Aboard the steamboat, for months, the sound of kentongan (bamboo gong) reverberated in Tjalie Robinson's ears.

The sound continued to follow Tjalie, a man of mixed Dutch and Indonesian ancestry, who for three months traveled by steamboat along with an Indies contingent back to Holland in 1950 following Indonesia's independence. It was the kentongan sound that later gave him his inspiration.

This is how the words 'Tong Tong' emerged, later to become the