Sahur Drums
Sahur is the meal Muslims eat before dawn during Ramadan, and in Indonesia people are woken for it, by roving groups banging kentongan slit drums, bedug, pots and amplified instruments through the streets in the small hours. The custom is centuries old and entirely real. Kentongan rhythm even carries meaning: a slow beat is the all-clear, a rapid one means fire, theft or danger. This facet is that practice, filmed straight, and it comes first because everything after it is a joke about something that actually happens.
Part of Triple T
11 moments in this segment.
- - A communal sahur gathering. A group meal eaten together before dawn during Ramadan, photographed in Indonesia in July 2013 and released under a Creative Commons licence. Sahur is the pre-dawn meal Muslims eat before the day's fast begins at fajr, observed by hundreds of millions of people every year. The photograph predates the meme named after it by twelve years.
- - Gendang sahur in Gorontalo. Hundreds of young people in Talomolo, Gorontalo hold their gendang sahur round with bamboo kentongan during Ramadan 1440 H.
- - Patrol music in Jember. KOMPAS TV reports on musik patrol in Jember, East Java, where the kentongan is played alongside flute and kendang to wake residents for sahur.
- - A kentongan seller in Kebumen. Wooden kentongan offered for sale in Kebumen, Central Java, photographed in June 2023. A kentongan is a slit drum, a hollowed log or bamboo tube with a vertical slit, struck with a wooden club so a signal carries across a village. This is the object the Tung Tung Tung Sahur character is carved from, recorded two years before anyone made the meme.
- - The slit drum behind the wake-up call. A short piece on the kentongan used for sahur rounds, and its long service in Indonesia as a signalling instrument well beyond Ramadan.
- - Don't break your fast again. A CapCut edit captioned 'jangan mokel lagi ye', a warning against secretly breaking the fast, with the character attached. Posted from an account whose captions run in Malay.
- - Asking for Eid money. A Malay-captioned skit built around duit raya, the money handed to children at Eid, with the character doing the asking.
- - What sahur actually means. A short explanation of the phrase behind the meme. Sahur is the meal eaten before dawn during Ramadan, and the drumming is the neighbourhood wake-up round that calls people to it.
- - Bamboo kentongan fills central Gorontalo. SINDOnews covers the koko'o or ketuk sahur tradition at Bundaran Saronde, with residents of all ages walking and sounding bamboo kentongan to mark the start of Ramadan.
- - Beduk and kentongan rounds in Banyumas. CNN Indonesia films residents of Banyumas, Central Java walking the neighbourhood before dawn with kentongan and kitchen implements to wake people for sahur. The rounds double as a night watch during Ramadan.
- - Obrog sahur, the Ramadan wake-up band. A record of obrog sahur, the custom of touring the village with traditional instruments to rouse households for the pre-dawn meal.
