27 Nov 2010

Sundanese Music



The notes on his page are derived primarily from my article on Sundanese music in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music,volume 4 (Southeast Asia). Fortunately for those interested in Sundanese music, a growing number of resources has made exploration easy. These resources include Henry Spiller's Gamelan: The Traditional Sounds of Indonesia, Andrew Weintraub's Power Plays: Wayang Golek Puppet Theater of West Java, my own The Sound of the Ancestral Ship: Highland Music of West Java, and Wim Van Zanten's Sundanese Music in the Cianjuran Style. Those are just the books! You can also find our articles in the Asian Music Journal, Ethnomusicology, The World of Music, Oideion, Balungan, Asian Theatre Journal, and The Yearbook for Traditional Music.


The Sundanese are Indonesia's second largest ethnic group. They live in the province of West Java (also called "Sunda" by many foreigners), encompassing the interior highlands, the coastal areas, and Cirebon, a culturally distinct region. The boundary between West and Central Java lies at the eastern foothills of the Priangan Highlands, and a wide band of west-central Java from north to south incorporates cultural elements from both West and Central Java. Those who consider themselves ethnically and politically Sundanese speak Basa Sunda in addition to Bahasa Indonesia (the national language), and most Sundanese are Muslims. When the Sundanese refer to their performing arts, they are careful to describe what they call khas Sunda -- that which is characteristically Sundanese -- a designation that bears a sense of regional identity

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