Countries Archives: Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea–Singsing

Singsing is the Tok Pisin term for the elaborate festivals held all over Papua New Guinea that feature theatrically choreographed dance and vocal performances by PNG villagers. Each of the many performing/competing groups comes to a singsing to represent its own village’s unique songs, dances, language and culture. The costumes and makeup are extensive, the harmonies are complex and the competition is intense. While in a sense the most popular singsings such as the Goroka Show are events sculpted for tourists, and while the truth is that most PNG villagers wear Western clothes and don’t paint their faces when they live day to day, Papua New Guineans value singsings as a time to revel in the beauty of their local cultures.

There are so many wonderful images and videos from singsings and other PNG cultural events available online and do check them out, though the “look at this slideshow before sharing it with the kids” disclaimer from above still applies:

— videos:

Mt. Hagen | the Tari Highlands | Goroka

Singsing 2010 | New Ireland dancers | When you go to a singsing, resist the temptation to do this.

— images:

Singsing photos on Google images | Singsing pictures on Flickr | Great shots of Singsing (the music on this video is nice but not from a singsing) | Images of the Goroka show, both in 1957/58 and today | Portraits of Huli Wigmen at a singsing

More about singsings:

A singsing overview from Peace-On-Earth.org | If it ever comes your way, don’t miss the extraordinary Wontok Music Production/David Bridie/George Telek production, “Singsing”: “It was magic–pure magic.”

How to sing with Jay each week in your home or classroom

Support All Around This World on Patreon

Enjoy interactive All Around This World lessons in your home or classroom

Papua New Guinea–Music

For fifty thousand years of Papua New Guinea’s habitation PNG islanders have been singing, singing and singing. Music in PNG is central to the development of tribal identity; the fact that each tribe has its own songs helps differentiate each from the other but also serves as a prelude to, or a substitute for, actual war.

The interior of PNG is so rugged and isolated that even today the music of many indigenous peoples continues to exist in its original language and according to its original forms. There are some common instruments such as bamboo flutes and slit drums, while certain groups have adopted particular drums and instruments such as the bullroarer for specific ritual purposes.

On the coast, music has developed as a hybrid of indigenous, Melanesian, Polynesian, European and East Asian influences. Since the early days of colonization Christian missionaries, gold miners and seafarers brought their own instruments and merged their songs with local music. For example, World War II-era American and Australian soldiers and sailors introduced guitars and ukuleles to PNG resulting in the development of a distinct PNG style of stringband music. The Paramana Strangers is the most popular and enduring of PNG stringbands, having formed in the 1960s and continued in generational incarnations–version II being the children of the original members, version III being their children–ever since. (Listen to clips of Paramana Strangers III’s stringband music on iTunes.)

In the 1970s the “bamboo band” style from the Solomon Islands became popular in PNG. In bamboo, musicians pound out rhythms by slapping bamboo tubes of varying sizes with plastic flip flops. The Wagi Brothers are PNG’s most widely known bamboo band. (See PNG bamboo in action on YouTube. This one’s pretty great too.) In the ’70s and early ’80s another PNG band, Sanguma, forged new hybrid territory by fusing Papuan roots with global jazz and funk. (For an example, check out a clip of Sanguma’s “Namilai” or “Sugu Kumpa” on iTunes.)

Since the 1990s George Telek has been the most prominent Papua New Guinean world fusion star. We’ll learn about him below.

More information:
National Geographic’s overview of PNG music | Who are the greatest PNG musicians of all time? |Â Learn about some of the PNG’s more unique instruments, such as the nose flute, the slit drum, the bamboo jews harp and the sepik flute | PNG’s University of Goroka’s Chanted Tales Project is documenting and recording the oral traditions
of the Central Highlands

In class we’re going to listen to:
— Telek: “Waitpela Gras”
During the 1990s PNG’s locally beloved singer/songwrtier George Telek became an international star when he seamlessly blended rock, reggae, stringband music and indigenous Papuan three-part harmonies on the album “Serious Tam,” released on Peter Gabriel’s Real World label. Telek hails from the Tolai village of Raluana, near the city of Rabaul in East New Britain and sings both in Tok Pisin and the Tolai language of Kuanuan. He started his musical career in the ’70s, playing in popular stringbands such as The Moab Stringband and The Jolly Roger Stringband before joining The Kagan Devils, The Unbelievers Revival Band and eventually the rock group Painim Wok (“looking for work”) which was PNG’s biggest rock band in the 80’s. His collaboration with Australian musician David Bridie, “Tabaran,” broke new ground by fusing Papua New Guinean and Australian sounds. He has since continued to record new music and tour internationally but he remains a dedicated PNG artist, still living and creating in Raluana.

