Largest orchestra playing on bamboo instruments

The largest orchestra playing on bamboo instruments was formed by 3011 people and was achieved during an event organised by Mr. Benny J. Mamoto in Tondano Maesa Stadium, Tondano, Indonesia on 31 October 2009.

Playing bamboo flute is common in Indonesia and the bamboo plant can be found in all regions. Under the influence of the Iberian and Dutch orchestra during three century of occupation and one century of formal education in schools, the people from Minahasa have taken over the European musical tradition and developed the single bamboo flute into a complete orchestra, made from bamboo materials. Most Minahasan villages have a bamboo orchestra to perform on special out-door festivities, such as a weddings. The power of the bamboo musical sound creates the festive atmosphere without using any electric acoustic instruments, and it suits the poor rural condition of living without electricity. This traditional orchestra set consists of 30 to 40 pieces of flutes in various sizes according to each position in the group. The most important flutes are the sopran (in tone scale of c), usually two pieces, and the alto (also two flutes), followed by the bass (also two), while other flutes, called as ‘guitar’ and ‘saxaphone’ according to their tone level, function to accompany the display. The sopran and alto flutes have six holes to play for two octaves, while the others have only three holes to play three tones with different tone scale; this is the way to transform the European musical band to the Minahasan traditional bamboo musical instruments. Therefore this orchestra needs at least 30 flutes players. The players do not have music books to exercise and most of them can not read the music notes so they can just count on their listening capacity to understand the music and to catch and blow the right tones. That is the traditional way they learn and inprove their musical talent and skill. Together with the introduction of zinc materials, the Minahasan musicians have also created new musical blowing instruments, added to the bamboo flute orchestra. There are then two kinds of the orchestra; one consists of only bamboo flutes, called Musik Bambu Melulu (‘all bamboo musical instruments’), and the other is called Musik Bambu Seng (‘a set of bamboo and zinc flutes) and also Musik Bambu Klarinet (bamboo and clarinet orchestra). The set of the Musik Bambu Seng or Musik Bambu Klarinet now consists of pieces of bamboo flutes, two for sopran, two for alto, 10-20 for three tones ‘guitar’, and of zinc blowing musical instruments, namely 2-4 functioning as ‘clarinet’, two as ‘saxophone’, two as ‘tuba’, two as ‘trombone’, and two as ‘bass’. Nowadays there are about 15 groups of the Musik Bambu Seng to be found among 2 million inhabitants of the North Sulawesi Province, especially in the Minahasa region with more than 400 villages.