ABSTRACT
In West Java, bamboo music’s long association with a distinctly Sundanese landscape, with pre-modern agricultural ceremonies, and with the aesthetics of participatory music making, as well as its adaptability to modern West Javanese society, make it a fertile site for investigating how musical meaning commingles with environment and culture. Since the beginning of reformasi, one hears more and more bamboo murmurs throughout West Java’s capital city. Like every locale, Bandung represents a unique and complicated nexus of geographies, histories, natural resources, and human relationships. The city occupies a high-elevation river basin (768 m), surrounded by high volcanic peaks, in the interior of the western part of the island of Java. Its relatively cool climate (cool by Indonesian standards, anyway) and its natural defensibility (provided by the high mountains) made it attractive as a new capital for the Dutch colonial administration in the early twentieth century.
