Cosmopolitan Intimacies is a historical and sociological book written by Adil Johan, an ethnomusicologist taking an interdisciplinary approach, from history, ethnomusicology and sociology with a substantial narration of history focusing on textual and musical aspects of Malay film music of the independence era. The commercial films of the period (1950s and 1960s), and in particular their film music, especially from Malaysia's national cultural icons P. Ramlee and Zubir Said, remain as significant reference for Malaysia and Singapore until today. This book can claim to be the first in-depth study of the film music of this period. It is well written and provides an analytical description through significant illustrations and musical scores. This book is not only of interest to film fans, musicians, composers and film-makers who are keen to know more about Southeast Asia and the Malay world, but would also be of interest to scholars wanting to expand their knowledge of the role of cosmopolitan and cultural intimacy in the nation-making history of Peninsular Malaysia.

It is very impressive that an ethnomusicologist is able to show detailed research and well-documented information in this revised and updated version of the Malay Film music of the Independent Era. It helps the current generation of Malaysians to trace many valuable Malay films that carry important messages about economic, political, social and cultural aspects. From historical and sociological perspectives, the author has made the organization of this book appear more scientific, with a more academic approach in mind, and his diachronic and synchronic approach has helped him to chart and enrich the historical discourse of the Malay Film industry especially in the 1950s and 1960s, which he claims in this 414-page book to represent an independent era. Adil Johan has discussed in detail the Malay film which interlinks elements of entertainment and nationalism with the nation-building of the government. The title of the book conveys the conviction in Adil Johan's argument that the 1950s and 1960s period in Malay film production represented an era of nation-building through the use of music and cultural cosmopolitanism.

Diachronically and synchronically, this book is arranged in seven chapters, from which five are concerned with the analytical discourse of Adil on Malay film music interwoven with film and music by P. Ramlee and Zubir Said. Every chapter is discussed through a thematic approach connecting the “intimate cosmopolitanism” as a process of formation of identity with regard to nation-building, the sentiment of musical decolonization, postcoloniality, tradition, musical constitution; technologically mediated modernity, inter-class intimacies, ethnonationalism in music and the moral policing of youth culture, national culturalism and nostalgia. In these chapters Adil has discussed in detail selected films as case studies of music. The nationalism or nationhood and sentiment of decolonization were brought to the soundscape of “traditional” and “modern” through the epic film Hang Tuah (1956, written by Buyong Adil and Jamil Sulong and directed by Phani Majumdar) and also through Sergeant Hassan (1958, written by Ralph and P. Ramlle and directed by Lamberto Avellana and P. Ramlee), both of which are discussed in Chapter 2. Hang Tuah conveys a sense of nostalgia of the hegemony of the Malay Sultanate through the character of the Malay warrior Hang Tuah, highlighting attitudes to postcolonization, whereas Sergeant Hassan conveys the feelings of becoming fully independent. The song and musical ideas in Hang Tuah are intended to convey the highly emotional feeling of Malayness, which is symbolically resistant to accepting colonization (p. 90). An in-depth examination of the function of music in the film in highlighting nationalism is provided in an analysis of the precolonial theme of Zubir Said's increasingly “traditional” music in films in the early 1960s. The film Dang Anom (1962, directed by Hussein Haniff), which features Zubir Said's music, incorporates a traditionalized aesthetic representation of Malay music as a way of articulating and aspiring ethnonationalism and anti-colonial sentiment. Zubir's music corroborated Hussein Haniff's progressive inclination by emphasizing a distinct aesthetic conception of a nationalized Malay tradition in his film scores (p. 92). Understanding of the intimacies of cosmopolitanism has further been enhanced through the analysis of two films, Antara Dua Darjat/Between Two Classes (1960, written by P. Ramlee, screenplay by Omar Rojik and directed by P. Ramlee) and Dia Ibu Mertuaku/My Mother-in-Law (1962, screenplay and directed by P. Ramlee), in which the phenomenon of city life, individualism and a materialistic approach become important in the agenda of life. Antara Dua Darjat reveals that while rural communal values and traditional hierarchical notions of leadership are emphasized, multiple layers of authority, class and gender are reversed and made ambiguous in the intimate musical interactions of the film's protagonists (p. 177). Ibu Mertuaku depicts a more ambivalent narrative of class, but is insightful in the overt music-orientated theme. These two films clearly show the discourse of the politics of modernity, which portray the clash of inter-class dynamics, inter-class relations and many more issues of the impact on modernity on the cosmopolitan Malays.

Diachronically, the cosmopolitan Malay keeps on changing when exposed to new cultural elements, especially the youth as the Malay film studio industry from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s evinced the inclusion of rock ‘n’ roll music culture among youth in Malay films, marking a substantial shift in film music away from the cosmopolitan and traditional sounds. Traditionally youth music cultures in Malaysia and Singapore have always been a locus of contention for nation-making policies, and their conservative power brokers ignited the history of contestation between the state and youth cultural practices. Pop yeh yeh, with its cultural rootlessness, was antithetical to the state vision, seen as a hindrance to the nation-making project. Pop yeh yeh music was regarded as unmistakably Western-influenced, and Malaysian and Singaporean youth were aligning themselves to the more radical and subversive subcultures of the West, and this incited “moral panic” among the conservative ruling elite (p. 224). In some films, youth music was parodied as inconsequential to the narrative, while in others, such as Muda Mudi (1965, written and directed by M. Amin), Malay youth and pop yeh yeh music featured prominently in the narrative, but more than that, it was presented as the antithesis to themes such as ageing. Meanwhile, films like A Go Go ’67 (1967, screenplay by Omar Rojik and directed by Nordin Arshad) portrayed a youth perspective on youth music and the moral policing of young people. Adil shows that while the music of Malay film in the 1950s and 1960s articulated the nation-making aesthetic of the independence era, the “sound of independence” continued to be rearticulated, reinterpreted and refashioned by those whose search for agency is a national cultural paradigm that marginalizes them.

The discourse of the book becomes broader in the sense of a state-defined national culture that appropriates Malay film music and its icons. The film music continues to form a major part of the present-day discourse on nationalism in Singapore and Malaysia. Malay film music, through these most enduring icons P. Ramlee and Zubir Said, provides an affective discourse for Singaporean and Malaysian citizens to embrace their national identity and also challenge rigid or autocratic boundaries of citizenship. Cosmopolitan and transnational articulation of Malay film music remains confined to bounded national spaces of nostalgia – Zubir Said to Singapore and P. Ramlee to Malaysia. Beyond understanding the politics of cosmopolitan nation-making and cultural intimacy in Malay film music, contemporary cultures of musical production are closely intertwined in the national spaces of Malaysia and Singapore that are too often imagined as separate (p. 272).

By stressing music of the golden age, Adil Johan stresses that the Malay films produced in Singapore's film studio articulate the cosmopolitan intimacies of nation-making that continue to unravel the contestation of paradoxes in Malay ethnonationalism. Even though this book does not discuss the history of the development of the Malay film industry in the 1950s and 1960s at length, Adil Johan, through the range of his references and interviews, has explained in a scholarly way the importance of Malay film music from a historical, social, cultural, economic and political point of view. Based on his empirical discussion of very relevant examples of these Malay films, we can conclude that this book is not only valuable to Malay film analysts but also to those who want to learn more about the role of film and film music in nation-building.