Pandaya, Banda Aceh – Teen pop icons Raja and Ratu's joint concert turned Banda Aceh upside down last month. The partitions erected to segregate the thousands of boys and girls, as required by the province's sharia law, crumbled as the hysterical star-struck young people jostled to get closer to their idols on stage.

As Aceh becomes part of the global village, the young in the conservative, predominantly Muslim province care more about pop culture than they do about indigenous culture. Concerts by Jakarta rock bands attract a lot more people than local cultural shows.

Sahari Ganie, a senior official with the provincial art and culture agency, mentioned a local cultural show by the Cut Nya Dien group, at which 80 percent of the audience was made up of foreigners working on local projects.

An ethnic arts enthusiast from Jakarta, who recently visited Banda Aceh and ventured as far as Aceh Besar farther west, said he was terribly disappointed by the dearth of local arts and culture.

"When you turn on your car radio, Christina Aguelera and Peter Pan rule the airwaves," he quipped. "When you walk down the street, you don't hear local music from the blaring stereos."

Cultural rebellion? Maybe. But the addiction of young people in Aceh to pop culture is worrying the more conservative local leaders, who see foreign culture as fast eroding local values.

Like other urban centers elsewhere in the country, Banda Aceh is besieged by modern-day symbols. Satellite dishes are common sights in major towns, and even in the tsunami victims' camps in Meulaboh.

Western fast food restaurants have been mushrooming since members of the international community arrived in great numbers to help rebuild Aceh. FM radio stations are on the air the whole day, some relaying news from Jakarta and major cities around the world.

Preserving the local culture is a tough battle to fight. If the provincial budget is a yardstick to measure the administration's commitment to preserving local culture, then it says it all: only Rp 250 million is allocated for the promotion of arts and culture this year.

"The budget is far from sufficient," says Risman A Rachman, manager of the education and cultural promotion section of the BRR (Aceh-Nias Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency), which contributed Rp 1 billion for a recent arts congress in Banda Aceh.

Despite the small budget allocation, the provincial government and Arts Council have been doing their best to instill a love for indigenous culture in young people, including staging cultural events in the refugee camps and the pesantren (Islamic boarding schools). But the lack of funds and sponsors makes it impossible for them to hold large-scale promotional events.

The heavy presence of expatriates working on humanitarian projects in Aceh has also imported foreign values, both "appropriate" and "inappropriate" by local standards. "In their first days in Aceh, many bule (Westerners) would stroll around the streets after dusk carrying cans of beer as the locals performed their evening prayers," said Ganie. "But as soon as they became aware of sharia, they stopped that." But it is also undeniable that the expatriates show a nobleness of spirit and character that local people both respect and admire.

"The locals have learned a lot of positive things from the expatriates, such as honesty and punctuality," said Ganie. "They no longer consider foreigners and Christians as infidels and enemies of Islam." The peace agreement that the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed last year has rekindled hopes for a revival of local arts and culture after 30 years of bloody conflict.

Despite the lack of money, Aceh hopes to revitalize the meunasah, an Acehnese cultural symbol that has lost its luster due to the prolonged conflict.

The original concept of meunasah meant the village mosque, but in the local social structure it serves as more than simply a place of worship. It is a place where the people meet, chat, study together and make plans together. In short, the meunasah, of which there are more than 600 throughout Aceh, is the center of Acehnese community life.

After GAM and the government became involved in the armed conflict in 1976, the meunasah concept was practically destroyed. The meunasah became deserted because the people were subject to military and GAM harassment whenever they gathered together.

"The meunasah will regain their original functions, where traditional and religious leaders rekindle lost indigenous values," says Ganie.

Hopefully, a lasting peace will allow traditional songs to once again fill the airwaves along with Peter Pan and Christina Aguelera.