Enter the Octagon: Hyperlocal Zither Drum Ensembles in Sumedang, West Java

Sound: Kacapi celempungan (also called simply celempungan)

Location: Ds. Pamulihan, Sumedang Regency, West Java

Of all the various wonderful micro-genres tucked away in the verdant mountains of West Java’s Sumedang Regency (see tanji, songah, or tarawangsa), one of my favorites is kacapi celempungan, an ensemble form played almost exclusively in and around the village of Pamulihan, right up the mountain pass from the urban sprawl of Bandung’s eastern fringe. 

Last summer, I went to Pamulihan and tracked down the claimed originator of kacapi celempungan, the enigmatic Pak Tatang. Born in Pandeglang in Java’s far western Banten province, Pak Tatang was a young policeman when he was stationed in the mountains of Sumedang in the 1970’s. It was here that he first became familiar with celempung, the bamboo tube zither which was once widespread in this corner of the Sundanese heartland. 

As Pak Tatang tells it, it was around 1974 that he was inspired to create his first celempung kayu, or wooden celempung zither. In very old-school celempung tube zithers (and modern celempung renteng), two strips of bamboo skin are separated from the instrument’s cylindrical body and raised up on bridges as strings. These strings are in turn joined in the middle by a unique floating bamboo or wooden bridge which adds mass to the strings and, when plucked or struck, transmits vibrations throughout the instrument as a gong-like boom. 

In Pak Tatang’s celempung kayu, the natural hollow body of the bamboo zither is replaced by an octagonal prism glued together from local wood. Along one of these flat surfaces, two long strips of scrap metal take the place of the older celempung’s bamboo “strings,” here bolted on the ends and similarly joined by a floating bamboo bridge. It’s a fascinating object in appearance - I don’t think most would even guess that it’s a musical instrument, let alone technically a zither. Played acoustically, the celempung kayu doesn’t sound like much, but when amplified with a contact mic, a kind of alchemy happens: this mysterious black box becomes, as Pak Tatang puts it, a “magic gong.” 

Pak Tatang claims to be the inventor of the celempung kayu, but there are other versions of the story: in ethnomusicologist Henry Spiller’s great article on bamboo music in West Java, Heavy Metal Bamboo, the author traces the bamboo celempungan ensemble back through Jaap Kunst’s 1920s descriptions of “celempung orchestras” then on to celempungan groups based around kacapi zither, with wooden celempung as an intermediary invented in the 1920s.

I had suspected this was an instrument of the soundsystem era of Sundanese music: Pak Tatang explained that he first put his celempungan group together as a replacement for the rowdy, amplified dangdut-flavored village bands that predominated Pamulihan at that time. “People would drink, fights would break out - it wasn’t good.” He didn’t say it explicitly, but I suspect the kendang drum typically at the rhythmic heart of these groups became associated with mischief and vice. In contrast to the stimulating, sinful vibe of those kendang-led bands, Pak Tatang typifies the sound of the celempung kayu as “adem” - cool, chilled.

In being linked to the ancient bamboo celempung, it also inherits that instrument’s mystical cred. A pious Muslim, Pak Tatang told of how, back in the day, the bamboo celempung was an instrument of dakwah, or Islamic proselytizing (similar tales are told about musical forms across Muslim Indonesia, especially gamelan, usually that the music was played to attract and comfort local audiences who would then be introduced to the teachings of Islam.) Despite being a modern, ostensibly secular instrument, the celempung kayu maintains this legitimizing association - Pak Tatang even insists on each performance with the instrument being graced by an opening tawasul, or Islamic prayer, without which, he insists, “the instruments won’t come together as one.”

The celempung kayu, after all, is only one piece of the larger ensemble itself called kacapi celempungan or simply celempungan. In performance, the celempung kayu are played in pairs, with one instrument largely used to divide beat cycles like the hanging gongs of other Sundanese percussion ensembles, while the other is played in a more intricate style with taps on both the bamboo bridge and wooden body along with selective damping, all of which conjure up the sounds of a Sundanese kendang out of thin air. Together, they provide a firm rhythmic foundation upon which rests a kacapi zither - a fascinating instrument in its own right, and one which too lends its name to the ensemble form (both as “kacapi” and in the wider sense of celempungan being a zither ensemble: “celempung” broadly translates as “zither” in ancient Javanese and Sundanese.) 

Alongside the kacapi, a violin (biola in Indonesian, often called piul in Sundanese) carries the melodies. This addition may seem surprising, but kacapi biola zither and violin duos were all the rage in certain parts of West Java starting around the 70’s, at least according to the record of cassettes I’ve come across in Bandung record shops (and Madrotter’s legendary tape blog.) As Pak Tatang explains, the music was in the past carried by just kacapi and biola, but eventually the ensemble was swept up in the sinden diva craze of that era. Now, a trio of sinden singers dominate the stage of any kacapi celempungan show - two sing classic (buhun - “ancient”) Sundanese songs, and one sings the dangdut-style bangers. 

Playing for events such as weddings, circumcision rituals (sunatan), promise-fulfulling rituals (nazar), and other ceremonies, the kacapi celempungan group sets up on a small stage and plays from the evening until late night, sometimes early morning. Much of the music consists of the kliningan repertoire usually played on and associated with gamelan, with some aspects taken from the groovy club-based sound of bajidoran and jaipongan; some pieces are also taken from the modern pop Sunda songbook or even from the ritual tarawangsa genre. Most of this is dance music, so various audience members will get up and groove, especially in the dangdut and bajidoran-flavored pieces. As the spiritual energy is considered high, often audience members will fall into trance, possessed by spirits. 

Yet, as Pak Tatang proudly proclaimed, no fights break out, no drunkenness in sight - just a handful of eccentric old-timers strutting their stuff to the sounds of a truly unique ensemble (and just as he said, the celempung really do sound, magically, like gongs and drums!). I wonder how long these hyperlocal traditions will last: Pamulihan is changing quickly, especially since a massive toll road was constructed barreling through the nearby mountains and valley just next door - you can almost hear the hum of traffic over the sound of those amplified celempung kayu. Whether these changes spell the end of fragmented traditions or the birth of some new hybrids remains to be seen!