healing, feasting and magical ritual ~ songs and dances from Papua New Guinea

The music is predominantly vocal, songs of hunting, war, totemistic ritual, cannibalism, myths, initiation, courtship, rain-making, funerals, magical healing, shark-catching and marathon feasting. Many are danced, accompanied by percussion instruments (the garamut slit drum, kundu hourglass-drum, launut friction drum, shell rattles), lengths of bamboo end blown to give a single pitch, and bamboo flutes. The rhythms can be forceful or trance-like, and are a mix of simple repetitions of regular patterns with more complex ideas. The vocalisation of songs, normally full-throated and open, and usually sung by groups in unison, is rich and vibrant.

The recordings were made by John Thornley, who for many years was a senior producer of world music programmes for BBC Radio 3. They are impeccable. In this guise, as intrepid explorer, Thornley travelled in Papua New Guinea between August and October 1987, funded by a bursary from the Commonwealth Relations Trust. He lodged his recordings with the International Music Collection of the British Library's National Sound Archive (collection C838), and this album, part of the IMC series issued with Topic, samples the collection. 

The five regions represented are: Karkar Island, a volcanic island of copra plantations and fishing villages off the northern coast of New Guinea; the remote Green River, a tributary of the upper Sepik River in New Guinea proper, an area renowned for its legendary mosquitoes; the densely populated Wahgi Valley at Mount Hagen in the Western Highlands; New Ireland, the northeastern island first 'discovered' in 1516 by the Dutch; the Gazelle Peninsula to the East of the 500km-long New Britain. Each region has distinct and fascinating traditions.

1 Garamut Call
2 Mukoa Silali
3 Kanam Dance
4 Birua (Warrior Song After Killing)
5 Healing Songs
6 Two Healing Songs: Kua Kua! The Bird Of Paradise Is Singing / Let Us Kill A Pig And Put The Blood On Our Sick Friend's Wound
7 Women's Sago Song
8 Healing Song About Lake Kanary
9 Healing Song
10 Feast Song
11 Three Eevil - (Children's Healing Songs)
12 Hunting Song of the Moge & Kopi Clans
13 Women's Song of the Moge & Kopi Clans
14 Sing-Sing, Western Highlands
15 Two Songs of Love & Courtship
16 Bayer River Sanctuary
17 Pur
18 Bot - Malanggan Funeral Ceremony
19 Friction-Drum & Song on the Death of a Chief
20 Getting on a Lorry
21 Shark-Calling Song
22 Two Slit-Drum Improvisations
23 Rongari
24 Fire Dance


Magic ritual 


thanks to the always present Arvind and to a kind soul out there

Songs of the Volcano (Slight Return)

...Songs Of The Volcano was filmed during two trips in 2003 and 2004, on location in and around Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. The camera I used stood up remarkably well considering what we were up against. On the first trip, the shooting conditions were pretty extreme. The volcano Tavurvur, which had destroyed eighty per cent of the town in a violent eruption in 1994, was still spewing out tonnes of fine volcanic ash, which sometimes got a bit lumpier and fell like snow. Generally it was a bit like bull dust and could find the tiniest gaps to enter, except its razor sharp granules with a bit of friction worked like sandpaper and could wreck anything. Coupled with the incredible humidity and torrential downpours, it was a mighty challenge to keep equipment clean and working properly. When we were shooting outside, I was constantly lens-cleaning with a can of compressed air, brush and cleaning tissues, usually under my shirt or another cover of some sort. ...more

Same old ass same old pass
6 steps to haven, thegoodone is up there.
For some good friends down here...

Songs of the Volcano

Papua New Guinea Stringbands & Bob Brozman - Songs of the Volcano

World renowned guitarist Bob Brozman travelled to Papua New Guinea – one of the last places on the planet to have guitars arrive from afar – to capture a sound largely untainted by outside influences; a raw, unique sound developed in isolation. The energetic and distinctive blend of voice and instrument performed by the Rabaul community’s local stringbands reflects their unfailing optimism in the face of adversity, be it war or the volcanic eruptions that have destroyed the town twice in one century, making this album truly ‘Songs Of The Volcano’.

In addition to this extraordinary album, this package features a full length, behind the scenes DVD documentary of the making of the album.

One of the few accidental, yet beneficial, side-effects of colonialism has been guitars washing up on shores all over the world. Papua New Guinea is no exception. Home to a huge indigenous population speaking more than 800 languages, it lay largely undiscovered until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and hence is one of the last places on the planet to have guitars arrive from afar.

Rabaul, in Papua New Guinea’s far flung province of East New Britain, is a town which has had its share of hard times. In the same century it has been destroyed twice by massive volcanic cataclysms and once by a devastating war imposed on it by outsiders. The Tolai people of Rabaul have suffered greatly from these natural and manmade disasters and yet, somehow, have always managed to bounce back and keep their spirits high. One of the main contributing factors to their capacity for optimism is their music, an energetic and unique blend of voices and instruments performed by the community’s local stringbands.

Bob Brozman is a world expert and leading exponent of the National guitar. An ethnomusicologist fascinated by the global voyage taken by the guitar over the last 500 years, he has collaborated with local musicians all over the world.

To create Songs Of The Volcano, in his capacity as Adjunct Professor of Music at Sydney’s Macquarie University, Bob went with filmmaker Phil Donnison to five villages in East New Britain to perform with five different Tolai stringbands. The purpose of filming and recording the performances was partly to document this fragile music before it disappears, and partly to facilitate the musicians in Papua New Guinea where there is an astonishing lack of musical infrastructure.

Rabaul is the location where guitars first arrived in Papua New Guinea, and the music carries a fragile innocence and beauty reminiscent of what guitar music may have sounded like in Hawaii in 1860, or Mexico in 1830. Most music travelled throughout the Pacific Ocean on boats, with sailors leaving behind instruments and ideas to then percolate in isolation. Hence, the music on this album will seem at once exotic, yet somehow familiar. Even today, there is still very little mass media penetration in Papua New Guinea, though that is changing and makes the preservation of this raw and unique sound more necessary.

This album and accompanying film present the story of this creative collaboration, a joint effort between an indomitable group of island musicians and one of the world’s greatest guitarists. Unlike Bob’s other world music collaborations, where there is a blend of styles between Bob and another established artist, Songs Of The Volcano has Bob in a more supportive role, playing simply as a member of each band in their own style.

The creation of this project not only yielded some great friendships, an unforgettable story and some remarkable results, but will enable the musicians to continue their pursuit of a musical life.

The musicians on Songs Of The Volcano are the first recipients of instruments, strings and musical supplies from Bob’s ongoing Global Music Aid Foundation, which seeks to provide donated instruments and materials to musicians in developing countries.


source


Volcano
don't blame this ass
for using a pass
and if it is thegoodone
just say, it will be done

if not by me, then someone