'Angklung' made with fatherly love

By Bambang Tiong

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Seventy-year-old Sumitro, who lives in Tegiri, a small village in Yogyakarta, is a successful maker of the West Javanese traditional musical instrument known as angklung, a series of suspended bamboo tubes which percuss when shaken.

He said that he began making angklung when his first child, who had been born blind and was then aged 8, was capivated by the sound of the angklung on the radio. Short of money, Sumitro could not buy a angklung outright. Fortunately, Kasan Wiyadi, a resident of the neighboring Menguri village, was moved by the boy. Kasan was a practitioner of the local traditional art called uncling, which closely resembles kuda lumping, in which men ride on horses made of plaitwork and dance themselves into a trance. Unlike kuda lumping, uncling is accompanied by angklung music.

Kasan promised to make the boy a set of angklung. However, this angklung, which took him about two months to make, did not satisfy the child. Prompted by his love for the child, Sumitro himself tried to make this musical instrument with Kasan's help. Unexpectedly, the angklung that Sumitro made was exactly to the child's liking.

Encouraged that he could make angklung, Sumitro, a father of four children, began making them commercially in 1973.

The instrument is constructed of three types of bamboo -- petung, apus and wulung -- which each have different and complementary functions. Petung is used for the diatonic tones, wulung for the accompaniment and apus for the basic tones," said Sumitro.

He further said that a set of angklung is made up of 60 individual angklung, 44 of which are used to produce melodies and the remaining 16 for the chords.

To make angklung, 30 pieces of bamboo are used. Each piece consists of 10 ros (a space between two joints), and each ros is 40 centimeters to 70 centimeters long.

In a performance, a set of angklung will be complemented with other bamboo musical instruments, such as several kinds of gong and gambang (a traditional instrument resembling a xylophone).

To be able to get the most melodious sound from the angklung, the quality of the bamboo is of great importance. One must consider the fertility of the soil where the bamboo grows.

A bamboo tree growing on fertile soil is harvested at three years of age. On the other hand, if a bamboo tree is growing on infertile soil, it will be harvested at one year of age. According to Sumitro, a bamboo tree growing on infertile soil undergoes a faster aging process. It is thinner and drier, and suitable to produce high tones.

A bamboo tree cannot be cut at just any time. You must know the best months for harvesting the trees. The period between March and June is believed to be good for this purpose -- the tree interiors are free from insects during this period. However, as the period between March and June is the wet season, the bamboo will be in a humid condition.

"Therefore, as soon as a bamboo tree is cut down, it must be dried and then kept for a couple of years on top of the roof in such a way as it is prevented from contact with water and exposure to sun rays," Sumitro said, adding that this process will prevent certain elements that insects like proliferating.

Besides, no chemicals are used in preserving the bamboo, he added.

In obtaining his bamboo stems, Sumitro buys them from areas around his village.

Making an angklung is not as simple as many people think. As soon as the bamboo is taken out of storage, it is tested for tonality. Usually, he said, only 40 percent of the bamboo stems are used. "As angklung produces unique sound, this uniqueness must be maintained," he said.

Once the right raw materials are found, they are cut with a saw and then smoothed with a small knife. Holes are then made using a pointed iron device. When all is ready, the bamboo pieces are subjected to another test for tonality. When the maker is satisfied with the sound, these bamboo are assembled using refined pieces of bamboo half the size of a little finger. The little pieces serve as the framework to which the bamboo pieces are tied with a rattan rope.

A set of angklung is made by three persons in about two weeks. The traditional working tools include a small saw, a sharpening knife, a machete and an iron piece for making holes.

Dwi Budiyanto, 29, who has worked with Sumitro for over three years, said that to make angklung properly is not difficult. What is difficult is to harmonize the tunes produced by different bamboo pieces. Dwi also said that he liked his job not only because it suited his artistic gifts but also because he could earn Rp 10,000 a day. Gunawan, 27, one of Dwi's workmates, agreed with him and added that after working with Sumitro for 4 years, he could help his family financially.

According to Sumitro, few of his fellow villagers are interested in making angklung -- they are not interested in working with bamboo.

"I cannot develop this skill in my own village because many people belittle this undertaking, arguing that the raw materials are cheap," he complained. One bamboo stem can be obtained at only Rp 1,500. However, every felling season (March to June), Sumitro spends Rp 3 million to amass a sufficient inventory of bamboo for the angklung's yearly demands. Sumitro needs at least 150 bamboo stems every month.

When asked how much money is spent to make a set of angklung, Sumitro was reluctant to give an answer. He simply said that the profit could be more than 500 percent. Sumitro sells a set of angklung at Rp 1.5 million.

Sumitro has sold his angklung to a great number of arts groups at home and abroad, such as England, France, the Netherlands and Ireland.

At the end of the meeting with The Jakarta Post at his workshop called Serambu, Sumitro said he was optimistic about the prospects for angklung. He believes that in this era of sophisticated technology, many people will return to the traditional things in life.