Classical Music of West Sumatra, Minangkabau – Talempong

One of the most devoutly Muslim areas in Indonesia is the Minangkabau region in the province of West Sumatra. The Minangkabau distinguish two cultural areas: the coastal lowland or pasisir and the largely mountainous interior or darat. Music in the pasisir is strongly influenced by foreign Muslims and neighbouring people along the northwest and northeast Sumatran coasts and in Aceh, northern Sumatra. 

But the darat retains many pre-Muslim characteristics and it is here that one must go to find the oldest forms of Minangkabau musical culture. Bronze kettles and gongs played today in ensemble with drums and sometimes wind instrument belong to one of the oldest musical strata in western Sumatra. There are fewer varieties of bronze instruments to be found among the Minangkabau than in Java and Bali whose inhabitants have developed their bronze orchestras to a very complex degree. 

The Minangkabau equivalent of gamelan is known as talempong ensemble which comprises mainly of small and large bronze, knobbed kettle gongs called talempong and canang respectively. The term can refer to the instrument, the ensemble or the genre of music. There is a good deal of local variation in the size, tuning and instrumental components of the ensemble but a common combination consists of five or six kettles, two or three canang and a pair of large and small two-headed drums or gendang. Musicians play static texture consisting fast interlocking rhythms on the kettles which may be tuned as follows. It can be used to play a wide variety of music, including both traditional and modern. Talempong are largely made from brass         but there are some which are produced from woods.

Each player holds one or two kettles in the left hand and wooden stick for beating the instrument in the right. Sometimes the kettles are arranged in a long frame, holding five to nine kettles, played by one musician. 

Talempong ensembles are still sometimes played during ceremonies for instance; the ceremony to become a village elder or during a rice ceremony to ensure a good harvest or to give thanks for a successful harvest which can be heard on local radio. Talempong ensembles are also used to accompany dances such as Tari Lilin, Tari Piring, Tari Pasambahan and Tari Galombang and as interludes in Minangkabau randai theatre. They may also be played in accompaniment to a solo melody on one of the Minangkabau single and double-reed wind instruments known as pupuih of which there are many types or on the plucked bamboo zither, kacapi bamboo. Alternatively, a pair of tambourine instruments knows as rabana may combine with the talempong and gendang.