Kaliwadas, the town where tambourines are made

Kaliwadas, the town where tambourines are made

Agus Maryono, The Jakarta Post/Bumiayu, Central Java

If you happen to see musicians from Brunei or Malaysia playing a rebana (traditional tambourine), there is a good chance the instruments were created in Kaliwadas village, Bumiayu subdistrict, Brebes, Central Java.

The village is a production center for rebana, most of which are exported to Malaysia and Brunei. The rebana is often associated with Islamic music.

Zawawi Faesal, a rebana maker in Kaliwadas, told The Jakarta Post recently that he often received orders from Malaysia and Brunei for hundreds of tambourines.

"I always feel like I have hit the jackpot every time I get a business order from Malaysia or Brunei because the prices there can be three times as much as local prices," Zawawi said.

In the local market, according to Zawawi, a rebana set, known locally as terbang or genjring, sells for Rp 150,000 to Rp 200,000, while buyers from Brunei or Malaysia pay Rp 400,000 to Rp 500,000 per set.

Made of a wooden circles with one side covered with dried animal skin, a set of this simple musical instrument usually consists of five to six rebana of different sizes and a bedug, or bass.

Unlike the rebana, which are usually thin, a bedug is much thicker. They are like the bedug hung horizontally at a mosque used to summon people to prayer.

"But of course the best quality wood is required to produce rebana for buyers from Malaysia and Brunei. So they should cost more. Besides, we don't want to disappoint foreign buyers," Zawawi said.

The best wood to make a rebana is from the mango tree. Unfortunately, he says, it is becoming difficult to find mango trees around Bumiayu because most of them have been cut down to make tambourines.

"Now we have to find the wood outside of the town to keep the business running," he said.

And not just any mango tree will do to make a rebana. The tree must be at least 1.5 meters in diameter around the trunk, and a minimum height of some eight meters.

A log of that size, according to Zawawi, usually costs him Rp 100,000 and can make up to 80 rebana, or some 14 sets of rebana.

If a set sells for Rp 200,000, therefore, Zawawi can make about Rp 2.8 million in sales from one log. After he pays his employees and buys the leather and paint for the instruments, Zawawi says he can earn a net income of Rp 1.5 million per log.

Waktub, 40, another rebana producer, says because of the relatively good profits almost 90 percent of the residents of Kaliwadas make a living from the rebana industry.

"Besides the easy production process, we also have some eight agencies here that are ready to buy our products at any time, no matter how many," Waktub said.

To make a rebana the first step is to cut the wood into circles. The circles are then hollowed out and the wood sandpapered to get rid of any rough spots. Then one side is covered with leather and painted.

"The product is then ready to market," said Waktub, adding that the money that he and other people in the village earned from the business was enough to support their families and send their children to school.

However, Waktub said there were some ups and downs in business over the course of the year, when they are either deluged with orders or have no work.

"The peak times are usually ahead of the Maulud and Rajab months (on the Islamic calendar)," said Zawawi, explaining that these were times of Islamic celebrations and a major part of these celebrations was music.

"We are always flooded with orders ahead of elections. Ahead of the last election, for example, we had an order for 650 sets of rebana from the Golkar party. All of them were made with a banyan tree picture on them," Zawawi said, referring to the symbol of Golkar.

"We also had plenty of orders during the administration of Gus Dur. It was probably because he is from NU (Nahdlatul Ulama) and hadrah (music) is mostly performed by NU members," Zawawi said.