[caption id="attachment_20868" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Kolintang by Kompas/Nasrullah Nara"][/caption] Indonesia, a nation consisting of more than 17 thousand island, has long been famous for its rich culture and colorful tradition. Among various aspects of traditions, each tribe living throughout the archipelago, developed music as well as its instrument. In north part of Sulawesi, Minahasan people built a decent mucis instrument. They call it Kolintang. It is only last Saturday (30/10) that a team from The Guinnes Book World of Records enlisted on their latest entry Kolintang played in a mass performance. During the performance on Maesa Stadium, Tondano, North Sulawesi, 1.223 people, each with mallets and a kolintang set, played two traditional song compositions entitled "Aki Tembo- temboan" and "Minahasa Kina Toanku". Wikipedia mentions that, according to the Vienna Symphonic Library, the earliest evidence of a xylophone is from the 9th Century in southeast Asia. From the fact that people of Maguindanao, a province of Philiphines' Mindanao situated close to North Sulawesi, also develop such music instrument with quite a similar name, there is a big possibility that the Kolintang is native to this area. The Kolintang is either one set or a group of local melodious percussion, each consists of wooden bars of various lengths that are struck by wooden or rubber mallets. The bars are arranged horizontally from shorthest (high pitch) on the left to longest (low pitch) on the right respectively. Underneath, a box is installed, functioned as the resonator. The name of Kolintang, as many other music instruments on native to the archipelago, is either directly or indirectly derived from its sound. Minahasan interpret the Kolintang's low pitch as "Tong", high pitch "Ting", and medium "Tang". Thus, one will say, "Let's play Tong Ting Tang", or in local dialect, " Mangemo kumolintang". A long process of language simplification finally produce the word "Kolintang." On its earlier development, Kolintang consisted only of wooden bars arranged atop two pieces of banana trunk. Minahasan believes that the use of resonator box was the influence from gambang, another type of xylophone on Javanese and Sundanese gamelan set, brought by followers of Diponegoro, a famous Indonesian freedom fighter, whom were put into exile on the island. This improvement helped much of its preservation not until its reintroduction on early second half of 20th century. After being improved, a concensus was made that a complete group set of Kolintang consists of 9 Kolintang sets. Each set has distinctive name and requires different percussion method. Loway is the name for Bass Kolintang, Cella for Cello Kolintang, Karua and Karua rua for Tenor 1 and Tenor 2 respectively, Uner and Uner rua for Alto 1 and Alto 2, Katelu for Ukulele, Ina Esa, Ina Rua, and Ina Taweng for Melody 1, 2, and 3. Modern Kolintang group set, however, simplifies, the group set into only six sets. Today, Kolintang is already famous around the globe as one of Indonesia's traditional music instrument from Minahasa land. Unfortunately, there are just a few national events offer opportunity for Kolintang group to perform. Far less than comprehensive one could find when searching Kolintang on the net. Should we wait it be claimed by others?
