Within the tradition of Indonesian lagu nasional, or nationalistic songs, various contemporary variants are emerging. Some of them are classical songs, others build upon the past and expand the tradition. One variant is the lagu perjuangan, which encompasses Indonesian songs that celebrate and commemorate the Indonesian War of Independence. This paper focuses on the electronic dance music of Indonesian musician Alffy Rev, to argue how patriotism and cosmopolitanism are at the centre stage of sonic memories of the Indonesian War of Independence. Although Indonesian popular music is inherently omnipresent in Indonesia, there has not yet been given an emphasis on the relation between Indonesian popular music and cultural memory. In this paper, I argue that three recurrent patterns in Rev's songs – traditions, transitions and tropes – create a mnemonic interplay between the old, the new, the past and the future whilst interweaving the national with the global. These songs encapsulate both the tension between the Revolutionary past and the post-colonial present and the spatial imagination of belonging between the patriotic space and a broader world. I therefore propose to call the sonic memories of Alffy Rev cosmopatriot memories, drawing on Edwin Jurriëns and Jeroen de Kloet's concept of the cosmopatriot (2007). In its focus on sonic cosmopatriot memories of the Indonesian War of Independence, this paper contributes to the understudied relation between contemporary Indonesian popular music and cultural memories of the Indonesian struggle for independence.