In class we sing our versions of two Telek songs: “Waitpela Gras” and “Lamagit.”

More about Telek:
Telek’s home page: “Telek is a band, a man and, in some parts of the world a legend.” | Telek’s biography | Listen to clips from “Serious Tam” | Hear “Waitpela Gras” on YouTube | Watch

Telek perform in the rousing David Bridie production, “Singsing”

— OShen: “Burn it Up”
O-Shen’s unique road to international reggae stardom began in Papua New Guinea where his white American missionary parents raised him until he was fifteen. When they returned to Spokane, Washington, O-Shen (born Jason Hershey) had a difficult time fitting in and eventually ended up getting into trouble. (A little burglary, a few years in prison.) After his release O-Shen returned to Papua New Guinea and from there relocated to Hawaii where his PNG-based roots reggae has not only become increasingly popular but also more confidently multilingual–his album “FaYa!” includes songs in Yabim, Rigo, Nakanai, Kiwai and Niugini pidgin.Â

More information:
Review of “FaYa” and an interview with O-Shen: “Raised and educated in the village of Butaweng (population 1,500), a community where neighbors took care of one another, a strong sense of cultural identity was imprinted early in life, and no one judged anyone by the color of their skin, O-Shen suddenly found himself in a world where it was far easier to get by burying his identity instead of celebrating it.” | Watch O-Shen sing “Meri Lawa” in a boat. From the video description: “O-Shen is an American White boy who grew up in the Morobe Provice of my homeland Papua New Guinea. This is for all you heart broken island boys. Wan fit mangi stret!”

Papua New Guinea–Languages

In Papua New Guinea people speak over 800 indigenous languages. Though many of these languages are highly local, boast less than 1000 native speakers and are in near threat of extinction, a good number are still viable and active. Ethnologue’s Papua New Guinea page will give you a good sense of who speaks what language and with whom.

Though the most widely-spoken local languags in Papua New Guinea are Melpa, Huli and Enga, the nation’s official languages are English (due to quirks of colonization, as described above, though few use it), Hiri Motu (spoken mainly in the south) and the lingua franca, Tok Pisin. Tok Pisin, also known as Melanesian Pidgin English or Neo-Melanesian, began as a “pidgin/creole” language blending English, German, Malay, Portuguese and local “Austronesian” languages and has transformed into a developing language in its own right. Like most “pidgins,” Tok Pisin developed in the colonial era as a mix of the colonizer’s language (in PNG’s case, English) and local dialects (in Tok Pisin’s case, primarily the local language of Tolai). Linguists disagree about whether its grammatical structure is based upon that of specific local languages or if it only developed when the first generations of speakers, those children who grew up speaking Tok Pisin rather than the more complex originating languages of English or the local tongues, imposed some sort of “default grammar humans are born with” (as Wikipedia’s entry on Tok Pisin puts it) to the language their parents had taught them.

At TokPisin.com you’ll find a plentiful English => Tok-Pisin or Tok-Pisin => English dictionary. Try searching for a word or term in English to see the equivalent in Tok
Pisin. If you get caught up you can refer to Hawaii.edu’s Tok Pisin page for grammatical tips. For example, “I love music class” translates roughly as “Mi laikim singsing skul.” And, of course, “I eat breakfast with happy purple ear-pigs” translates very roughly as, “Mi kaikaim kaikai long moning wantaim amamas hap ret yai-pik.”

Papua New Guinea–When You Go There

[mappress mapid=”15″ center=”-5, 147″ zoom=”5″]

Papua New Guinea is an exceedingly difficult place to travel. Tourist-friendly hotels and restaurants exist but are scattered and scarce and there are few easily accessible historical or cultural attractions. Even if you have a particular travel destination in PNG there is virtually no infrastructure in place to enable Papua New Guineans to get around, let alone cushy transportation networks to coddle us spoiled Westerners. (For example, there are no roads connecting the capital city of Port Moresby with other cities–to get anywhere else one must fly.) According to Lonely Planet’s PNG pages, traveling in Papua New Guinea, “can feel like you’re stepping into the great unknown.”

