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the angklung

The angklung: one bamboo instrument, one note

The angklung began as a rice-field ritual instrument, not a concert one.

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The real story

In Sundanese villages of West Java, angklung was played at rice-planting and harvest ceremonies, linked to Dewi Sri, the rice goddess. Traditional sets were pentatonic. In 1938 a teacher in Kuningan, Daeng Soetigna, retuned them to the diatonic do-re-mi scale so children could play any song, from folk tunes to Western music.

One of his students, Udjo Ngalagena, opened Saung Angklung Udjo in Bandung in 1966, and it still teaches visitors to play together in minutes. UNESCO inscribed Indonesian angklung as intangible cultural heritage on 16 November 2010, and that date is now celebrated as Angklung Day.

What the narrator says

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The facts we checked

  • Each angklung is tuned to a single note; a melody needs many players, each shaking one
  • Angklung comes from West Java (Sundanese); it was inscribed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage in 2010
  • Daeng Soetigna adapted angklung to the diatonic scale in 1938

Sources

We checked every number and date on screen before the video was made.

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