Tag Archives | Paramana Strangers

The Paramana Strangers

Much of the music of Papua New Guinea 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 string band music. The Paramana Strangers is the most popular and enduring of PNG string bands, having formed in the 1960s and continued in generational incarnations–version II, as seen in this video, being the children of the original members, version III being their children–ever since.