The history of bamboo musical instruments in Indonesia
By Endo Suanda
BANDUNG (JP): Bamboo used for musical instruments is as old as bamboo in cultural artifacts. This is due to the nature of bamboo as a source of sound. The plant's hollow trunk and straight, strong and flexible grain enable interesting and different sounds to be produced.
A large variety of instruments can be made from bamboo with very simple tools. From the delicate and complicated Jew's harp to the bulk and simplicity of a stamping drum; from using the hollow trunk as an air column of a flute to using its strong, flexible length as a bow to stretch a cord; from the thin clarinet reed to the easy to make xylophone key; from the paramusical instrument of a wind whistle attached to a pigeon's tail to a large ensemble of Balinese jegog, bamboo can be used to build most instruments. In fact, bamboo can be made into all four of Sach-Hornbostel's categories of musical instruments: idiophones, aerophones, chordophones and membranophones.
Bamboo idiophonic instruments, in which the entire body of the instrument is the vibrating element or the sound source, are stamping tubes, slit drums, angklung, calung and the bamboo fork.
Stamping tubes, or stamping drums, are among the simplest instruments, some of which are not intended to create musical tones and are used as a container to carry water or sugar palm juice and wine. The tube is hollow at one end and closed at the other. It is held vertically, with the closed end at the bottom, and struck on a hard surface such as a rock. The longer and wider the tube, the lower the pitch.
Such instruments used to be found all over the archipelago and are common in all bamboo cultures. Today, they are still used occasionally in sintren performances in the areas of Indramayu and Cirebon in West Java. The small ones, between 30 and 40 cm long, are the ketuk (rhythm) and the big ones, 1.5 meters long, act as the gong.
In North Sumatra, stamping drums are used to scare birds and animals from rice fields. The drum is placed on an axle between two poles. When the top of the tube is filled with water, the drum turns upside-down. When empty again, the tube swings back to its original position, striking the bottom on a rock and making a sharp, loud sound.
The slit drum is another common idiophone found all over Indonesia. Even though it is used in an ensemble of four or more players, it is generally used as an alarm, or even to call animals on the farm.
Angklung
The most well-known and unique type of bamboo idiophone is the angklung or calung. The Sundanese calung rantay, a xylophone with half of the key left full while the other half is cut away, is similar to angklung tubes found in other places in Asia. In Sunda, West Java, one end of the smaller keys is attached to a tree or pole while the other side is held by a sitting player's toe or tied to a standing player's waist, making the instrument hang vertically. Acoustically, the angklung of Banyuwangi in East Java, the gamelan bumbung and the instruments of jegog in Bali, and some instruments of the modern Sundanese arumba operate on the same principle, except that both ends of are attached to a rack. The Cambodian and Siamese roneat may have evolved from this type of instrument.
The Sundanese traditional calung rantay, a solo instrument usually played in a hut in a rice field, is almost extinct. A few remained in the Baduy area of Banten in the 1970s. Still performed on occasions is the modern calung gantung, played by four or five comedians who sing and dance on stage as amateur performers. The largest and most spectacular is the Balinese jegog ensemble, in which the musicians not only play quick, elaborate, and intricate rhythms, but also show impressive physical stamina in beating the gigantic instruments with heavy mallets for long periods. The instruments, like the bronze gambelan of Bali, are tuned in pairs, one set with a slightly different frequency than the other. When they are played together they create a shimmering "wow wow" sound.
The other type popular idiophone that is indigenous to Java and Bali is the angklung. The tubes, up to four of them, hang from a rack and rattle back and forth in their slots when shaken. Today, the traditional angklung is mainly found in villages from the mountains of Baduy to the coastal village of Bungko in Cirebon in West Java. The modern angklung is found in the city of Bandung. Most angklung are played in an ensemble with drums, gongs and shawm.
In some ensembles, one musician plays a set of angklung, but in others, several people play one or two sets of angklung while singing and dancing. Interestingly, in Bali there is a type of gambelan called gambelan angklung even though the angklung instrument itself is no longer used. This signifies that the angklung was at one time a very important instrument. Even though most traditional angklung, like Balinese gambelan angklung, are tuned to salendro (equidistant pentatonic), pelog (non- equidistant) tuned angklung ensembles can be found in Ciamis, West Java. The diatonically-tuned modern angklung, however, can be played by 10 to a 1,000 people, monophonically or polyphonically. They can play any song -- from Halo-Halo Bandung to My Darling Clementine.
