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."