Tanjidor

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Three Tanjidor players with strimbas ( helicon ), clarinet ( clarinet ) and trombon ( trombone )

Tanjidor , more rarely Orkes Kompeni , is an entertainment orchestra that originated in the 18th to 19th centuries during the Dutch colonial era in Batavia (now Jakarta ) on the north coast of the Indonesian island of Java . Musicians of the Betawi folk group play brass instruments outdoors, similar to European marches, with Dutch , Chinese and Javanese influences.

Origin and Distribution

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) established a trading post in the port city of Batavia in 1619. Until the beginning of the 19th century, the indigenous population (pribumi) of Batavia, which became the capital of the Dutch East Indies in 1799 , consisted of only a few Javanese from the area. Three quarters of the Indonesian population were immigrants from Bali , Sulawesi and other East Indonesian islands. A large part of Batavia's population were Portuguese, Arabs, Chinese and former Indian slaves. From the 17th century onwards, the Dutch began bringing slave laborers baptized Catholics to Indonesia from the former Portuguese colonies in India . They spoke a Portuguese dialect and were called Mardijkers . The word goes back to Sanskrit mahardika ("tax-exempt"), which is also the basis of the Indonesian merdeka ("freedom"). Another group was called the Papangers . Name and origin go back to the Papango, an ethnic group of the northern Philippine island of Luzon . They were brought to Batavia as prisoners of war by the Dutch, where they served as soldiers of the VOC for many years before they were granted the status of free citizens. Over the first 200 years, the different origins of the immigrant population, called Betawi , remained recognizable in Batavia and the surrounding area. The Indonesian word Betawi is derived from the name of the city, in Dutch they were called Batavians . By the end of the 19th century, they merged into a uniform population group with a special culture, in which remnants of the original diversity have been preserved to this day.

Tanjidor is derived from Portuguese tanger , "to play a musical instrument", and tangedor, "musician". In Portugal it was understood as the player of a string instrument. The word therefore originated at a time when Portuguese was still spoken in Batavia. In the 18th and 19th centuries the music served as entertainment for the wealthy landowners; their workers played them European marches and folk dances, as well as Indonesian and Chinese songs. The instruments were selected to match the respective musical style. When institutionalized slavery disappeared in the mid-19th century, local musicians who could play European instruments continued to be in demand for military parades and festive events. The music troops, which basically consisted of male members, were able to take part in official events and music competitions on behalf of the government.

Since the beginning of the 20th century at the latest, Tanjidor music groups have regularly moved from house to house on public holidays in the neighborhoods of rich Chinese ( peranakan , the Chinese who immigrated during the colonial period and their descendants) and Dutch people to play for tips. In 1955 the city administration banned this practice on the grounds that local musicians should not allow themselves to be treated as beggars by the Chinese. Tanjidor disappeared from the street scene. There remained music performances in front of private, peranakan and pribumi audiences at weddings, funerals, circumcisions and Thanksgiving celebrations. At Chinese funerals during the colonial era, bands were popular, leading the funeral procession on the way to the cemetery with the melody of Auld Lang Syne ( Janjii Tua in Indonesian ). Tanjidor is also ideal music for Chinese temple festivals.

The European-influenced Tanjidor is just one of the performing arts developed by immigrants around Batavia during the colonial era . Chinese influence can be seen in the Betawi culture in the dance Cokek (tari Ciokek) , the operetta Lenong and the music style Gambang Kromong , whereas the Betawi Cokek dance is accompanied by Balinese gamelan instruments. The shadow play Wayang Kulit Betawi is a local Javanese variant; from West Java also comes the Jaipongan - dance. An Arab-Islamic background have widespread in the region Zapin - dance, and musical styles Gambus and Rebana . In the Portuguese Kroncong -Gesang, who had arrived in the 18th century in the Betawis are Malay Pantun - dialect Betawi verses in the local presented and accompanied by European musical instruments.

