Six generations hammer away at gong-making tradition

Six generations hammer away at gong-making tradition

Text by Rebecca Moubray, photos by P.J. Leo

BOGOR, West Java (JP): Above the roar of the Bogor traffic,
the rhythmic pounding of the gongmakers' hammers can be heard on
the red-hot bronze.

Inside the barn, four barefoot men strike the metal with their
seven-kilo sledgehammers, while another rotates the gong in and
out of the fire. Each hit makes a ping sound much like the sound
of the gamelan instrument they will ultimately produce.

There the four men will stand for two days, hitting, rotating
and reheating the metal to fashion just one gong.

The gong workshop, called Bengkel Gong Sukarna, is one of a
few left in Java, a living tribute to a dwindling art form.

Gongs were invented in China in the sixth century, but it was
the Javanese who refined the musical instrument that is the most
important piece of the gamelan. Gongs are still a celebrated
component of Javanese culture, but like many hallmarks of
traditional culture, they are no longer a common feature of
regular village life.

Bengkel Gong Sukarna has been owned by six generations of the
Sukarna family since 1879. It is currently under the stewardship
of 69-year-old Pak Sukarna, and will someday be passed to his son
Iwan, 41, the only of Sukarna's children interested in taking
over the workshop.

Family legacies have traditionally sustained work inside the
workshop, too. Many of the 30 gongmakers say they work there
because their parents did, and some will also train their
offspring in the art of gong-making.

One polisher, Maman, has worked there for 35 years, shaving
the gamelan pieces to the proper pitch, and two of his children
have joined him working in the factory.

But this too is changing. Boykey, another gongmaker, says he
works in the workshop merely because other jobs are hard to find.

Boykey sits with his body curled around the crudely fashioned
gong, bracing it with his toes as he scrapes it with a serrated
tool to make it thin and shiny. It takes Boykey two days of
scraping eight hours a day to shape one gong to perfection. He
earns Rp 10,000 per gong.

These gongmakers train each other to pummel and shave the
crudely fashioned gongs and listen for the perfect pitch. The
gongmakers say that while they are not musicians, they have
developed an intuitive sense for the proper sound.

"If it doesn't sound good, we hit it again," Boykey said about
the forging process.

Conditions inside the workshop are difficult. Two fires for
forging the gongs make the barn hot and smoky, and the soot
blackens everything. A pair of doors and a vent in the ceiling
are the only sources of light and air.

Growth

The gong making business is not likely to grow, said Jakarta
composer Franki Raden, because younger generations are not
exposed to the gamelan.

"It's difficult to excite people about the gamelan because
it's in competition with urban and pop music," Raden said. "It's
hard to get a gamelan because they're so expensive, so people
have to go places to play."

It may be the government that preserves gamelan music and
sustains the gong-making business. The Indonesian government,
particularly the Ministry of Education and Culture, is the
Sukarna family's largest customer, buying gongs for gamelan
groups, museums, schools, as awards and as office decor. The
Sukarna family's gongs can be found in the Jakarta and Bogor
presidential palaces and Taman Mini Indonesia.

Though the gong workshop makes only 15 gongs a month and a
handful of full gamelan a year, the prices are lucrative. A 50-cm
gong with the wooden stand sells for Rp 600,000, while a full
Sundanese gamelan sells for Rp 7.5 million. Gongs are only made
to order.

Tourists are the second largest gong purchasers. Danielle
Mitterand, the wife of late French president Francois Mitterand,
took one back to France a few years ago, and many other
foreigners bring them home as well.

Some of these gongs live on in unexpected ways. Conoco Inc.
employee Paul Grimmer, on a business trip to Jakarta from
Houston, Texas, bought a gong with a particular purpose in mind.

"We've got five kids and my wife thinks it would be cool to
hit the gong to call the kids for dinner."