International Journal of Visual and Performing Arts ISSN 2684-9259 Vol. 2, No. 1, June 2020, pp. 15-32 15 10.31763/viperarts.v2i1.130 https://pubs2.ascee.org/index.php/viperarts viperarts@ascee.org The Musicality of Campursari Music in the Islamic Ritual Context Bambang Sunarto a,1,* a Institut Seni Indonesian, Surakarta, Jl. Ki Hajar Dewantara No 19, Surakarta, 57126 Indonesia 1 bsunarto432@gmail.com*; * corresponding author 1. Introduction In Central Java and its surrounding area, since the early 1990s has grown and developed a new musical genre called campursari music. It is a hybrid music, mixture genres of gamelan music with other musical genres, such as keroncong, dangdut, and pop. In essence, the creation of campursarimusic refers to a mixture of several different music genres today [1]. The collaboration between keroncong musicians from Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI) Semarang and gamelan musicians at URIL KODAM IV Diponegoro 1 in post-1965 was the origin of the birth of this music genre [2]. There is an oral source that states that the delivery of campursari began with a collaboration between a group of gamelan musicians called Riris Raras Irama Surakarta led by Cipto Suwarso with a group of keroncong musicians named Radio Orkes Surakarta from RRI Surakarta in the 1970s. The collaboration took place to fill the live broadcast on Radio Republik Indonesia Surakarta. In the show, they jointly use their respective instruments to present and work on the song Kembang Kacang. They together play and perform this song using mixed devices, between gamelan and keroncong musical instruments [3]. Since the collaboration in the 1970s, the term campursari has become famous, to express the existence of music creations that combine elements of music, and produce musical productions that contain many of the essences of music [4]. Unfortunately, this event leaves no trace 1 The nomenclature of KODAM IV Diponegoro in post 1965 (1970’s) is KODAM VII Diponegoro. ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history Received 2020-05-19 Revised 2020-06-10 Accepted 2020-06-20 This article discusses campursari’s music, which has an increasingly broad role, from profane to sacrilegious Islamic areas. Since its birth, this music serves as entertainment music. In the era of the 1990s and its peak in the 2000s, this music entered and interacted with the Islamic community. The entry of campursari music into the Islamic religious community is the embodiment of expectations and demands for environmental situations and conditions. Hopes and needs give birth to musical syncretism, which gives birth to adaptation strategies. Verstehen are appropriate methods for recognizing forms of adaptation and syncretism. The choice of the verstehen method is because this article does not merely highlight the problem of music, but also tries to understand the social actions of campursari musicians in serving the muslim community via campursari music. The choice of this approach is because musical adaptation stems from the idea that the birth of musicality has the support of a socially developed network of meanings. The benefit is to recognize the principles and rules of adaptive value and productive syncretism that occur behind music phenomena. The results of this study indicate that campursari's performance is sufficient to prove that campursari's musical musicality in the context of Islamic rituals is productive syncretism. Adaptation and syncretism are thus two methods and ways of building products, both of which must co-exist. This is an open-access article under the CC–BY-SA license. Keywords Music Syncretism Ritual Event Religious Campursari Adaptation