Ngada kampungs music contest - 8.5mins
Bajawa is the main town of the Orang Ngada Region. It's a hill-town [1,100 metres] in SW Central Flores ... one of the Eastern islands between Bali and Timor. Almost all of the Ngada people are either animist Catholics or to a lesser extent animist Protestants [both Portugese and Dutch influence here ].
In Bajawa at the 17th of August 'Hari Proklamasi 1990' Indonesian independence day celebration there were many local kampung music groups fiercely competing against each other. What stood out was that there was such diversity of music styles between neighbouring villages. However most of the villages performing there had vigorous 'war drum' percussion groups.
Last year [August 2010] I revisited Bajawa to find out why such diversity, to see if they still exist and if they still compete at Hari Proklamasi celebrations in Bajawa. Soon I will present what I found out in Bajawa & surrounding Kampungs last year ... both here & on a linked Photo-gallery site. Included will be recordings & images from the 2010 visit.
Of special interest was the row of trombone like bass-line bamboo 'flutes' [bombadoms]. They sounded awesome ... so mellow.
And yes ... the group did win the contest! However they had to wait through a tug o' war [rope] and a push o' war [bamboo pole] contest before the results were announced. You can hear the bamboo pole push o' war after the group finish playing.
You can also see higher resolution images of the 1990 Ngada kampung music contest at this photo-gallery site. The best view can be had by pressing the slideshow button at the top RHS for a full-screen slideshow.