Still, self-motivated, very independent travelers go to Papua New Guinea and have a grand time. There may be no better place on earth to go to experience nature the way nature used to be; PNG is one of the most megadiverse of the world’s few remaining megadiverse countries.

If you want to forge relatively uncharted territory, go into the Papua New Guinean interior. There are almost certainly species of animals and varieties plants no one but indigenous Papua New Guineans have ever seen; there are also still potentially “uncontacted” tribes living in complete isolation. (See a video of members of PNG’s Toulambi tribe meeting a “white man” for the first time. Or, is the video fake, or at the least disingenuous? Whatever the case, there are many nuances to what is happening here.) If you want to experience the Papuan interior but would prefer it come to you, book your travel to coincide with a “singsing,” a celebration of traditional song and dance (learn about singsings below).

One of the best ways to decide if you want to go to Papua New Guinea is to read accounts by travelers who have gone there and decide if you’d like to do some of the same. This account by American Clark Scott tells the tale of his trip to PNG that included some time in Port Moresby, a slow motorboat tour of the Sepik River, a visit to the Huli Wigmen, the Tumbuna Sing Sing and a few second-hand run-ins with PNG’s legendary lawlessness. For his BBC/HumanPlanet blog photographer Timothy Allen traveled to PNG and seemed to have a grand time (Allen in the forest | Allen at a singsing). For the even more adventurous, maybe a trek along the Black Cat Trail sounds like fun. Do you mind leeches and snakes?

Papua New Guinea–History

Papua New Guinea has one of the most culturally diverse and rurally isolated populations on earth. Though it has been independent nation since 1975 and is a member of the British Commonwealth that vows formal allegiance to the British monarchy, PNG’s seemingly infinite number of distinct tribal groups still speak a mindboggling array over 800 local languages, making PNG the world’s most linguistically rich nation. Less than 20% of the approximately seven million Papua New Guneans live in cities but instead dwell in the nation’s functionally impenetrable jungle interior.

Until the 19th century, few Westerners, other than a handful of Portuguese and Spanish explorers, had set foot in the eastern part of the Papuan island. (The Dutch had long controlled the western part of the island, which is now the Indonesian territory of West Papua.) On the other hand, Southeast Asians such as the Malay had been visiting the eastern part of the island for over five thousand years; the name “Papua” comes from the Malay word “pepuah” which indicates “frizzy Melanesian hair,” or at least so says Wikipedia’s entry on PNG. The land became known as “Nueva Guinea” when an
early Spanish explorer suggested a physical resemblance between people on the island and those from Africa’s Guinea Coast.

The eastern part of the island first came under Western control when the Germans colonized its northern half in 1884 and called it German New Guinea. In 1904 the British established themselves on the southern part of the island, calling it Papua. After World War I the League of Nations gave Australia a mandate to control the former German New Guinea while Australia administered Papua as a British Commonwealth possession, confusingly resulting in the northern and southern parts of the nation having different administrations and laws, albeit both under the thumb of Australia.

During World War II the Japanese attacked Papua New Guinea and the American-led Allied forces fought a brutal battle to maintain it. After the war the northern and southern territories combined to form a single nation called Papua New Guinea. In 1975 Australia granted PNG its independence. In 1975-’76 there was unrest on Bougainville Island and from 1988 to 1997 there was a more extensive independence revolt, inspired by the local population’s dissatisfaction with both its level of poverty and the PNG government’s partnership with the Rio Tinto corporation in the Panguna Copper and Gold Mine. (More information: See a slideshow of images from Bougainville Island | Watch “The Coconut Revolution,” a documentary about the more recent Bougainville rebellion | The copper mine closed in 1989 but will it reopen?)

Today PNG is a nation rich in resources that are important in the West such as oil, copper and gold, though international corporations are unlikely to move there en masse any time soon. Not only is the cost of developing infrastructure to access PNG’s raw materials resources very high, but the labyrinthine PNG system of land tenure essentially grants indigenous people the right to live on their traditional lands indefinitely.

More about PNG:
The BBC’s PNG country overview | Are there really cannibals in Papua New Guinea? | Are there really Christians in Papua New Guinea? Yes. In the 2000 census 96% of Papua New Guineans say they are members of a Christian Church. Learn about the history of Christian denominations in PNG | Should West Papua be free from Indonesian rule? George Telek, Papua New Guinea’s most popular world fusion musician, who we’ll meet below, thinks so.

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Countries Archives: Papua New Guinea