Bandung Part 2 : Angklungs

The other main part of our day in Bandung was visiting the Udjo Angklung factory. We were treated to an hour and a half long show of music and dancing, and even got to participate! The angklung is a traditional Indonesian instrument made of bamboo tubes attached to a bamboo frame. Each one plays a single note on the scale, so you need many players to get a full sound. You can also see them put on stands that hold an entire octave. You have to be pretty talented to play those! It brought back fond memories of playing tone chimes at Pratum.

The guy conducting these angklung players holds the world record for the largest angklung performance. He conducted over 5,000 players last year in Washington DC, playing the song "We Are the World". 

The video below is of all of us in the audience getting to play. The little boy conducting us, is the older conductor's son. He used the solfege hand signals to direct us. I remember trying to learn those in choir, and learning with one hand was hard enough! This little guy was using both! All we had to do was memorize what hand symbol represented our individual angklung, and play ours when we saw our sign. It was such a neat experience for us to play together in a large group of people who had never played, and still be able to play a song well enough to recognize! I can't remember the name of it, but the first song we played was a well-known Beatle's song.