Gambang Kromong
Practice DKI Jakarta
Attenuated
A Betawi ensemble joining the gambang and kromong of the gamelan with two-stringed fiddles from southern China — tehyan, kongahyan, sukong — and, from the twentieth century, wind instruments and electric guitar.
Two repertoires in one ensemble
Gambang kromong joins gamelan instruments — the wooden gambang and bronze kromong — with two-stringed fiddles from southern China: the tehyan, kongahyan and sukong. Its tuning is neither slendro nor pelog but a five-note scale that allows both groups to play together.
Such a joining is not a mixture that happened by itself but a technical solution: two instrument families with different tuning systems cannot play together without one adapting, and what happened in Batavia was an adaptation producing a third tuning. The ensemble is therefore audible evidence about the composition of the city where it arose.
Old songs, and composed songs
Its repertoire divides in two. The lagu lama — also called pobin — have Chinese titles, are instrumental, and are played in fixed arrangements. The lagu sayur are sung pieces in Betawi Malay whose repertoire keeps growing and whose lyrics are often comic and pointed about current matters.
The division explains how the ensemble survives. The fixed part requires players who command the old repertoire, and their number falls; the growing part allows the ensemble to keep being booked for weddings and celebrations because it can play what its listeners know. A form with both a fixed and an open part survives better than one with only one of them, and this encyclopedia records that as a point applying more widely than to one ensemble.
Full entry 3 / 3
2 sections, 3 sources, one of them primary.
Full does not mean finished. It means this record clears the bar this encyclopedia sets before it will speak at length.