Music Bambu - Minahasan Bamboo Music Orkestra

Bamboo music, in Madidir in a party-Bitung Aertembaga December 6, 1948

All week long, the fishing hamlet some 20 kilometers offshore from the North Sulawesi capital of Manado presents a vignette of island tranquility: pastel pink church steeple, a wave-lapped beach and white-washed cottages.

But on Thursday nights, the calm in Bunaken is shattered by the raucous practice sessions of the town’s 32-piece “bamboo orchestra” — six rows of men wrapped in contorted yards of bamboo and brass tubing from which they pump out volumes of “oompah” music.

There are two rows of flutes including 83-year-old Simon Lungala giving his large bamboo flute his all. Behind him are nine mouth “coronets”, a few trumpets, a drum and cymbal set, and a generously twisted gigantic bass tuba.

Conductor Zakarias Likawa leads the ensemble, waving his own instrument, which he calls a “bass clarinet”. The three-holed, conical brass contraption looks about as much like a clarinet as Zakarias (in his loud, blue batik shirt and knee-side Aqua bottle of Cap Tikus — 17 percent proof local alcohol) looks like a conventional conductor.

But close your eyes for a minute and you can almost imagine Zakarias in full tuxedo wailing away on the elegant, floor-length woodwind that is his instrument’s namesake.

At play: Faldini Salimu, 14, joins his father and other members of Bunaken’s Orkes in a weekly rehearsal.At play: Faldini Salimu, 14, joins his father and other members of Bunaken’s Orkes in a weekly rehearsal.The sonorous, thick sound of his music bespeaks a smattering of classical training, a lifetime of jazz listening and a purist connoisseurship. “We have no electric instruments in the bamboo orchestra,” Zakarias explains, “only our breath. It’s kind of like we are singing.”

Although Zakarias insists that the music is a unique and spontaneous creation of Bunaken alone, there are, in fact, numerous bamboo orchestras that go back a long way and are widely scattered throughout the Minahasa territory of Northern Sulawesi. Many of them, including the Bunaken band, source their instruments from the same two craftsmen near the legendary Minahasan heartland of Tondano.

In Tara-Tara, about 60 kilometers uphill from Manado, another bamboo orchestra claims to be playing in the music’s birthplace. According to orchestra leader Pietro Menteng, a retired elementary school teacher, the music was first brought to Northern Sulawesi in the early 1900s by a Dutch Catholic missionary, perhaps homesick for Western music.

The priest worked with local villagers to construct instruments for a full western orchestra, complete with saxophones, clarinets and an “organ”. All the instruments were built from locally sourced bamboo.

Over the past century, though, the hollow bamboo sounds of Orkes Bambu have migrated away from Western church music into a folk music specific and unique to the Minahasan lands, Pietro says. “We interpreted it to our current situation here. This is music of a mixed culture.”

Another shift local orchestras have encountered recently is the comparatively tepid reception their music receives, at least in the Minahasan lands of Tomohon and Tondano.

Pietro blames this on outmigration of Minahasans in search of higher paying jobs. “Before, our ancestors worked on the farm, planting enough [to pay] for food and clothing, but now people are always looking for more money and need to leave the village.”

Ask around the marketplace in neighboring Tomohon and answers differ. The tone just doesn’t seem to jibe anymore according to Yulius Pagamanden, a 50-year-old ojek driver. He says he listens to Orkes Bambu because it is a regional art with a strong local presence. Asked if he likes the sound though and he smiles and says, “yeah … a little bit.”

In a blue mikrolet nearby, Jeffrey Wetick is blasting tunes from Indonesian Christian crooner Rohani. He says he still plays music from Manado’s Orkes Bambu in his mikrolet from time to time but he listens to Rohani’s “Ave Maria” more often.

If Orkes Bambu music is in decline, though, you’d never know it back in Bunaken, where Zakarias insists the music is appreciated by locals young and old. A look around the Thursday evening practice is evidence.

The band is made of three boat builders, three retirees, two schoolteachers and a whole lot of fishermen. Brass flutes, cymbals and drums drown out the only remaining bamboo element of the band: the “coronet” (a mouth organ comprising bamboo tubes of different heights cradled in a larger bamboo stump). Those that play the instrument such as 14-year-old Faldini Salimu, the youngest member of the ensemble, are vocal advocates of the older instrument form.

Faldini plays his “coronet” in the row right behind the oldest member. Neighbors crowd around under umbrellas. Kids tip their heads back to take in the whole 32-man band at one sweep. Wives sit on the wraparound parapet, whispering to each other and tapping their high-heeled feet to keep in time with the songs.

It’s the regularity of the rehearsals that keeps the music alive and the village intact, Zakarias maintains. “Villagers need to gather, get instruments and practice. If this doesn’t happen, they disperse.”