Tarawangsa - a revelation!

A few weeks ago we went to see a concert by a band called ‘Trah Project’, whose distinguishing feature is their combination of both traditional and modern Indonesian music. We were treated to gamelan instruments played alongside rock and heavy metal style music, mixtures of traditional drumming on kendang backed up by drum kits, and the haunting sound of live Sundanese singing against a slightly electronica style backing track. Overall I didn’t find these combinations overwhelmingly appealing, but right at the beginning, for about one minute, a stringed instrument was being played with a bow, accompanied by someone plucking the strings on a small, zither- like box. This was before I had begun to form a true appreciation for Sundanese music, and I assumed the bowed instrument was a rebab as I couldn’t see it very clearly and the sound was similar. One of my friends however, was transfixed by the sound of this instrument, and a week or so ago we started to research it.

The instrument is a tarawangsa, which is similar to a rebab (in that it’s played upright with a loose bow and it has two strings), but the sound of it is more somehow more subtle and pure than the rebab, which in comparison sounds nasal and harsh. It has such a beautiful sound that we were both surprised at the fact we had never really come across this instrument before, and that it doesn’t seem to be very popular. It’s unique to Sunda, (the area of West Java we’re currently living in) and if you search for tarawangsa on youtube you will find a few videos with varying degrees of quality in the recordings, but that seems to be the extent of its popularity.

This youtube video demonstrates the sound of the tarawangsa very well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk2DHf9t6ZA

After spending quite a long time on youtube listening to this music I started to really fall in love with the sound of the tarawangsa, and being a musician and a string player, just listening to it wasn’t enough – I wanted to play one of these! The trouble was finding someone who plays it (very rare these days), getting in touch with them and convincing them to teach a couple of ignorant westerners one of the most traditional Indonesian instruments there is. Luckily, we have an amazing supervisor of the program here in Bandung, and when we told him about our interest he managed to take advantage of his contacts, pull some strings, and got in touch with a tarawangsa player who was actually willing to come to Saung Angklung Udjo to give us a demonstration!

So yesterday we met a student called Tegu, the tarawangsa player, who came here along with his friend Wisnu who plays the zither-type instrument which accompanies the tarawangsa. Tegu is the only person at his university who plays this instrument; even his teachers and lecturers in traditional music (his area of study) don’t know how to play it so he has to travel a long way for infrequent lessons. He explained a little more about the instrument, which started to give us an indication of why it seems to be dying out.

The tarawangsa is an extremely sacred instrument. It’s possibly the most sacred of Indonesian traditional instruments, and not only is it sacred, but very very old – it originates from pre-Islamic times in Indonesia. Before Islam the people of this country were animists, believing that everything had a living soul and worshiping the gods of the things that were most important to their daily lives. The tarawangsa is the embodiment of the goddess of rice; the staple food of the Indonesian people and therefore extremely important to the animists. Because of its sacredness, there are rules concerning the instrument which people have been unwilling to break. Firstly, the tarawangsa is always accompanied by the jentreng – the zither-like instrument demonstrated at the Trah Project concert. Secondly, the tarawangsa is never played with any other instruments. It’s not inconceivable… it’s just not done! Tarawangsa and jentreng is the traditional way of doing it. Thirdly, the tarawangsa is almost always only played at very important ceremonies, and rarely played for performance. These rules limit the ways and situations in which the tarawangsa can be played, and in a world which is evolving fast and in which musical cultures have to evolve to survive, the tarawangsa seems to struggle to keep up. As a result people who play the instrument are becoming rarer, and many Indonesians, even the Sundanese people, no longer even know what the tarawangsa is.

This sad reality made us more determined to learn how to play the tarawangsa, and I’m even considering the possibility of buying one and bringing it back to the UK. However there are other limitations of the instrument, for example although it has two strings, only one of these is used to play a melody. Any wide intervals in pitch are extremely difficult to play as the hand has to be moved up and down the string very quickly, although the tarawangsa suits the meandering, pentatonic melodies of Sundanese music perfectly. But my friend and I are resolute (for now at least) and after an amazing evening of sharing music and traditional tunes from around the world with Tegu and Wisnu, with our Thai friend playing the Saw Duang and myself on violin, we arranged another lesson for Sunday (at a negotiable price).

Here are some more pictures of the instruments Tegu left for us to practice with:

The top of the tarawangsa and its two pegs

The sound box (the sound hole is actually at the back!) is made entirely out of wood with no stretched skin or membrane

The bow is loose and the correct tension needs to be applied using the little finger; another reason this instrument is difficult to play!

The tarawangsa with its accompanying instrument, the jentreng

During the lesson, Tegu revealed that he only knew of one other non-Indonesian who has learned to 

play the tarawangsa, and also that I am probably the first woman to ever learn this instrument! I feel incredibly lucky to have this opportunity, and I will try to keep people updated with our progress!