Gongs prove to be a striking success in Bogor

Gongs prove to be a striking success in Bogor

In the best traditions of Indonesian tourism a unique attraction
involving culture, music and craft is poorly promoted and hard to
find. But the effort is worth the energy, reports The Jakarta
Post contributor Duncan Graham from Bogor.

It looks like a scene from Dante's fevered imagination: An
ancient, soot-blackened, windowless workshop lit by a volcanic
display of sparks. In the center are two roaring charcoal
furnaces.

Sweating men squat around the saucer-shaped fires. They look
like demons in the flickering red and yellow lights. They wear
sandals and T-shirts. Or no shirts. When tongs withdraw the
white-hot dish they jump to action.

Before the metal cools they pound it with great hammers;
properly beaten into submission the hapless metal is thrust back
into the heat for more torture. From such prolonged pain will
come extraordinary music.

Bogor's gong factory could feature as a case study in Western
manuals on industrial health and safety. But before activists
leap to protest let it be said that it was this writer and not
the inferno workers who shuddered at the conditions.

They clearly thought a foreigner's sensitivities a great joke.
Who needs hard hats, steel-capped boots, masks and ventilation?
Protective gear is for Western sissies, not Indonesian craftsmen.

Visitors to what's reputed to be West Java's last remaining
gong factory should set aside squeamish sentiments and ponder the
significance of their experience. For they are witnessing ancient
technology little changed since our prehistoric ancestors
discovered that mixing molten copper and tin makes a marvelously
malleable, durable and attractive metal.

In Bogor the Bronze Age is alive and glowing.

The workshop's owner Haji Sukarna, 70, said little had changed
during his family's seven generations of gong making. An electric
fan is now used instead of bellows to excite the embers and a
compressor drives a spray painter, but other tasks are manual.

Thermometers are not used to measure the heat. As in many
crafts the eye of experience gauges when the metal is just right
for beating. Too hot and the chemistry changes; too cold and the
shape will not change.

Bronze has excellent acoustic properties, which is why it is
widely used for bells and wind instruments.

The Indonesian government supplies bars of tin and copper for
the process. The metals are melted and combined to form a flat,
round disk. The tin component is critical; if much more than 40
per cent is used the alloy can be too brittle.

It takes about four days to hammer this into a gong of about
50 cm diameter, six days for an item half as big again. The price
tag for the smaller instrument is Rp 2,500,000 (US$ 250),
complete with wooden stand and striker. These are also made at
the same factory.

Add at least another million rupiah if you buy the same gong
from a shop in Central Jakarta. It can be an expensive but
impressive way to summon the family to dinner. The bigger gongs
are sold to mosques. Gong size determines pitch.

The smaller, hat-shaped gongs used in gamelan orchestras are
also produced, along with the red-painted and carved frames that
hold the instruments.

Pak Sukarna's son, Mohamed Riduan, 56, now manages the
business. "Our gongs have been sold all over the world," he said.
get a constant stream of visitors from abroad. We don't
advertise or publish brochures. People get to know about us
through word of mouth."

A listing in the Lonely Planet guide -- better known as the
"Backpacker's Bible" -- has also helped spread news of the
factory and some local tour guides include the place in their
itineraries. But it seems that tourism authorities do not
realize what a gem they have in their midst.

"The work is hard and because of this it's sometimes difficult
to get staff," said Pak Riduan. "It's a specialized skill. We
operate seven days a week with 25 workers to keep up with
demand."

When the business started in the 19th century the workshop was
in a rural area. Now Bogor has expanded and houses and shops
surround the foundry.

But there's no doubt about the location, even if you miss the
crudely painted sign on the wall outside. The heavy bass bong of
hammer on burnished metal echoes down the crowded street; it
bounces slowly off the bitumen and rolls round the concrete,
unimpeded by the clamor of modern traffic.

It is also the same sound that rang through the forests of
Java hundreds of years ago when the magic properties of bronze
were the leading edge of technology.