A Malaysian and Indonesian percussion instrument made of wooden bars struck with mallets, similar to a xylophone.
From Malay gambang, an instrument traditional to Southeast Asian gamelan orchestras. The word represents the instrument's own cultural origin, borrowed directly into English from Indonesian/Malay languages.
The gambang is proof that different cultures invented essentially the same instrument independently—wooden bars and mallets make sense for percussion, and nearly every culture from Africa to Asia has a version!
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