Sunday, February 01, 2015

The Sounds of Bamboo




It seems I haven't had much time for the ukulele lately so I decided to take up a more local instrument, the angklung. It's a Sundanese instrument from West Java made from bamboo and it sounds delightful when played well. During a trip to Bandung, I had the chance to visit Angklung Udjo, a sort of music and dance school that both preserves the tradition of music making and also innovates upon it, adding modern songs to the repertoire and modifying the instruments to accommodate new sounds.


Here's the instrument maker himself playing a modernized version of angklung with keys. Twenty dollars later, this instrument is now mine, although I don't sound half as good on it... yet.

 

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