Lampa Lampa Lombok, Pt. 2: Cotton Candy Music

[Aural Archipelago has moved - why not read this article there? Lots more material at www.AuralArchipelago.com]

Location: Kembang Kerang, East Lombok

Sound: Gule gending (also known as kecumping)

Indonesia is a loud place. In the city, the air is filled with the honking of horns, the blat-blat of un-muffled motorbike engines, and the regular, deafening battle of mosques pumping their call to prayer through loudspeakers, each one competing to outdo the others in an odd sonic arms race. Even in the village, cicadas buzz like dial-up modems, roosters crow, and the inescapable motorbike blat-blat continues.

It takes a certain craft to even be noticed within this ever-present din. Itinerant salesmen, hawking everything from noodles to brooms, have found unique ways to make their presence known to potential customers: there's the tok-tok of wood on wood, the clang-clang of spoon against ceramic bowl, the donk-donk of a small gong hanging from a food cart. There's even a guy who coasts through my neighborhood with Chinese meat-filled buns loaded on the back of his bike, a recording looping a monotone call-to-eat: "Bakpao, bakpao. Bakpao, Bakpao..." These sounds become like primitive jingles, sonic symbols signifying fast approaching treats.

On the island of Lombok, some cotton candy salesmen have taken this tradition from a pragmatic sales tool to something more like art. In villages across the island, a unique call-to-eat can be heard from far-off footpaths, a sound like gamelan being played on Trinidadian steel drums: the gule gending.

It's a remarkable marriage of form and function, the gule gending. A roughly horseshoe-shaped container curves around the salesman's waist, suspended from the neck by a length of fabric. On top are two caps the size of saucers. Lift one, you find a shallow stash for money - the cash register. Lift the other, and, if you're lucky, you'll find a fluffy, pink mountain of cotton candy (in Lombok called gule) bursting from the hollow hold within.

Gule gending in Pringgasela, E. Lombok - the only one I encountered in use on the street. It was a low-quality zinc version that was completely untuned.

The magic of the gule gending, other than the sweet treat hidden inside, is what spans the curving exterior - six tins, made of the same stainless steel or zinc as the body, and looking equally utilitarian. Indeed, the tin to the farthest right acts as handy storage, but the other five carry the gule gending away from the culinary world and into the musical. With a gentle tap to the top, each empty tin sings with the bright metallic plong of a steel drum. Played together, these five tins, perfectly fitting the five-tone pentatonic scale favored in Sasak music, are just enough to play melodic tunes called gending, borrowed from the reportoire of age-old gamelan pieces. With the gong-like caps being occasionally struck with a spare thumb for a percussive flare, the gule gending transforms into a remarkable, distilled approximation of the familiar gong and xylophone gamelan ensemble.

Like so many Indonesian instruments, the gule gending has a fascinating, hyper-local history. Dating back to pre-independence era of the 20s and 30s, the instrument emerged from Kembang Kerang, a small village in the fertile, tobacco growing lands at the foot of Gunung Rinjani in East Lombok. While so many origin stories are lost in obscurity, the gule gending can be traced confidently by modern-day salesmen to one man: Pak Sahadap. The prototypes that this clever saleman produced were primitive in comparison to today's, literally using cookie and frying oil tins, two or three in all. With only a handful of notes at their disposal, early gule gending players likely just played a rhythmic approximation of gong patterns. In the sixties, however, the instrument evolved to its current form, with five (plus one "dead" tin) purpose-built zinc or stainless steel tins tuned through a mysterious process of adding and subtracting dents and grooves to the tin's flat surface with a wooden stick.

Back in those days, the tunes played by the gule gending had a ritual and meaning that seems to have been largely forgotten. One tune, "Semarang," would be used to announce the beginning of the salesman's rounds. Other songs would be played to fit certain contexts within the a day of sales: "Turun Tangis" ("Beginning to Cry") would be played if a child cried to their mother for cotton candy, while "Tempong Gunung" ("Crossing the Mountain") might be played if a salesman was forced to scramble up a mountain in search of customers.

These decades past were likely gule gending's heydey - the instrument became so popular, it would even be played outside of the context of sales, with three musicians leading the traditional Sasak wedding procession called nyongkolan. Countless Sasaks I spoke to told me with nostalgic smiles that the sound of the gule gending brought them back to their childhood, when the candy and its music could be found regularly all across the island. These days, like so many other traditional arts, gule gending is receding into the shadows. A dozen or so musicians still make their rounds, with only a handful able to make and repair the instrument as well.

