TEMBANG SUNDA & KACAPI SULING
Tembang Sunda and kacapi suling are important expressions of Sundanese cultural identity. Tembang Sunda (also known as Cianjuran) emerged in the latter half of the 19th century as an entertainment for the aristocracy in and around the court of the Regent of Cianjur. Sundanese poetry was traditionally never read in a speaking voice, but always sung to standardized, syllabic melodies corresponding to the poetic metre (wawacan). Tembang Sunda developed in Cianjur as a way of setting Sundanese texts to highly melismatic and ornamented melodies. It is accompanied by kacapi (zither) and suling (bamboo flute).
The core of the tembang Sunda repertoire consists of mamaos, songs which are rhythmically very free. The kacapi player needs to adjust his timing, cues and phrase lengths to the singer. Tembang Sunda also absorbed pieces from several very different styles of Sundanese music, notably pantun, gamelan degung and gamelan salendro. Pantun is a narrative genre, now very rarely performed, in which a solitary bard (often blind) accompanies himself on a kacapi, and narrates and sings epic Sundanese stories. Performances last from early evening to the small hours of the morning. Songs from the gamelan repertoires were introduced later in the development of tembang Sunda. They are tagged on to the end of a set of mamaos songs, and referred to as panambih: “extra” songs. Panambih are readily recognizable, as the smaller kacapi joins in, and the phrase lengths begin to move in units of four. They are normally only sung by women. The real tembang Sunda aficionados tend to look down their nose at the panambih, which they regard as mere easy listening. Kacapi suling means the performance of panambih tunes without a singer.
Two sizes of kacapi are used. The larger model is called kacapi “indung” (“mother”) or kacapi “parahu” (“boat”). It has 18 brass strings which are rough tuned by turning the protruding pegs, and fine tuned by moving the pyramidical bridges (“susu” or “breasts”). Her child is the kacapi “rincik”, a term which also describes the patter of light rain.
The kacapi are tuned pentatonically. In tembang Sunda the two most common tunings are pelog (roughly
F – E – C – Bb – A) and sorog (F - E - D - Bb - A). The voice and suling have more freedom to stray outside these tunings occasionally.
F – E – C – Bb – A) and sorog (F - E - D - Bb - A). The voice and suling have more freedom to stray outside these tunings occasionally.
PARAHU
The traditional boat or parahu shape has an important place in Sundanese culture. The volcano which dominates the Bandung skyline is said to resemble an upturned boat or Tangkuban Parahu - see the legend of Sangkuriang (a sort of frustrated Oedipus) below.
The Legend of Sangkuriang
According to local folklore, the formation of the Tangkuban Parahu volcano began with a young man Sangkuriang who fell in love with his own mother, Dayang Sumbi.. One day, when he was hunting, Sangkuriang accidentally killed his beautiful black dog (Si Tumang). This dog is actually Sangkuriang's father who had been condemned to live the life of a dog by his Guru. However, Sangkuriang never knew it. Sangkuriang had been separated from his mother since childhood. Yet, he was destined to meet his mother again. When on his way home, he stopped at a small village and met and fell in love with a beautiful girl. He did not realise that the village was his homeland nor that the beautiful girl was his own sacred mother (remain young & pretty). Their love grew naturally and one day, when they were discussing their wedding plans, Dayang Sumbi suddenly realised that the profile of Sangkuriang's head matched that of her only son's who had left twenty years earlier. How could she marry her own son? But she did not wish to disappoint him by cancelling the wedding. So, although she agreed to marry Sangkuriang, she would do so only on the condition that he provide her with a lake and a boat with which they could sail on the dawn of their wedding day. Sangkuriang accepted this condition and built a lake by damming the Citarum river. With a dawn just a moment away and the boat almost complete, Dayang Sumbi realised that Sangkuriang would fulfill the condition she had set. With a wave of her supernatural shawl, she lit up the eastern horizon with flashes of light. Deceived by false dawn, the cock crowed and farmers rose for the new day. With his work not yet complete, Sangkuriang realised that his endeavour were lost. With all his anger, he kicked the boat that he himself had built. The boat fell over and, in so doing become the mountain Tangkuban Parahu (in Sundanese, tangkuban means upturned or upside down, and parahu means boat). With the dam torn assunder, the water drained from the lake becoming a wide plain and nowaday became a city called Bandung (from the word bendung, which means dam). [From: Indonesia: Tangkuban Parahu booklet, published by PERUM PERHUTANI UNIT III - JAWA BARAT] |