aural archipelago

Ever since I moved to Bandung and fell into the booming karinding scene, I’ve had a special place in my heart for Indonesian mouth harps. Since then, I’ve made a special effort to track down local variations of mouth harp culture across the archipelago, often sharing the results with Asosiasi Harpa Mulut Indonesia, the Indonesian Mouth Harp Association, on Facebook. Only rarely have I shared the results here in Aural Archipelago, until now.

And so I inaugurate a new tradition: Mouth Harp Monday. Every other Monday (interspersed, I hope, with other posts in between), I will share a new regional mouth harp tradition. Because organologically and often culturally these instruments and their traditions share a huge amount of similarities, these will be special mini-posts, with the intention that I don’t have to repeat myself with more comprehensive coverage. Enjoy!

Location: Kalisemut, Kab. Lumajang, East Java

Sound: Rinding Lumajang

About the Instrument:

One of only a handful of surviving Javanese mouth harp traditions (that I know of!), the rinding Lumajang is even more special for having survived in the tapal kuda Madura area of East Java, a region with no other surviving mouth harp traditions that I know of. The rinding here, like other rinding played in Central Java, is a bamboo instrument of the string-pulled variety (see previous examples like genggong in Lombok, yori in Sulawesi, or knobe oh in West Timor.)

The instruments here are of fine quality, perhaps because they’ve aged gracefully - the rinding recorded here are nearly fifty years old. The material is preng tutul aka spotted bamboo (bambusa maculata), a common choice for bamboo instruments in Java. As with other bamboo instruments, the selection, drying, and conditioning of the bamboo has a whole complex of rituals and beliefs surrounding it - the bamboo must be preng tutul tua, or older bamboo, and it must be dried for months or even years before use. The string is common twine, though in the past natural fibers were probably used. To hold the instrument comfortably, a bit of batik cloth is fascinated to the gripping end - in the past the instruments were longer, with the musicians gripping the bamboo extension - this is the tradition in Madura, which suggests that it may have been these musicians’ Madurese neighbors or distant ancestors who brought the mouth harp to this area.

On both instruments, Pak Sutimbang has written (recently or in the past, it wasn’t clear) the date the instruments were made - THN 1974 BLN 5-10, or May 10th, 1974. He also wrote their names - P. Suhar and P Timbang (short for Sutimbang.) Ratu Sungem, Pak Sutimbang explained, is a nickname from his other hobby - kite-flying (layang-layang.)

Both men are still capable of making new instruments, but it’s difficult to acquire good quality bamboo and to age it properly. My friend Mas Alfian is eager to help make more, though, and I plan to order some (and take orders as well) once he can acquire a good source of bamboo.

On the two surviving rinding found in Lumajang, the thickest part of the tongue, literally called pentil or the “nipple,” is weighted with a dab of kemenyan, the fragrant resin called benzoin. I’ve found this elsewhere, as we’ll see later in this series, sometimes with beeswax. Adding heft to the vibrating tongue might change the pitch in addition to giving it a stronger vibration (anybody know the physics of this?) The musicians explained that it simply makes the sound more nyaring, or sweet, resonant.

Tradition and Technique:

In the past, rinding maestro Pak Sutimbang explained, the rinding had a play in local ritual, sometimes being played for wiwit rice harvest rituals or on the occasion of a lunar eclipse in the belief that its sound would heal the “sick” moon (a tradition I’ve noted in other mouth harp traditions here in Indonesia.)

This, however, was before Pak Sutimbang’s time, maybe pre-Independence - the ritual life of rinding only lived on in stories from his grandfather. In Pak Sutimbang’s youth, the rinding was simply a secular instrument played for entertainment (hiburan), “on the streets of the village.” Young boys and girls would sit about playing together (boys with boys, girls with girls!) improvising interlocking patterns with their friends, usually with one playing the downbeat, and the other filling in the spaces on the upbeat.

The rhythms and melodies of Indonesian mouth harp music often takes inspiration from other regional musics, and the rinding in Lumajang is no exception. Pak Sutimbang played us a selection of rhythms inspired by percussion music like glipang (syncopated, lively rhythms played on twin barrel drums called ketepong) or terbangan (frame drum music played to accompany Islamic devotional song.) This means that the rinding style here is more rhythmic, with none of the melodic “song”-based quality I’ve found elsewhere.

Pak Sutimbang and Pa Suhar are the only men left in their village to still own and play rinding - the others who they once played with in their youth have largely passed away, they explained, or no longer have instruments so haven’t played for decades. They both still play for fun, though, never in a formalized performance context as in other rinding traditions like those in Yogyakarta. My friend Mas Alfian, a Lumajang local who accompanied me to document rinding Lumajang, was ecstatic to find that Lumajang still has a surviving rinding tradition - he already dabbles in karinding, the Sundanese mouth harp from West Java which has seen a massive revival in the past ten years, and as a proud Lumajangite is eager to help revive the rinding Lumajang tradition. Watch this space! We may see a revival just like the karinding scene sometime soon.

The People:

Rinding Lumajang can only technically be called a living tradition: the only surviving players (and instruments) that I or the musicians are aware of are the aforementioned Pak Sutimbang and his lifelong friend Pak Suhar. Both are cattle farmers in their late sixties (only Pak Sutimbang knew is birth year - 1953.) Pak Sutimbang is the proper “seniman” (artist) of the duo - his father was a glipang dancer who played in ludruk folk theater, and Pak Sutimbang maintained that musical lineage, forming a glipang group as a young man. Though he was a bit sick when we met him, Pak Sutimbang is a delightful presence, kind and extroverted, happy to be the bearer of a tradition that he’s long taken for granted.

Pak Suhar, as a self-proclaimed “non-artist,” is humbler about his credentials, but his technique is great, and quite different from Pak Sutimbang’s more free-form, glipang-inspired solo playing. Speaking basically no Indonesian (my friend Mas Alfian helped translate when my Javanese proved insufficient), Pak Suhar was a bit upstaged by Pak Sutimbang in our meeting, but he is equally an expert here worthy of respect. He also has a hilarious giggle - he cut short a handful of Pak Sutimbang’s efforts to record a solo piece with his laughs, a response to the incongruous sound of glipang rhythms coming out of Pak Sutimbang’s mouth.