Tuning the gule gending with a specially carved wooden tool

Context:

As rain poured down, I carried my gule gending through claustrophobic footpaths lined by homes and informal housefront shops. I played as I walked, leaving a wake of confused smiles, amused laughter, and disappointed children expecting candy. After one final turn, I made it to what seemed to be the informal headquarters of a union of cotton candy salesmen. Pak Lalu Satrun was outside, stooping with a sarong wrapped around his waist. He looked surprised to see me. "What are you doing here?" he asked. My instrument had a worrying buzz, I told him. "Come on in."

Inside, his home was stark with poverty - cold concrete floors were covered by a single bamboo mat, a handful of gule gendings strewn about. Pak Satrun and his roommate, another old, impossibly weathered man, had just returned from their daily rounds at sundown. They were already preparing for the next hard day, with molten sugar boiling in a large wok in a corner, giving off a delicious aroma of caramelization. Apologizing for bothering him, I explained my issue to Pak Satrun - I was going home to Bandung the next day, and my gule gending was already broken. He was the only man I knew who could repair it, so I'd hunted him down.

This was not the first time I'd searched for Pak Satrun. Days earlier, on the other side of the island, I'd rolled into Kembang Kerang, the tiny epicenter of gule gending. Armed with just his name and an exceedingly helpful guide, I'd managed to find his family's home. Bemused but proud to have someone come to him, Pak Satrun had sat on the floor of his living room with me and satisfied my curiosity with stories of the history of gule gending. In his seventies, Pak Satrun was the fourth generation of musician salesmen to come out of Kembang Kerang, and he was said to be the most skillful player. After recording a few tunes, my fascination turned to obsession and I had bought his instrument right there for an embarrassing sum.

That should have been our last meeting, but after a few local friends loose with rice wine beat it a little too hard, my gule gending came down with a worrying buzz. Pak Satrun had explained that three weeks out of the month, he lived with other candy salesmen in a community near Mataram, Lombok's capitol, in order to be closer to a larger customer base. It was there that I found him again, smiling and confused.


Using the fiercely hot flame under the wok of molten sugar, Pak Satrun heated a metal tool till it was firey red, then aimed it at the crease between the problem tin and the body, closing a hole that had been responsible for the buzz. Working with a steady focus, he looked as assured and skilled in welding as he did in playing his homemade instrument.

After fixing my problem, I assumed Pak Satrun would send me off and take a rest. Instead, he and his partner took the next half hour to demonstrate the ingenious, hand-spun method of making their cotton candy product. I ended up sitting beside a massive pile of pink cotton candy, Pak Satrun playing gule gending by my side, soaking in the same two questions that often enter my mind in my adventures: 1) How the hell did I end up here? and 2) How have these brilliant, hardworking men become so forgotten?




Special thanks of course to Pak Satrun, but also to Fathul, whose fantastic blog post led me to him, and Fathul's friend Salman, who acted as cheerful guide and intermediary in the awkward negotiations of buying a big, rare instrument.

Lampa Lampa Lombok, Pt. 1: Genggong in Gunungsari

[Aural Archipelago has moved - why not read this article there? Lots more material at www.AuralArchipelago.com]


"Lampa lampa" is the Sasak language equivalent of bahasa Indonesia's "jalan jalan", which means wandering or exploring an area. This is the first in a series of recordings I've made on two wandering music-hunting trips to the fascinating island of Lombok.

Location: Gelangsar Village, Gunungsari District, West Lombok

Sound: Genggong Sasak

The musicians sat cross-legged in the beruga, that ubiquitous bamboo hang-out hut found throughout every corner of Lombok. A single bulb cast light on their weathered faces from above - all outside of the hut was dark, chirps and echos coming from the fish ponds and forests nearby. From the darkness came a sound: croak. A solitary frog in the night, singing out. Croak croak. Another frog joined nearby, filling in the gaps. Croak croak, croak croak. Suddenly, a single cry became a chorus, the rhythmic bubbling of frog calls becoming a wall of sound in the night.

The musicians seemed not to listen, but surely they knew: this was the genesis, it's been told, of their craft: genggong, the mouth harp of the Sasak people of Lombok. Perhaps inspired by the bubbling, interlocking sounds of their amphibian neighbors, the Sasaks of centuries past had crafted this beautiful instrument, so similar to other mouth harps found throughout Indonesia, yet also so beautifully rooted in its place of birth.

I've encountered other nearly identical mouth harps in my travels, from the karombi of the Toraja people to the gongga lawe of the Mandar people of West Sulawesi, but none have been so exquisitely crafted: its handle (called ekor, or the tail) is made of folded, dried Lontar palm leaf, bound by rattan string and tied to the body of the instrument, which is carved from the wood of the enau palm. Delicately carved from this main body is the lidah, or tongue, whose vibration supplies the fundamental tone (the musicians gleefully described the long, thin tip of this vibrating tongue as kemaluan laki - literally "male genitals"!) This tongue is set into motion by a firm tug on a string, itself crafted from pineapple leaf, which is attached to the body of the instrument. The string is cleverly attached to a handy stylus, carved from bamboo, which allows for firm and steady pulling.