Tanjidor is considered to be a style of music developed in Batavia, but there are similar orchestral formations, which may be imitations, in southern Sumatra around Palembang and around western Kalimantan's capital Pontianak . There are no tanjidor bands in downtown Jakarta. The home of the Tanjidor musicians are the outlying districts within today's greater Jabodetabek such as Depok , Cibinong and Citeureup halfway towards Bogor in the south, Jonggol in the southeast, Tangerang in the west and some places around Bekasi in the east.

Style of play

The melody instruments in the Tanjidor are European wind instruments such as helicon or tuba , trombone , trumpet , saxophone and clarinet . The clarinet takes on the melody, similar to the Sundanese (West Javanese) double reed instrument tarompet or the fiddle rebab , while the helicon blows between the basic rhythm in the pieces influenced by the Sundanese gamelan and thus takes on the role of the hump gong kempul in the gamelan. The drummers use small drums , barrel drums and cymbals for marching music . The trumpet can be dispensed with, occasionally a violin or the two-stringed Chinese fiddle tehyan complement the game.

Marches and waltzes form the original standard repertoire. Popular Javanese styles such as Jaipongan or Dangdut can alternatively be performed in a Tanjidor cast. Instead of the European percussion instruments struck with sticks, Indonesian drums ( kendang and tambur) , gongs (kenong or gong angkog) and metallophones are used. A melody popular since the 1890s and occasionally still played today is La Paloma .

Tanjidor still belongs to a small extent to public and private festivals. The Chinese New Year is celebrated with music (including tanjidor) and theater performances such as the barongsai ( lion dance ). At smaller village festivals and family celebrations, large Tanjidor orchestras are often no longer booked for cost reasons, because they are more expensive than a Dangdut group consisting of only two or three musicians, which provides just as loud entertainment with keyboard and electric guitar . Most Tanjidor musicians can only perform part-time, they are booked too seldom to be able to make a living from the music. Their wind instruments come from the colonial era and are hardly replaceable.

The Dutch ethnomusicologist Jaap Kunst mentions Kroncong in his standard work Music in Java from 1949 only in one place rather disparagingly and Tanjidor not at all, since neither is traditional style. In contrast to the melancholic Kroncong, whose simple melodies are comparable to European hits and which hardly contains any Indonesian musical elements, the Tanjidor is an extremely lively and virtuoso mix of styles that has not developed its own repertoire, but borrows creative ideas from performance practice.

Discography

  • Betawi & Sundanese Music of the North Coast of Java. Topeng Betawi, Tanjidor, Ajeng. (Music of Indonesia 5) Smithsonian / Folkways, 1994. Produced by Philip Yampolsky

literature

  • Ernst Heins: Kroncong and Tanjidor: Two Cases of Urban Folk Music in Jakarta. In: Asian Music 7 (1) . 1975, pp. 20-32

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heins, p. 22.
  2. ↑ Jacqueline Knörr: Creole and Postcolonial Society: Integration and Differentiation in Jakarta. Campus, Frankfurt 2007, p. 97 f.
  3. ↑ Philip Yampolski in the booklet accompanying the Smithsonian CD
  4. ↑ Margaret J. Kartomi: Indonesian-Chinese Oppression and the Musical Outcomes in the Netherlands East Indies. In: Ronald Michael Radano, Philip Vilas Bohlman (Eds.): Music and the Racial Imagination: Cultural Topics. (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology) University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2005, p. 307
  5. ^ Martina Claus-Bachmann: Gambang Kromong. June 2000
  6. ↑ alat musik tehyan. Flickr photo of a Tehyan
  7. ↑ Margaret J. Kartomi: From Kroncong to Dangdut: The Development of the Popular Music of Indonesia. In: Franz Födermayr, Ladislav Burlas (ed.): Ethnological, historical and systematic musicology. Oskár Elschek on his 65th birthday. Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. ASCO art & science, Bratislava 1998, pp. 145–166, here p. 151
  8. ^ Garuda Magazine
  9. ^ Jaap Art: Music in Java. Its History, its Theory and its Technique. 3rd expanded edition 1973, p. 375
  10. ↑ Ernst Heins, p. 20