Musical Icebreaker

It had been a long and tiring week full of energy-sapping activities and the last thing I needed was to attend yet another social function in the evening. But then, faced with the choice of getting caught up in traffic by going home in rush-hour traffic or enjoying a free glass of wine of five-star hotel quality, I chose the latter.

I would like to think it was all in the name of networking, the function being a celebration of the birth of the European Union, otherwise known as Europe Day, but having gone to similar functions for the last two decades, I must admit that socializing and striking up conversations are not my forte.

Normally, the first thing I do when arriving at the venue, after dutifully greeting the host, is to seek out familiar faces, either friends I already see on a regular basis or those same people I always bump into only at functions. Making new acquaintances, I’m afraid, is not on my list of priorities on these occasions as, with my propensity for short-term memory loss and inability to remember faces, I risk reintroducing myself to people I’ve actually met in the past.

Though in my defense, I notice similar behavior among other guests, thus creating little islands in a sea of people, barely aware of each other but conscious of the fact that most of us are there to fulfill our social and professional duty of s etor muka or showing our faces.

The routine is almost always the same; a little speech, the cutting of a cake and then lining up for the food, which one then eats standing up while trying to balance a drink. This is followed by a chat with a handful of people and then the hurried departure for yet another function or the long trek home.

This time, however, I got held back as I was waiting for a friend to arrive. Which as it turned out was a fortuitous thing.

The music at the function was being provided by musicians playing angklung , a percussion instrument made from bamboo that produces a sound when shaken. They had been playing unmemorable tunes to a largely inattentive audience, but all of a sudden stopped. The a ngklung were then passed out to the guests, many of whom looked bewildered, while others appeared mildly amused.

The conductor (one Daeng Udjo from Bandung, I discovered afterward) instructed the audience on what to do. Each a ngklung was l abeled with the name of an Indonesian island, for example, Sumatra, Java and Kalimantan, and i n his less than perfect English, Daeng Udjo told the mainly European guests to shake the bamboo instruments each time the name of an island was called out.

Everybody complied with enthusiasm. Each island name, of course, represented the musical note of that particular angklung . Through this simple teaching method, and to the delight of the assembled guests, we were able to create musical sounds that (if you’ve never heard angklung before) were pleasant and harmonious to the ears, evoking balmy breezes, swaying coconut trees and the merry bubbling of brooks.

After a few minutes, the next lesson involved associating the island names assigned to each angklung with hand signals, thus freeing the conductor from having to shout out the names and allowing us to play more complicated melodies.

By this time the guests holding the angklung were hooked. Here they were at a function actually playing music together on an instrument they’d rarely seen before let alone handled, and moreover, it was in tune.

Then, seeing the improvement in the guests’ musical skills, Daeng Udjo handed over the conducting duties. First to take over was a 7-year-old boy who was then replaced by a 5-year-old. Both of them conducted with fast and complicated hand signals, getting us to play well-known songs. The guests were totally focused on the job at hand, playing earnestly while others watched enchanted. This was serious business.

The combination of pint-sized conductors, the sweetness of the sound and the sheer fun of learning to play music was indeed the highlight of the evening. I thought it a pity that it started a little late into the evening, when many people had already left, as they too would have enjoyed having their spirits lifted.

This musical experience gave true meaning to the word socializing by bringing together a roomful of more or less strangers in literally perfect harmony.

And I even managed to talk to people I didn’t know.