Bas Tanah

BAS TANAH – MUSIK KAMPUNG
Musik Kampung is entertainment music played by an ensemble of string instruments, in which the instruments are homemade by each village, consists of one single string contrabass and few small guitars like ukulele called juk and benyol and sometimes an addition of percussive instrument. The lyrics are sung together in harmonious vocals. Musik Kampung in Flores is very similar to Yangere music or Kastela music in Ternate, North Maluku but they certainly have different history. Yangere music adapted the music brought by the Portuguese, and after the Portuguese left Ternate, the locals took over the instruments and imitated them. In Flores, this kind of orchestra arrived in around 1960s when a German pastor gathered young people to practice music. They made their own instruments including the contrabass (Bas Tanah), which was made by digging the ground and use pinang midrib as membrane. When the orchestra is more developed, the pastor then imported musical instruments to be imitated by local instrument builders.

This video is a recording of Abdon Aliandu and his family of instrument builders and the musicians of Musik Kampung showing how they made the Bas Tanah.