Edited by Don Niles, Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, and Denis Crowdy, University of Papua New Guinea. With one cassette (IPNGS 014). Boroko: Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies and University of Papua New Guinea, 2000.

 
Reviewed by Lars Kjærholm
Department of Anthropology, Moesgaard, Denmark

 
This rather sprawling collection of long and short papers and transcripts of discussions is rather unique in the world of ethnomusicological literature, because it covers the entire range of music in a new postcolonial state from whistled speech to Church Hymnody. The conference was itself something of a performative event, where people from various parts of the culturally and ethnically very heterogeneous Papua New Guinea came together to discuss and present music.

A major theme at the conference was the discussion about the nature of Papua New Guinea music. Is there a distinct type of music, which ties the many ethnic groups together? This event should no doubt also be seen as an exercise in nation building, like the whole series of publications on music and culture from the Institute of New Guinea Studies.

It is impossible in a review to mention all papers in this book, there are no less than 23, and also transcripts from discussions. Some papers are very short, almost like abstracts, and some are more fully worked out papers. In the latter category is Michael Webb's paper, "Raboul's "Johnny Ray": Paul Cheong and Early Popular Music in the New Guinea Highlands". Webb's tale about the early years of Westernised popular music and the role which people of mixed descent played in it is quite fascinating. His perspective is that of modern performance theory, and he places his observations in a sociological perspective, arguing that this new type of music was used to create status for the group of people of mixed ethnic origin, the so-called Euronesians.

Otto M. Nekitel's paper: "A Perceptual Analysis of Abu?-Wam Whistled Speach" is about a very peculiar phenomenon, a mixture of music and language, which is found in various places around the world; whistling which conveys linguistic meaning, or as the authors defines it: content-bearing tones and pitches which function as speech surrogates". During the Second World War the Abu? And Wam used this language to convey information about the movement of Japanese ships along the coast to allied forces, which was of help in the war effort. "The one army code which was never changed, never intercepted and never broken", as Nekitel quotes from G.W.L. Townsend. The technique that produces the "whistled speech" is to fold hands tightly and blow air in a small vent between thumbs and pointers. This produces a powerful sound that carries far and the pitch can be varied by varying the size of the cavity formed by the hands. This method of communication is rare and seems to be found mostly among people living in rugged mountain conditions, and only half a dozen of such "languages" have been described. It is part of a larger family of non-vocal "speech" forms, such as drum and percussion languages, which are more common throughout the world. The considerable skill and dexterity in producing these sounds and in interpreting them would seem to account for their rare occurrence, but this is an interesting paper on a rather amazing topic, which is not yet fully studied and understood.

Andrew J. Strathern and Pamela Stewart's paper on Melpa ballads demonstrates the value of ballad and other song texts as a source of knowledge of a society and culture. These ballads are very popular and describe important themes in Melpa culture. "They are the Melpa equivalent of videos" as the two authors say. The authors point out that although there are many and lengthy ballads, and although the Melpa hold them in high esteem, they have not been given much study. It calls to mind other studies, such a Seeger's study of the Suya of South America, who spend more time on singing than on any other activity, including gathering and producing food, and yet many fieldworkers have ignored this aspect of their performative culture. Strathern and Stewart's paper is a timely reminder to us of the need to use all the cultural sources presented to the researcher.

Don Niles' paper, "Different Approaches to Papua New Guinea Hymnody: An Overview" argues that "different churches have created their Christian hymnody in Papua New Guinea, and as a result, have created their different individual identities". Niles describes an important area of research which has "received little attention by researchers, except scorn, yet over 96 % of Papua New Guineans identified themselves as Christian in the most recent census (1990)". He makes an important point here, and a study like Andrew Midian's book on church music in The Duke of York Islands shows how important church music has been for identity formation in Melanesia in this century. In most mission work the native peoples were not expected to learn a foreign language, since the ministers would do their best to bring them the Good News in their own language, but they were almost invariably required to learn a style of music very foreign to them. Thus an intricate socio-cultural process was set in motion, which has had a major impact on identity and group formation in the region.

There are six other, shorter, papers dealing with church music, and together they contribute to filling the gap in our knowledge about an important topic.

At the end there are two interesting papers by Pauline ToLiman Mogish and Julie To'Liman-Turalir on traditional ownership of music which point out that traditionally music and songs could be owned by certain social groups, who might receive payment from others who borrowed this music. Failure to pay for music and songs borrowed would end up in the village court, so it would seem Papua New Guinea is fully prepared to enter the modern world of cultural ownership called copyright.

The various group discussions in the book add value and life to it, and so does the cassette tape which accompanies it, giving samples of the topics dealt with in the book. Although somewhat lacking in technical quality, these sound samples are very interesting and for most readers the only chance to ever hear this amazing tapestry of sound that is the music of Papua New Guinea.