The Tone Material of the Kacapi in Tembang Sunda in West Java

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T he theory about the tone material in Sundanese music, prevailing since the 1920s writings of Kunst and Kusumadinata, is neither appropriate for describing what is happening in current practice nor adequate for prescribing what should be happening. This article will focus on tuning behaviour in one genre of Sundanese music and offer a new empirical foundation for theory as developed from frequency analyses of recorded zither tunings. Over the span of half a century it appears that the pitch level of certain songs has dropped by as much as 500 cents. Information for this study was gathered mainly from players in the regions of Bandung and Cianjur during field work in 1981 and 1982. Bandung is the present capital of the province of West Java and a main center of Sundanese culture. Cianjur was an important administrative city in the first half of the 19th century, the period in which Tembang Sunda' developed as a separate genre (see van Zanten 1984:290-292). Tembang Sunda was formerly named after the place in which it originated: Cianjuran. In 1962 the term Tembang Sunda was agreed upon during a conference (see Wiratmadja 1964:107). The terms and concepts which are presented in this article come from acknowledged, leading performers of Tembang Sunda. Players of the radio station in Bandung, led by Uking Sukri, were my main informants on the concepts of Tembang Sunda. In Cianjur my main informant was Bakang Abubakar. The first part of this article will discuss the instrumental components of Tembang Sunda, with special emphasis on the tone material of the large zither kacapi indung. In the second part we will turn to the frequency analysis of the recorded tunings of this instrument. Some notes on the way of recording, the recording apparatus, the frequency analysis and the measurement error may be found in Appendix 1. Appendix 2 gives the recorded and analysed kacapi indung tunings in Hertz.