The rengkong in the Sunda region of West Java is another unique musical instrument. Although it doesn't look like a musical instrument, the idea behind it is clear: to create sound while carrying rice home from the field. The pikulan (a bar laid across the man's shoulders) is made out of a dry, resonant length of bamboo, while the bundles of paddy are attached at either end by bamboo or palm-fiber ropes. When the carrier sways from side to side while walking, the friction between the rope and the pikulan creates a sound.
In the past, as recorded by J. Kunst, the rengkong carrier also played another instrument, the panpipe. Today, the rengkong (without panpipes) is only found in a few villages of Sumedang regency, West Java.
The bamboo fork is classified as a lamellaphone, and, according to the literature available, is only found in Sulawesi, Nias, and some parts of the Philippines. It is a fork-shaped piece of bamboo, in which the two prongs vibrate when one of them is hit against a soft surface, like the player's palm or thigh. The sound, however, doesn't come from the prong itself, but from a slit running from the bottom of the tongue to the node. When the prongs vibrate, the walls of the slits hit each other. The pitch of the instrument therefore doesn't depend on the length of the prong, but on the depth of the air chamber from the bottom of the prong to the node of the bamboo. Some of them have tuning holes somewhere in the middle of this air chamber, so one instrument can produce several tones. W. Kaudern's Musical Instruments in Celebes: Ethnographical Studies in Celebes, shows various types of this instrument in Sulawesi, called rere, some of them elaboratly carved.
Kowangan
The other lamellaphone proper, which is rare in Indonesia and may have disappeared entirely, is the kowangan (Java) or chaping buyuk (West Java). This instrument is described by Kunst, complete with photographs. It looks like a big bamboo hat, but is held by hand or laid against the head and shoulders of the wearer. Inside bamboo frames are weaved with fiber strings. Several thin bamboo rods are pinched in with unequal lengths sticking out freely. The strings play the melody, this lamellaphone plays a drum-like rhythm, and the hood functions as the sound board.
The aerophones, and flutes in particular, in which the vibrating air in the air column is the source of sound, are perhaps the most typical bamboo instruments. Other aerophones, the whistle, ocarina, clarinet, shawm and trumpet, are also made of clay, wood, bone, horn and metal. The saluang or the surdam of West Sumatra are the simplest flutes to make, but the most difficult to play.
They are end-blown flutes, but don't have a wind-way or duct as found in the recorder and Javanese suling, just a hole in the inner wall of the cylinder. The outer wall is cut diagonally, so the instrument has a somewhat sharp rim. The player carefully directs his lips and blows air to a spot on this sharp rim without pause, using the circular breathing technique. Unlike the Japanese shakuhachi, which has a similar acoustical system, but which is blown in a vertical position, the saluang is played diagonally, precisely like the Persian ney.
Flute
The most common flute found in Indonesia, however, is the end- blown duct-flute and the side-blown flute. The duct is the mouthpiece where air is directed to the sharp edge of the sound hole. This air duct may be made externally, by cutting a grove from the outer wall of the cylinder and covering it with a loop of palm leaves, bamboo, rattan or thin sheet of metal.
Internal air-ducts are another type and run between the inner wall of the cylinder and the block that closes its end. The length of flutes vary from about 10 cm, like the elet of the Baduy, to over a meter, like the suling gambuh in Bali. The number of tone holes vary from two to eight, though the most common are those with four and six holes. Double flutes are now known in Java, but originate in the outer islands of Flores and Sulawesi.
Side-blown flutes are not as common as the end-blown ones, especially in Java. But, there are two kinds of side-blown flutes in Baduy. One is long, about 75 cm, and is called kumbang. It has only two tone holes but, with the over-tones, it can play five salendro tones. The other one is shorter and is called taleot. It also has two tone-holes but can play five pelog tunes.
