Angklung

The angklung is a bamboo instrument each unit of which sounds one pitch when shaken. Because one unit gives one pitch, playing a tune requires a number of people each holding one or two units and shaking them in turn.

The arrangement has a consequence no other instrument has: no one can play the tune alone, and each player knows only when his pitch is needed and not the tune as a whole. That is why angklung is widely used in education as a means of teaching working together, and the reason genuinely belongs to the instrument rather than being an interpretation added to it.

Angklung buhun, its older form, is tuned to the Sundanese salendro or pelog scales and used within agricultural cycles — at seren taun and at rice ceremonies — rather than to play general tunes. It is still used in several Sundanese customary villages and among the Baduy.

In 1938 Daeng Soetigna tuned the angklung to the diatonic scale, so that it could play any tune alongside Western instruments and could be taught in schools. It is that form which spread across Indonesia and abroad, and which grounds the UNESCO inscription of 2010. This encyclopedia records both and states the relation between them, since an account naming only one would conceal that the better-known form is the result of a datable decision, and that the older one still exists and stands in a far more fragile condition.