Trouble And Strife: Anklung-ing By Rosie Milne

I’ve been learning to play Waltzing Matilda on an angklung, round at the Indonesian Ambassador’s house.

I’d never heard of an anklung until a few days ago, but I now know that it’s a traditional Indonesian percussion instrument made from bamboo pipes tied loosely to a wooden frame.

An anklung is easy to play: you just shake it to make the pipes rattle on the frame.

Since the bamboo pipes are cut to different lengths, they produce different notes. Each separate anklung produces only a single note.

Trouble and strife: Anklung-ing

Because one anklung produces one note, the music is simple to read. Each anklung is numbered, and each number corresponds to the note it produces. Hence the music is just a string of numbers.

For example 3 / 3 / 6 / 1. Have you got that?

Shake, rattle and roll

Now, suppose you are responsible for shaking an anklung labelled 6. To keep the tune going, you just shake it when 6 crops up in the music.

You’ll perhaps gather I was given an anklung number 6 during the aforementioned visit to The Indonesian Ambassador’s house.

It was passed to me by one of the Luscious Ladies of The Indonesian Women’s Association.

These brave souls, under the leadership of the Ambassador’s wife, If Wardana, were trying to shape me, and assorted other ang mo women – that is, foreign women - into an anklung group in record quick time – about twenty minutes, to be exact.