Similar to many other musics from Java to Lombok, the music for genggong is built from interlocking parts - a single melody is split up and shared by at least two instruments. Because of this, formal genggong tunes (called gending) require at least two musicians to be played. These two root instruments are conceptualized as ibu and anak - mother and child, with the mother playing the lower, louder tones and the child filling in the rest. Together this familial duo splits six tones, described to me as "dang, ding, dong, dung, deng, and ting." Each tone has a special character and role - for instance, I was told that dong is similar to the tone of the gong in gamelan music.

In a story that is tied with bizarre consistency to mouth harp music around South East Asia, from West Java to Vietnam, the genggong was originally a tool for courtship - any boy who wanted a chance with the girls back in the day had to have a genggong and the skills to woo the ladies. Even girls could make and play genggong, showing that this mouth harp courtship went both ways. In its ensemble form, genggong music has always been purely for amusement, with no sacred properties, although I was told in the past it was tied in with lunar eclipse rituals and wedding ceremonies.

The current status of genggong is of a quiet, hesitant revival - the elders are getting together to play in a way that they hadn't in years past, but the young folks still show little interest. While in the past genggong could be found across the island, it is now found in only a handful of villages around West Lombok (the group I recorded claimed to be the last in Lombok, although that claim was later contested by other musicians I spoke to elsewhere on the island.)

Song Notes:

The songs (called gending in Lombok) that make up the reportoire for genggong are unique to the instrument - there are sixteen in total. While there are obviously no lyrics, each melody is paired with a title and an accompanying story. The first track here, "Layang Senang" (Happiness), has an accompanying story that was told to me like this: Long ago, there was an old man who lived in the forest, acting as the guardian of the place. One day, while the old man was in the forest playing genggong, a young man approached and, drawn to the sound, asked its name. The old man replied that the music was called genggong. The young man was so delighted by the sound, he was moved to give a name to the tune the forest guardian was playing: "Happiness."

The next track, "Petemoan" ("Heritage of the Ancestors") tells the story of two groups of Sasaks, one from the western mountains, one from the eastern mountains. The groups heard each other playing genggong across the island and came together in the middle to meet. In this way, the music of genggong was able to bring the ancestors together.


Context:

After a month languishing in Bandung dreaming of adventure, I began dreaming of returning to Lombok, an island I'd visited twice in years before. On those earlier trips, I'd found it to be absolutely brimming with amazing music, and couldn't wait to go back and see what I'd missed.

With the name of a village and nothing more, I flew to Praya International Airport in the center of the island, shared a taxi with some Bandung bros on holiday to Senggigi, then rented a motorbike and sped off into the countryside as fast as the little scooter and unpaved roads would allow. After a short drive on roads winding through massive groves of bamboo and followed by the low mountains neighboring Mt. Rinjani, I pulled up on a muddy, rocky path into the village of Gelangsar. A friendly local brought me to the village head, who gave me my blessing and sent me on the way to the home of Pak Baharuddin, the head of the village's genggong group.

A saronged and smiling old man, Pak Baharuddin sat me down in his bamboo beruga while I tried to explain how I'd heard of his obscure little genggong group (how to explain YouTube to an old man who's probably never used a computer?) He was delighted with my interest and immediately offered to fetch the elders who made up his ensemble, some from neighboring hamlets.

As the day turned to night, the elders assembled, equally saronged and smiling. Genggongs and glasses of hot, bitter coffee were spread amongst them while I quizzed them on their tradition, with a friendly intermediary translating from their Sasak language to Indonesian. While Pak Baharuddin whipped out a guestbook and bragged off the foreigners who had come to investigate their agriculture and development, he insisted that I was the first soul to come searching for genggong.

With the frogs gurgling in the background, the musicians eventually picked up their tools, put them to weathered lips, and with firm, syncopated tugs of the string, unleashed a strange and amazing cloud of melodic overtones. Between songs, they would turn and spit enthusiastically into the dark, then, placing the genggong to lips, resume again. In those brief, spitting interludes, you could hear - the frogs had gone silent, that burbling slot in the soundscape occupied by a new, wooden croaking.



Special thanks to the musicians, Pak Sahman, Pak H. Jalaludin, Pak Rafi'i, Pak Darmali, and Pak Jemurah, as well as their leader Pak Baharuddin, the helpful Pak Mahri, and Mas Dedy for letting me sleep in his beruga.