If you don't know Bobbe Edmond, try google or youtube him (assuming 'youtube' has gone verb as much as 'google' did)... Bobbe also had several posts here in this forum early days.
I found his writing about Pak Bambang in his blog and I like it.
Taken from
http://currythief.blogspot.com/2006/06/in-shadow-of-my-teacher.html. Credit to Bobbe Edmond
In The Shadow of My TeacherMany people who know me know I do martial arts of some kind. If you’ve been to my house you will at minimum either think you are in an Asian museum or the secret laboratory of Dr. Fu Manchu. But unless you are a student of mine, very few people could tell you what art it is that I train & teach, because it’s one of the single most obscure arts in the world. So much so, in fact, that when people find out I do martial arts & ask which one, I normally put on a fake smile & say “Kung Fu” or “Karate”.
It’s much easier than answering the barrage of questions that will follow if I say “Pencak Silat”.
Pencak Silat is the native martial art of Malaysia and Indonesia. It is an evolved system birthed from the influences of Yoga, Kalaripayattu, Kung Fu, and other styles & techniques brought over from visiting/invading cultures, as well as the native fighting systems already in place. Due to the unusual topological makeup of the Nusantara (Indo-Malay archipelago), as well as the blade-oriented culture common to the jungle, these arts had to evolve and adapt to the lay of the land to survive and be effective. This has produced what is now a unique system of combat that emphasizes savage brutality over the more commonly known “Martial Arts are for self-development and peace” attitude that is so prevalent in the rest of the world. The techniques are mostly oriented toward close-range infighting, usually with a bladed weapon of some kind. And the Indonesians have some of the most horrible-looking knives around, some of which can terrify just by the sight of them.
My current teacher in this art is Bambang Suwanda. Bambang comes from a family in Indonesia that is famous for Silat, and his older brother, Herman, was one of the most famous Silat players in history, and was largely responsible for publicly bringing Silat into the open in America. His knowledge and skill attracted a large number of followers, many of whom frequently went to Indonesia for special training camps. Pa Herman died in a car accident in Germany in 2000, and Bambang decided to preserve the legacy that his older brother had left by continuing the education of Herman’s former students. Some came back, others went in different directions, still others quit altogether. In the past 6 years, Bam has developed a strong core of students from Pa Herman’s original student cadre to continue the training they started in Pencak Silat.
Of which, I am one.
Bambang is way different from his older brother. His knowledge and training were the same, his father made him train alongside his brother when he was younger, and also served as the “punching dummy” for Herman as well. But Bam had a much more difficult time in his own life. Being younger, he was also much smaller than his older brother, and this made him approach his silat differently. He couldn’t overpower Herman in a head-on confrontation, so he trained in systems that emphasized dodging to oblique angles and attacking from the blindside. Also, where Pa Herman was a much more spiritual person, Bam was not. He liked to drink. He also liked to fight. He LOVED doing both at the same time. Of course, this got him into deep water with the local police, different Silat schools, and several street gangs in Indonesia, and it’s something that Bam doesn’t like to speak about much. But as a result, much of Bam’s technique that he teaches us comes directly from his street fighting experience, as well as the “school technique” we learn in the Suwanda Padepokan (Silat School). There are times he has shown me something that went WAY north of what I had learned from his brother, and when I asked about this he would say “Oh, they never punch like that, I always have to do this first” or “I found out the hard way that the elbow is quicker on the inside line, so I changed the Jurus to reflect that.” I can see in his eye that he is actually REMEMBERING at these times, not guessing. It’s difficult to argue when it’s the voice of experience talking.
Bam has great pride in his culture, and especially that he is from the Sunda race. The Sundanese are different from the Javanese. They are the Jawa Barat (West Javanese), descendants of the aboriginal tribes of Indonesia, and fiercely proud of their heritage. Although they are Muslim, they are equally animistic as well, and practice their native beliefs right alongside Islam, without conflict between the two religions. They share a common lineage with the mystical Badui tribe, a people so secretive that the inner village has never been seen by outsiders, Indonesian or otherwise.
The Sunda weapons are unique, and the theory of use in their martial arts takes a widely different approach than that of the central or East Javanese. Bambang wanted to emphasize this difference in the culture, and so he structured his system to reflect the method of his people and called it Sundanese Silat. Amongst ourselves, we (his students) use the term “Maen Po Jawa Barat”.
Entries and finishing techniques are the name of the game with Bambang. His philosophy is that anything can happen when the hands cross, you can’t really dictate the future in a juru or a form. So his style covers a wide range of elaborate hand traps and footwork to gain purchase inside the opponent’s defenses, and the use of body positioning is paramount. Bam preaches body English more than his brother did, and will spend hours drilling us on full body motion, as opposed to feet-first or hands-first. The advantage to this is the practitioner can position himself for attack on the first beat, without having to need any “adjustment” time. Normally this will allow for the defender to be out of harm’s way and return fire before the attacker has finished his initial punch or kick.
The footwork almost never wades the defender directly in from the front, nor does it step directly back. It is circular, whether advancing or retreating, and upon initial use can resemble various styles of Chinese Kung Fu. But deeper inspection reveals that we are forcing the opponent to constantly change and adjust his line of attack on us, while we are always a few steps ahead of the game. Very few martial artists can separate their upper and lower body regions and make them work independently of each other, while retaining fluidity. More commonly, attention is placed entirely on one end or another, and if the hands are preoccupied then the feet will usually be rigid or rooted to the floor.
This is the province of Sundanese Silat, you must always keep the fluidity of negotiation in combat, because you never know if you will have to suddenly change horses in midstream. It is the fluid mind that can accept sudden shifts in the technique, and immediately adjust himself to accommodate them. Bambang will drop whatever he was doing in the technique and bring out something different at the slightest hint that things may not be going the way he thought they would. This is pretty amazing to see, because I can usually recognize what he WAS doing, but I have no idea what prompted him to switch styles or techniques. Later on he’ll tell me “Oh, I saw him starting to figure out what I was going for, he was doing the counters. So I just abandoned my first plan & went with a more radically different attack. He never saw it coming, let alone had time to adjust for it”.
There are teachers and there are teachers. Bam has no presumptions about himself, or what he knows. He is recognized as a Pendekar amongst his peers, yet we all address him like we’re getting together for poker night. He doesn’t like being put on a pedestal, and despises the idol-worship mentality prevalent in so many martial arts.
Bambang has the skill of a fighter, no questions there. But he has a genuine concern that we are getting the material in our heads, and understanding what he’s teaching. His English is severely limited, and as a result I have had to learn Bahasa Indonesia. But this doesn’t stop him from insuring that we have understood his lessons, and if we can’t make out his words he will drill us physically until we DO understand what he wants. He also has no compunctions about smacking the living daylights out of us to demonstrate the effectiveness of what he teaches. “I don’t want you going back to America without understanding WHY you are doing it this way” he’ll tell me. “You are representing me when you walk out of here. If your students ask & you don’t know, it will make ME look bad. Don’t let me down. Don’t let my brother down.”
I’m trying, Bam.
English Version