did not keep his wife’s promise. So he set out to get the king’s head. For seven days he played his surando
in the garden below the palace. When the sounds reached the king’s ears, he was so enticed that he sent
his servant to call the wandering bard. But Bijlu pleaded with him to let him go since he had to beg for
something incomparably more precious than mere alms, but the king had already succumbed to his music
which told of the unity of all being in a way he had never heard before. For seven nights, he offered him
more and more of his treasures, but Bijlu finally insisted that Dhayj had to give him his head as reward.
The king replied that even if he gave him a hundred heads, he could not repay him for his music. Finally
on the seventh niught he beheaded himself while listening to the enchanting sounds … and the strings oif
the surando, the knife and the kiung’s neck became one.
Peter Pannke,
Saints and Singers 1999
Tarawangsa
‘One of the most peculiar yet also most impressive musical traditions of West Java is tarawangsa’, write Nanang
Supriatna Skar and Dieter Mack in the booklet to the CD
Topeng Cirebon – Tarawangtsa (Wergo SM 1607-2) and
continue: ‘This music that is also little known among the locals at first brings to mind the mannerist or abstract-
reductionist genres of court cultures. But Taranwangsa is a real people’s art.’ It is one that the Sundanese―who
inhabit the rural western part of Java around the capital Bandung―mainly perform during ceremonial celebrations. It
is played for healing and entertaining purposes but it’s main function is on the tenth day of muharram, the first month
of the Islamic calendar (sura in Java): On this day the Shiits terminate aschura, their hightest mourning ceremony that
commemorates the death of Imam Al-Husain in the battle of Kerbela.
On the same day, the Sundanese celebrate their harvest festival (ngabubur sura) in honour of the rice and fertility
goddess Dewi Sri: Most notably in the villages of Giri Mukti and Rancak Kalong, located some 50 kilometers east of
Bandung, a rousing feast is celebrated. People already gather in the early morning hours with their offerings: all sorts
of rice, potatos, fruits and vegetables. Togteher wirth coconut milk, salt and white and palm sugar they are cooked in
a big metal pot, resulting during the day in a porridge for the evening ceremony. At 7 pm the elders assemble in the
largest house of the village to worship Dewi Sri. During these prayers of thanks and petitions the tarawangsa ensemble
plays a fixed sequence of solemn melodies; a single person is dancing. After the end of this section the boiled porridge
is eaten; afterwards the ensemble plays on, albeit with a more entertaining repertoire: All inhabitants of the village
are dancing, and the young ones usually extend the party until the next morning.
Tarawangsa is known as tre-wangsa since the 15
th
century although the true origins are left in the dark. Today the
term denotes the ceremony as well as the leading instrument, a rather primitive two-stringed spike fiddle. One string
is bowed with a curved bow while the other is plucked―to hit it formally has the meaning of stroking a gong.
Traditionally tarawangsa is accompanied by just one more string instrument, the seven-string zither kecapi which is
here called jentreng―a name also given to the ritual dance.
Tarhu
The tarhu is the development of Australian instrument maker Peter Biffin.
The idea for the tarhu grew slowly over almost two decades. In 1977 the Turkish tanbur maestro Erhan Alptekin
attuned Biffin―who had commissions from Joe Pass and Ry Cooder (a.o.) to build guitars behind him―to the knee
fiddle. Three years later, Biffin spent six months in India restoring old sarangis with the great Ram Narayan. He later
studied both Indian and Turkish classical music. The knowledge and experience that he had gained, further informed
by exploring the possibilities of esraj, erhu, kamanchah, and other members of the family, finally resulted in his self-
designed tarhu in 1995. Its present ‘turned wooden sphere’ body was developed in 1998.
At the tarhu’s heart the string’s vibrations are attached to a featherweight wooden cone suspended within the
spherical body. This design has created extremely sensitive instruments with an unprecedented range of tone colour
variations. The efficiency of the cone system has also given these instruments a very large dynamic range.
Unlike almost all other acoustic stringed instruments, the tarhu system does not subject the sound-producing
components to the destructive forces of string tension. This allows the cone to be constructed according to acoustic
considerations only. This advanced structural design has other benefits as there are no glued joints in a tarhu that are
under stress. Meaning also that any repairs necessary due to impact damage are facilitated by the fact that a tarhu
can be dismantled into its component parts with comparative ease in minutes, require no refinishing after reassembly.
One of the design goals for the tarhu has been to function equally well as a bowed and a plucked instrument. For both
ways of playing the instrument offers the same amount of notes and tone colours―a small change in plucking angle
can change the attack from fast and percussive to smooth and flowing. The tarhu is therefore capable of playing a
large range of styles from East and West, using either bow, several different forms of plectra, and fingerstyle.
Today, four main instruments are manufactured by Peter Biffin.
* the tarhu proper is a longneck tarhu;
* the kamancha tarhu comes in an Azeri and Iranian version: The vibrating string length is either 33cm (standard
length for Iranian style kamancheh) or 29cm (Azeri kamancheh);