Computer-aided analysis of the cultural influences of Malay music in the 20th century

Mufid Manjun / unsplash

Our project aims to better understand processes of cultural exchange using the example of popular music from Malaysia and Indonesia. Why are we focusing on music from precisely this region? Indonesia and Malaysia belong to a geographical area that is often referred to collectively as the Malay world due to their cultural similarities. At the same time, this region is characterized by a high degree of cultural diversity, which is particularly reflected in regional music. This has developed through centuries of blending regional traditions and supra-regional influences.

Our aim is to trace these complex compositions of various influences that make up Malay music using computational methods. We draw on previous research that has identified Indian, Arabic, Chinese and Western music as key influences in Malay music. On this basis, we want to examine the extent to which these different cultural influences can be traced using modern methods of musical signal processing. We will focus on popular music of the 20th century, as it is particularly representative of the interweaving of different cultural influences in the region. To summarize, we want to examine the extent to which Malay music has similarities with the assumed influences in terms of various musical parameters.

The implementation of our project comprises several steps. The starting point is the collection, archiving and digitization of musical sound carriers, mainly in the form of vinyl records, compact cassettes and CDs. We analyze the resulting audio files with Computational Music and Sound Archiving (CoMSAr), a digital signal processing system developed at the Institute for Systematic Musicology at the University of Hamburg. CoMSAr uses various algorithms to sort audio files according to similarity with regard to different musical parameters such as loudness, timbre or musical mood. The results of the analysis are visualized in the form of self-organizing maps (also known as Kohonen maps), which display high-dimensional data on a topographical map. This form of data visualization makes it possible to identify similarities between different types of music that the human ear alone cannot necessarily identify. 

The project brings together various disciplines and fields of research that have so far been determined to varying degrees by computer-aided methods. We aim to expand the field of research in Southeast Asian Studies through new computer-aided approaches in systematic musicology. In our opinion, questions in the humanities in particular offer promising interdisciplinary applications for computer-aided methods. In particular, these approaches can provide new insights for research into cultural transformation processes based on music. 

And here the group in their own words (German):