Kacapi-siter, pentatonic box zither. Painted wooden box with a soundhole beneath. Steel guitar strings with movable bridges.
This is the modern workhorse of the kacapi family, made to be portable and to accompany both traditional and modern songs, and also the rebab and suling. The kacapi-siter was developed in the 1930s from the much more expensive and heavy kacapi-indung of classical Sundanese music. A genre of topical, often comic songs quickly developed in the 30s and 40s of which Mang Kokok Kosware (Tatang's father) was a leading exponent. Subjects of Kokok's songs included badminton, fashionable shopping and nuclear power, as well as some very beautiful 'art' songs. These kacapis can be electrified with a magnetic element, much like a guitar. Some are made double strung, like a 12-string guitar.