Bamboo is also used to make reed instruments. The single-reed clarinet is found throughout Indonesia, from the child's temporary rice-stalk to the professional sarune. Most of the oboes (double, quadruple, and hexaduple reeds) are made of wood, with the bell at the bottom made from carved wood, coconut shell, wound-up palm leaves or metal. The similar names used for the idioglottal clarinets (where the reed and the pipe are one piece) and the multiple reed-oboe -- pupuik in Minang, West Sumatra, pu pai and puwi-puwi in Sulawesi, and puwi-puwi in the kraton of Yogyakarta -- suggests that the instruments may have originated from the same place. Because the reed instruments are generally loud and piercing, they are played outdoors, and are combined with other loud instruments such as drums. This combination of reed instruments and drums is found throughout Asia. The Indonesian names of serunal, sarune and sruni may have been derived from West and South Asian zurna and suma.
The other type of aerophone is the trumpet. This kind of instrument does not have a reed, the player's lips function as the reed, just as with western trumpets, trombones, horns and Australian aborigine's didgeridoo. Although there are not many bamboo trumpets found, as they are generally made of conch shells or horns, there is a unique one made from a smaller bamboo pipe blown into a bigger one. By adjusting the depth of the small pipe in the bigger tube, and of course adjusting the air force and lip tension, the pitch can be raised or lowered. In Sulawesi and Ambon it is called bonto, and in Sunda it is called goong tiup (blown gong) or goong awi (bamboo gong) as it is used to imitate the sound of small and big gongs.
Bamboo chordophones, in which the stretched cord is the sound source, are also found throughout Indonesia. Due to the nature of the material, the variety is rather limited. The most common is the idiochord, in which the string is also bamboo, dug out from the resonator. Some instruments have only one string, others have two, three or many more. The famous sasando in East Nusa Tenggara has the strings all around the tube, as it is mounted on the second, larger resonator, made of palm leaves. The sasando now uses metal strings, as the function of the instrument is to play melody by means of plucking them.
Mallet
In other places, like Bali, Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi, the bamboo cords are the perfect material, as the instrument is used to play a drum-like rhythm with a small mallet. To lower the pitch, a small tongue-shaped piece of bamboo is clipped to the string. The vibration of this tongue makes the air chamber of the tube resonate more effectively. To vary the tone of this air chamber, or to create a vibratto like a gong beat, a small hole is added at one of the nodes so the player can manipulate it by closing and opening it with his palm. Even though the names for the instruments vary from place to place -- keteng-keteng in Karo, North Sumatra, celempung in Sunda, and guntang in Bali -- most of them are onomatopoeic.
The other, less common type of bamboo instrument is the membranophone, in which a membrane stretched over a frame is the sound source, like bamboo tubes used as frames for drums. The shapes and sizes, therefore, are limited only by the length of the resonator and the way the membrane is attached. Bamboo drums generally have only one head, though their lengths vary from about 10 cm to 1.5 meters. In northern and southern Sunda, the long drums, called dogdog lojor, are commonly played in an ensemble with other bamboo instruments, such as angklung.
Bamboo's extensive use for musical instruments is not only due to the physical nature of the bamboo plant, but also its familiarity and availability. People are attracted to its versatility. The thick and flexible bamboo tali is suitable for rope, the thin and brittle bamboo tutul is used to make containers and musical resonators, the thin, long tamiang is used to make flutes and blowguns, and the hefty bambu betung is used for building. Bamboo has also been used for tools and weaponry, from the knife that cuts the umbilical cord to the lethal bow and arrow.
Bamboo is also easy to grow and propagate in most parts of Indonesia. It grows fatter than wood, takes up less space, and dries more quickly. But above all, bamboo is almost identical to village life. It is inseparable from rice farming and rituals; the scarecrows, huts, ropes, carriers, baskets, fences, rice houses and kitchenware are all made of bamboo.
Not a day passes without bamboo being used. In modern-day Indonesia, bamboo is therefore associated with "village", "rustic" or "low" culture. Wooden and cement houses, for example, are considered to be of higher value and more prestigious than bamboo houses. Similarly, this value system is applied when comparing wooden drums to bamboo drums, wooden xylophones to bamboo ones, bronze gongs to bamboo ones.
These values reflect a perspective of modern culture and philosophy borrowed from Europe, where no bamboo grows. If this value system is applied to Indonesia, truly understanding the village philosophy and culture, the bamboo culture of Indonesia, will be difficult.
Endo Suanda, a dancer, gamelan musician, and ethnomusicologist was born and raised in West Java. A Ph.D. candidate from the University of Washington, Endo is currently finishing his dissertation on Cirebonese wayang kulit.