Being Distinctive: Cocos Malay Islamic Music in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Mainland Australia, and Beyond

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands, a tiny coral atoll in Australia’s Indian Ocean Territory, are home to around 450 Malays and 150 others. Cocos Malays largely identify as Malay and Muslim and have strong connections with the Malay world (Indonesia and Malaysia) as well as the wider Islamic world. They are also Australian citizens, part of its economy and culture, and have migrated in significant numbers to Western Australia and Sabah, Malaysia. This article focuses on two musical practices, zikir and nasyid, that have become particularly interesting in recent decades in terms of the ways they involve Cocos Malays in interactions with these wider systems, in which the distinctiveness of the particular Cocos version of Malay culture is variously emphasized, valued, overlooked, glossed over, or overcome. In this article I examine the significance of these two practices in the diasporic context of Katanning, Western Australia, where such performances of cultural identity are resignified and become involved in larger systems such as the transnational nasyid industry and multicultural agendas at local and state levels. I propose ‘distinctiveness’ as a valuable concept for understanding the way Cocos Malay culture functions as a minority culture because it recognizes the relationship both of difference from and connection with a wider group, holding these two things in tension. Attention to distinctiveness moves us beyond thinking about assimilation on the one hand or cultural preservation and sustainability on the other, to examining a situation in which both difference and belonging are important, and examining the dynamics that govern the value placed on a community’s distinguishing cultural practices.