Emic and Ethic Knowledge of Bamboo’s Characteristic in Process of Making Angklung

Abstract

Bamboo as raw material of angklung has not received special attention yet, whereas the quality of angklung will be highly influenced by the quality of bamboo as its main material. Only bamboo with certain character can produce angklung with the quality of good sound and proper tone. Unfortunately the knowledge of the local community regarding the characteristics of bamboo is still qualitative hence that the process of knowledge inheritance was obstructed. Therefore in this research, society knowledge (emic knowledge) will be translated scientifically in order to obtain the quantitative data of bamboo characteristic for angklung. The methods used was a qualitative and quantitative descriptive. The emic data was collected with deep interview with the selected informants in purposive. The key informant on this research was the owner of Bale Angklung Bandung. Quantifying emic data was conducting by the measurement and laboratory test of physical properties (the water content), chemical properties (the concentration of sugar reducing/Luff Schoorl) and anatomy (the density of vascular bundles). The measurement aimed to determine the reed diameter, the minimum length of internode, the physical condition of drying, the reed uprightness, the reed roundness, and the depreciation. The result showed that the scope of local knowledge regarding making angklung was varying. Not all of the craftsmen understood the steps and the characteristics of bamboo that used in the main material selection process. Some of bamboo characteristic for angklung could be quantifying, including the chosen bamboo which having 44 cm of minimum length, the reed uprightness was 45-90˚ above the ground, and the circles reed round with the maximum diameter change tolerate outside the reed is 0,15 cm. But there are still many more local knowledge that could not be construed scientifically so it needs further excavation. In main material selection process, the most treatment and bamboo characteristic selection was conducted to gather bamboo in the low water and sugar level at average 7.5% and 0.54%. The low water level will prevent the reed shrinks after drying process. After drying, the bamboo will be compact with the average of density vascular bundles is 142.63 number/mm.