Century of the Angklung Journey and Its Establishment in Thailand

Abstract

Both Thai and Javanese have been with lifelong cultural friendship for over
250 years. Thai people enjoyed the Panji storytelling since the late 1700’s and
have been using Panji as written Thai poetic literature and for court theatre over
2 centuries. We shared the same brass knobbed gong culture with its pentatonic
(Slendro) and septatonic (Pelog) equidistance scales. The angklung, bamboo
shaking instrument, were brought as a gift to royal children by HM K
ing Rama the V to Siam since 1871 but the ensemble were not set up until our great court musician named Jangwang Sorn Silapa-banleng, took the instruments from Sunda West Java to Bangkok in 1908, later, he established the very first Thai
Angklung Ensemble played several songs he composed in pentatonic scale
same way he heard in the Javanese Islands. Since then, the bamboo angklung
were made with the Thai native bamboo followed by the nationwide uses. This
paper describes the Angklung Journey from West Java to Thailand showing the
historic photographs of Thai Angklung music teachers, their houses of
Angklungs and the music they composed. Today, Thai Angklung were used for
children classroom music. DVD and Musical Disc of Thai Angklung will be
demonstrated, bringing both music knowledge and enjoyment to show the
cross cultural examples of the two nations.