Popular West Java Regional Musical Instruments
West Java regional musical instruments have their own characteristics compared to musical instruments from other regions. Nowadays, we may be more familiar with contemporary musical instruments such as guitars, pianos, violins and so on. But before the emergence of these various contemporary musical instruments, there were already traditional musical instruments.
More and more traditional cultures are being abandoned, including regional musical instruments. However, there are still many younger generations involved in preserving traditional tools from West Jave, such as angklung and flute. Both musical instruments are often performed as traditional musical instruments.
In fact, there are many other regional musical instruments that should be proud and preserved so that our children and grandchildren can later learn these musical instruments . Therefore, we will review the most popular traditional musical instruments from West Jave, via the article below.
Rebab from copper
This musical instrument from West Jave is from 9th ad and still survives today. During sailing, Middle Eastern traders brought rebabs to Indonesia. This copper musical instrument has 3 strings or strings as sound producers.
With the passage of time, there have been changes in the basic material for the production of rebabs, which were originally made of copper and now there are many rebabs made of wood with a shape similar to a crossbow. The way to play is to run the strings, just like when you play a modern musical instrument, namely violin.
Flute Bamboo musical instruments
Next up is the west Javanese’s most popular musical instrument, called flute. This bamboo or wood musical instrument is played by blowing up the available holes. In addition to inflatable holes, there are also holes to adjust the rese ve, so that the number of holes varies, ranging from 4 to 8.
The number of holes is tailored to the needs of the song to be played. Most West Javanese flutes have four holes after sundani songs, which are often played. The existence of a flute is very important as a musical instrument, because it is able to enable music to sing songs in a way that sounds very dense traditional tone.
Edinstvena karinding
A typical Western Javanese musical instrument that is no less popular is carinding. This unique musical instrument should be put on your lips to play it. You can then tap the bat to create a sound resonance from the friction of the handle and the swimsuit fingers that touch the instrument.
Bamboo is often used as a material for making carindinga, although there is also carinding from palm fronds. Typically, palm caring is used for men, while bamboo caring is used for women. In the past, karinding was not only used as a musical instrument, but as midges in rice fields.
Calung Musical Instruments
Most people can’t tell the difference between calung and another traditional West Java musical instrument, angklung, because it looks the same at first sight. Calung is made of bamboo type awi wulung or black bamboo, and there’s a calung from another type of bamboo, a bamboo ater.
This musical instrument is played according to the type of calunga, be it calung jinjing or calung rantay. Calung is playing only with his right hand, while the left hand is holding calung. Calung Rantay plays with both hands, hitting him. The way players sit should be cross-footed to facilitate the movement of the hands.
Multi-tone and two-way Angklung
Although you’re not Western Javanese, you should already know this traditional instrument, as it is often exhibited as one of the popular traditional musical instruments from West Java. This bamboo tool is also known as multitonal or double resin.
How to play it also seems easy by softening the instrument. The impact of the bamboo body is the source of the sound generation with different tons. Because the entire vibration of a musical instrument is capable of producing sound, angklung is classified as an idiosyncratic musical instrument.
Tarawangsa Similar to Rebab
Tarawangsa may have a similarity to the rebab, but the difference is that the number of tarwangs is only two pieces. Unlike rebaba, which has three strings, so you can easily and quickly differentiate two musical instruments that originate in West Jave.
Although you have two strings, you can only play one string by dragging it. In the meantime, the other series are played by selecting using the left hand pointer. Tarawangsa often plays with other musical instruments, such as Jentreng, for making such a beautiful tone or melodies.
Traditional musical instruments, harps
Another interesting regional musical instrument of West Jave is lute. In Sundanese, the presence of lute as an accompanying musical instrument is very important. This is related to two features of lyre, namely the mother of lyre and the child’s lyre, while following traditional sundane music, so it’s important to know lyre.
The mothership has the task of set the tempo, the start of the music and the used luta usually has 18-20 strings. Unlike children’s lute, which serves as an accompaniment to high-frequency music. Strings are less, which is 15 pieces than the number of strings for the parent lyre.
Arumba traditional musical instruments
Another musical instrument from West Ham that deserves our study is arumba. For some people, they may still be unknown to the name of this traditional musical instrument, especially for people outside West Jave. Arumba belongs to a group of ensembles or a combination of several musical instruments at the same time.
This musical instrument is made of high-quality bamboo, such as black bamboo (wulung), bamboo ropes or awi dark bamboo. Although it is a combination of several musical instruments, it eventually becomes an arumba musical and a distinct type of music, which we know from several traditional Western public songs.
Jenglong as a basic sound maker
Another Western Javanese musical instrument that should not be missed is Jenglong. Jenglong serves as the basic frame of a song or sound producer, so its role is very important in playing traditional Western Java music. Nevertheless, many of us are not familiar with this musical instrument from the Western Yuja region.
A special bat is used to hit Jenglong to produce sound or sound. Beater, used in this musical instrument, is made of special materials to produce real sound. Usually this bat has a coating that is soft, be it made of wool or knitted yarn.
Celempung from Bamboo Skin
Finally, we’ll get to know a traditional tool called a whole pin, made of bamboo skin. Sound is generated by the use of resonance on bamboo sticks. It is therefore not easy to make this traditional musical instrument, because each stem must have a different shape and size of internals.
The whole pin has two sets with different functions, namely strings for pellog tons and strings for slendro tone, so that they can be reused for Siteran. In addition to the whole pun, siter is also often used in gamelan instruments as a feature that is still preserved today.
There are still many traditional musical instruments that you can find from West Jave with your own uniqueness. Most traditional musical instruments are made of nature, be it wood or bamboo, so it feels very similar to the traditional impression shown. So don’t stop you from continuing to introduce Western Java music instruments.