You hate jedag jedug/dangdut because you hate poor people

Originally submitted as one of my degree portfolios, published on Wixsite.

Every year, towards late November or early December, many young people, including myself, wait for one digital ritual almost as eagerly as a cultural event: Spotify Wrapped. First introduced in 2013 as Year in Review, Spotify Wrapped provides a personalised summary of users’ annual listening habits, including most-streamed artists, songs, genres, and podcasts. According to Annabell and Rasmussen (2025b), what began as a platform feature has now developed into a global social media phenomenon. In 2024 alone, Spotify Wrapped generated engagement from nearly 250 million users across 184 markets and 53 languages within its first week.

What makes this online trend interesting is how users rarely keep their data to themselves. It is common to see users reposting their Spotify Wrapped content on social media to compare results, joke about unexpected songs, and react to other people’s listening habits. Music consumption trend has now become a public discourse which reveals deeper processes of social judgement, cultural distinction and identity performance. This is where social positioning comes into the picture.
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Clémence (2001) defines social positioning as “the process by which people take up a position about a network of significations.” So when individuals express their preferences, they are not just sending signals of their personal taste but also processing information to align their thinking with what the rest of society thinks. As Clémence further explains, positioning “provides the means for articulating the variations between intergroup beliefs and knowledge with the temporary crystallisation of a network of meaning in a given public sphere”. In the context of Spotify Wrapped, music becomes one of those public spheres where identity is communicated and negotiated.
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This is a common occurrence in my observation. When people post their Wrapped, reactions often go beyond music itself. Some users proudly display obscure artists as proof of individuality; others apologise for “guilty pleasure” songs, while some receive comments such as “good taste” when their artists are socially approved. These responses suggest that music taste functions symbolically: certain artists confer prestige, while others require justification. Here, Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power becomes useful. Bourdieu (1991) argues that symbolic power allows certain descriptions to appear legitimate and self-evident, while others are dismissed as excessive or inferior. Taste therefore, is never neutral; it is socially organised.
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A study by Gartner (2023) supports this observation. Participants were asked what non-musical meanings they attach to posting Spotify Wrapped, and many associated it with signalling identity, personality, and social belonging. Wrapped functioned as a mechanism of social positioning within communities of practice, especially among university students. Because university students often occupy similar institutional environments, subtle distinctions become important. Music taste then operates as symbolic social capital, expressed through labels such as “cool,” “good vibes,” or “interesting taste.” What is being evaluated is not simply what someone listens to, but what that listening supposedly says about who they are.
 
Social positioning through music did not emerge in the modern time of streaming culture; in fact, it can be traced back decades ago.​ In the late nineteenth-century United States, Peterson and Kern (1996) note that “highbrow” taste was associated almost exclusively with opera and Western classical music, genres requiring cultural familiarity and formal knowledge. Musical legitimacy was tied to education and elite social status. By contrast, genres associated with ordinary life were often considered culturally inferior.
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Even today, in the music listening field, in the United States, the phrase “I listen to everything except country” often functions as more than a musical preference. As Nadine Hubbs (2014) argues, rejection of country music often reflects distance from white working-class identity, because country music is deeply associated with that social group. The statement, therefore, becomes a subtle way of drawing class boundaries. It communicates not merely dislike, but disassociation.
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This dynamic becomes especially interesting when viewed from my own regional context in Malaysia and neighbouring Indonesia through the genre known as jedag jedug. Jedag jedug is a popular fusion of dangdut and EDM characterised by heavy bass, repetitive beats, and highly rhythmic editing styles often used in short-form video culture. The term itself imitates a pounding sound, roughly meaning “thumping” or “pulsing.” In recent years, it has become highly visible on TikTok, particularly in Southeast Asian meme culture.
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What I found most interesting about Jedag Jedug is the social meaning attached to this genre. Online discourse frequently frames Jedag Jedug negatively. It is often associated with illegal motorcycle racing, loud public spaces, moral disorder, and “kampung” aesthetics. These reactions reveal how music becomes linked to class judgment. Similar to how labels of ‘chav’ or ‘pikey’ are commonly used on the working class in the UK, Jones (2011) notes that class discrimination often remains socially acceptable when directed toward working-class culture, including accent, clothing, neighbourhoods, and cultural habits. Labels such as “cheap,” “low quality,” or morally questionable are also often used without hesitation towards people who engage in Jedag Jedug because class prejudice is normalised.
However, over the past few years we are seeing more Jedag Jedug genre of music entering mainstream digital culture through younger generation artists such as Tenxi and Jemsii which have incorporated similar sonic elements into more modern music. Although Jedag Jedug was once associated with lower-class music, this genre has now appeared in TikTok viral trends consumed by middle-class users, influencers, and urban audiences.
Nevertheless, this does not mean classism is erased; my observation is that the way that people from different class backgrounds engage in Jedag Jedug still has a stark difference. For instance, middle-class users often participate ironically. They use Jedag Jedug in humorous videos, accompanied by captions that signal distance: they are “playing with” the trend rather than fully belonging to it. I believe this ironic framing protects their social identity as someone from the upper class who only engages in lower-class music for ‘fun’.  This reflects what Hall & Bucholtz (2005) call positionality and relationality in identity construction. Identity is produced through categories and through oppositions such as authentic/inauthentic or powerful/less powerful. Thus, identical musical behaviour produces different meanings depending on who performs it.
 
This also reflects Lakoff's (2004) theory of framing: what counts as reasonable or acceptable is often decided before explicit discussion begins. If a working-class user posts jedag jedug seriously, they may be judged as vulgar. If a middle-class user posts the same sound ironically, they are seen as funny, experimental, or culturally aware.
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This interesting phenomenon can be further explained by Peterson & Kern (1996), who argue that the dominant group would usually absorb and reappropriate elements of popular culture to maintain control instead of rejecting them outright. Middle-class people engage in Jedag Jedug to maintain symbolic control while also appearing culturally open. This does not necessarily change the social image of the genre itself and definitely does not change the negative perception of Jedag Jedug listeners who come from a working-class background.
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In summary, we could also view the people who failed to sever the connection between Jedag Jedug and class as a classic example of failing to uphold one of the central challenges of contemporary social life. That is the ability “to tolerate views and lifestyles inconsistent with their own.” (Tyler, 2008). Finally, Marková (2003a) also reminds us that understanding the other requires seeing the world from the other’s perspective. In the case of music, this means asking not why someone listens differently, but why certain listening practices are granted legitimacy while others are mocked.

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