When she was a young girl, Ibu Siti Rahma and other Alas girls in Southwest Aceh would sit together after a hard day's work in the field and play kecapi, a four-stringed wooden lute modeled after Western imports like ukulele and guitar. These days, a real kecapi is hard to find, so with typical Alas ingenuity (they also play gong music on sardine tins!) she and her friends took a child's toy guitar and tweaked it with an improvised wooden nut/capo to raise the action and help with tuning.

Alas women often call the instrument "canang kecapi" - literally "gongs on a lute." The looping four-note melodies played on the instrument are taken from the repertoire of canang situ, a ritual music where Alas women play interlocking melodies on five bronze gongs (or fish tins). To accomplish this, the musician plays the lute in an ingenious way I've never seen on any other lute in the world: wrapping her thumb and fingers around the neck, she selectively mutes three strings at a time, leaving the remaining string to ring out.

Have you seen this technique used elsewhere? If so, share in the comments!

Hear and learn more at the new Aural Archipelago post coming soon at https://www.auralarchipelago.com