I’ve been learning to play Waltzing Matilda on an angklung, round at the Indonesian Ambassador’s house.

I’d never heard of an anklung until a few days ago, but I now know that it’s a traditional Indonesian percussion instrument made from bamboo pipes tied loosely to a wooden frame.

An anklung is easy to play: you just shake it to make the pipes rattle on the frame.

Since the bamboo pipes are cut to different lengths, they produce different notes. Each separate anklung produces only a single note.

Trouble and strife: Anklung-ing

Because one anklung produces one note, the music is simple to read. Each anklung is numbered, and each number corresponds to the note it produces. Hence the music is just a string of numbers.

For example 3 / 3 / 6 / 1. Have you got that?

Shake, rattle and roll

Now, suppose you are responsible for shaking an anklung labelled 6. To keep the tune going, you just shake it when 6 crops up in the music.

You’ll perhaps gather I was given an anklung number 6 during the aforementioned visit to The Indonesian Ambassador’s house.

It was passed to me by one of the Luscious Ladies of The Indonesian Women’s Association.

These brave souls, under the leadership of the Ambassador’s wife, If Wardana, were trying to shape me, and assorted other ang mo women – that is, foreign women - into an anklung group in record quick time – about twenty minutes, to be exact.

Before the Luscious Indonesian Ladies let us loose on their instruments, they treated us to a demonstration of how things should be done.

They chose to play a delightful traditional piece and, as they shook their anklungs, with perfect timing, a harmonious tremolo filled the room.

The tremolo wasn’t quite so harmonious when we ang mo got shaking.

I for one quickly learned anklung-ing wasn’t as easy as it looked. For a start, I held my anklung all wrong. I now know you are supposed to keep your anklung level, when you shake it, but I slanted mine, until I was corrected.

And although it should be simple enough to follow music, when it’s presented as a string of numbers, I think I managed to come in either too late, or too early, on every note number 6 that I played.

Under the circumstances, it was perhaps not surprising that the Luscious Indonesian Ladies did not let me and the other rookie anklung-ers loose on their traditional airs.

Instead, as I have already mentioned, we cut our teeth on Waltzing Matilda. This was a nice piece of cross-cultural pollination, I thought.

Once we’d, ahem, mastered the Ozzie masterpiece, we progressed to Edelweiss.

Granted, a fan of the Sound of Music could have hummed along to our rendition, just about, but it wouldn’t have won any prizes in an anklung competition.

Mangling the poco-poco

Still, I think it’s fair to say we didn’t mangle it as badly as we mangled the poco-poco. The poco-poco, pronounced pocho-pocho, is a dance, and it’s very popular in Indonesia – it’s even been integrated into aerobics classes.

It accompanies a song whose lyrics describe a man’s admiration for the beautiful women of the Minahasa region. The man’s admiration makes the women feel shy and embarrassed.

These feelings are reflected in the dance, which also makes reference to agricultural activities, such as planting cloves and rice, hoeing the fields, and processing coconut fibre.

Yet again, the Luscious Indonesian Ladies first gave us ang mo a flawless demonstration, before inviting us to have a try. Yet again, they told us it was easy. It wasn’t.

I would describe the poco-poco to you, but I never did get the hang of it. There was quite a bit of stepping forward, back and sideways, quite a bit of dipping and twisting, and quite a lot of fluttering your hands.

And what was the order in which these things were supposed to occur? I really haven’t a clue.

If Wardana’s living room floor was serving as the dance floor, for the duration. I left it feeling as graceful as an elephant.

Mind you, I’d been feeling galumphing ever since I’d arrived. This was partly because I’m western tall, and my hostesses were mostly Asian petite, and partly because all the Luscious Indonesian Ladies were so elegantly dressed.

They all looked drop dead gorgeous in traditional, brightly coloured kabayas and sarongs.

Kabayas are long-sleeved, tight fitting jackets and sarongs are lengths of cloth, often batik, tied to make tubular skirts. I coveted every kabaya in the room.

One of my hostesses, whose kabaya was a paint-box bright tangerine, showed me the lace and embroidery at the cuffs. It was all hand worked, she explained.

Grateful for buttons

Another women told me that kabayas were traditionally closed with three diamond pins, and that, in the old days, each pin could cost as much as a whole house – and not a village house, either, but a fine house bang in the middle of town. Cor!

The price of a house just to stop your jacket falling open! I felt very drab in my black skirt, and red cardigan, but I also felt very grateful for buttons.

When it was time to leave, If Wardana, whose own kabaya was a glorious maroon, embroidered with gold, pressed upon each of her guests a tiny bamboo pin, in the shape of an anklung.

I could use it to close my kabaya, if only I owned a kabaya. In fact, I think I’ll have to buy a kabaya in order to accessorize the pin.

Yes, I can definitely feel a shopping trip coming on – but I’d better not tell The Banker. Not now I’ve admitted Kabaya button-alternatives can be as expensive as houses.

Rosie Milne's novels How To Change Your Life and Holding The Baby are both published by Pan, they are available through Amazon UK.

John Huggett is an artist and illustrator whose works are available through his website at www.johnhuggett.com

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