Across Indonesia’s sprawling, interconnected network of creative music scenes, artists working to weave together personal and cultural sonic references often create work that defies the narrow, rigid genre frameworks that shape much of global music classification, leading to flexible categorizations that can hold the full complexity of their output. The country’s music ecosystem is shaped by layers of cultural exchange that stretch back centuries, from the cross-island trade that carried regional folk styles across archipelagic communities to the 20th and 21st century flow of global musical ideas that have given local artists access to a vast toolkit of sounds, structures, and approaches to creating work that resonates with both local audiences and global listeners.