their past was collected. Through interviews some participants were asked to recall essential events. Besides, the author identified relevant administrative data to fill in the information gap and circumstances of the past events. By applying the method, tracking down Kunst's heritage is like taking a vacation at grandma's house, bringing back all the memories but not necessarily related to the present.