A Visual Journal of the City of Bandung and Its Vicinities.
A photo a day with insightful and informative commentaries from the capital city of West Java and one of the most fascinating cities in Indonesia.®
A young man playing the kacapi (or kecapi) on the pavement of Dago Street one Sunday morning some time ago. He is the member of the same group that plays the cilempung in the story that I posted yesterday.
Kecapi is a traditional Sundanese string musical instrument of the zither family. If you want to know how it is played and what kind of sound and music it produces you can check it here.
Cilempung is a traditional Sundanese bamboo musical instrument. If you want to know how it is played and what kind of sound it produces, you can go to Bandung Daily Photo's sister blog Bandung Daily Video and check it out.
Although both are Sundanse traditional musical instruments and the names are nearly the same, cilempung should be differentiated from celempung. The former is a percussion type of instrument, the latter is a string musical instrument. And while the former is made entirely from Bandung bamboo, the latter is made of wood and strings.
This boy is playing the karinding, a traditional Sundanese musical intrument made of bamboo.
The karinding is a percussion instrument. It is played by puting it in between the lips and shaking it with the fingers to produce a rhythmical vibration.
There are two types of karinding: those made of the midrib of kawung (arenga pinnata) palm leaves and those made of bamboo. The former is said to have originated from the southeast of West Javanese area of Tasikmalaya, and the latter from Cililin (an area in the southwest of Bandung) and Limbangan, Garut (about 65 kilometers to the southeast of Bandung). In terms of shape, they are also slightly different. The former is shorter and is said to have initially been made by men, while the latter is longer and made by women. Such attribution is thought to have something to do with the fact that the shorter one (the 'kawung', male, karinding) can easily be stowed in a man's tobacco walet and the longer one (the bamboo, female, karinding) can be slipped into a woman's hair (and thus also functions as a hairpin).
The karinding is not just a musical intrument. In the agrarian culture of the Sundanese people where rice growing and cultivation occupies a central importance, the low decibel sounds that it produces have traditionally been believed and proven to be a very effective means of pest control.
To see how it is played and hear its sounds, here is a You Tube video that I borrowed from TejoFilm:
The karinding exhibition and demo was part the 4th Bambu Nusantara World Music Festival that was held this weekend in Bandung.
This is a picture of "Kendang", the traditional Sundanese drum. Like any drums, it is a membraphonic percussion musical instrument.
Sundanese "kendangs" are classified and named according to their sizes. The largest of them is called "kendang gede" (the large drum), then there is "kendang leutik" (the smaller drum), and "katipung" (the smallest drum).
If you look at the picture, one side of the Sundanese drum has a wider surface than the other. The part with the wider surface is called "bem" and the one with the narrower surface is called "kempyang".
A standard "kendang" is usually about 60 - 70 centimeters (23.6 - 27.5 inches) long, with the diameter of about 20 centimeters at the "bem" side, 25 centimeters in the middle, and 15 centimeters at the "kempyang" side.
"Kendang" is usually played in a set, that is the larger "kendang" and its smaller "siblings". It can be played to accompany a dance (for example in "Jaipongan"), in a combination with other musical instruments like in "degung" or even in an ensemble of their own, which is called "rampak kendang".
To see how this musical instrument is played in a "rampak" (ensemble), please check out this 9 minute 24 second youtube video presentation courtesy of kocin. This "rampak kendang" performance was made by KABUMI, the performing art group of the Indonesia University of Education Bandung (my Alma matter) who was performing in Tokyo quite a while ago. (Note: The video includes an opening speech in Japanese by the host of the program. The actual performance starts at minute 1:15.)
