Karinding (2020)

A Sundanese saying goes -- "language is the identity of [a] nation" (Sundanese: asa téh cicirén bangsa"). The colonization era was complicated for Indonesia -- a country with 700 languages -- as it is hard to tell how it influenced the Sundanese language and culture. Ilham Nurwansah is on a mission to digitize old Sundanese-language (spoken by over 35 million people) text, and share encyclopedic information through the Sundanese Wikipedia. When not digitizing old Sundanese palm leaf manuscripts, he carves bamboo and palm and plays Karinding, a lamellophone instrument similar to Jew's harp that originated from West Java and Banten in Indonesia. Made from different kinds of local bamboo varieties and midribs of palm trees, the sound of Karinding is "robotic" as Nurwansah's explains. This short documentary has a narration and performance by Nurwansah that was recorded by Subhashish Panigrahi at the T-Centralen station in Stockholm, Sweden during Wikimania 2019.