kepyak

The tradition & historical record

The Kepyak is a percussion instrument played by the dalang (puppeteer) of a wayang performance in Java, Indonesia. It is a struck idiophone consisting of several bronze or iron plates attached by strings (in Surakarta) or a single plate (in Yogyakarta), which the dalang plays with a small mallet held between the toes of his right foot. It is placed on the side of the keprak, a wooden box which can also be played directly. The kepyak can also be played with a mallet (cempala), either in the hand in dance performance, or in the foot in wayang. The kepyak used in dance performances is smaller than that used in wayang. The use of the kepyak is called kepyakan. It is used to signal cues to the gamelan to begin or end pieces, or change tempo or pathet. It has a distinctive sound which can be heard quite clearly during performance. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Kepyak”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

kepyak is percussion instrument played by the dalang (puppeteer) of a wayang performance in Java, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²