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Journal de la Société des Océanistes 146 | 2018 Le Sepik : société et productio

Journal de la Société des Océanistes 146 | 2018 Le Sepik : société et production matérielle Middle Sepik music and musical instruments in the context of Melanesia La musique du Moyen Sepik et ses instruments dans le contexte mélanésien Raymond Ammann Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/jso/8411 DOI: 10.4000/jso.8411 ISSN: 1760-7256 Publisher Société des océanistes Printed version Date of publication: 15 July 2018 Number of pages: 179-188 ISBN: 978-2-85430-135-9 ISSN: 0300-953x Electronic reference Raymond Ammann, « Middle Sepik music and musical instruments in the context of Melanesia », Journal de la Société des Océanistes [Online], 146 | 2018, Online since 15 July 2020, connection on 05 January 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/jso/8411 ; DOI : 10.4000/jso.8411 © Tous droits réservés Journal de la Société des Océanistes 146, année 2018, pp. 179-188 ABSTRACT The ceremonial flutes and the large slit drums are the most significant musical instruments of the Sepik River region. The sculptures and decorations on the instruments link them to the mythical world and their sounds represent the voices of ancestor spirits. Furthermore, a detailed music analysis reveals the miscellaneous and complex ways of how the ceremonial music represents this society’s structure and its driving force. This contribution is based on the findings from a short field trip in the 1980 and the study of relevant publications. Keywords: ethnomusicology, slit drums, bamboo flutes, music, Melanesia RÉSUMÉ Les flûtes cérémonielles et les grands tambours à fente sont les instruments les plus significatifs de la Rivière Sepik. Leurs sculptures et leurs décorations les relient au monde mythique et leurs sons représentent les voix des esprits des ancêtres. En plus, une analyse musicale profonde montre les moyens diver- sifiés et complexes avec lesquels la musique cérémonielle repré- sente non seulement la société elle-même mais aussi sa force motrice. Cette contribution est basée sur une courte recherche de terrain dans les années 1980 et une étude de la littérature importante. Mots-clés : ethnomusicologie, tambours à fente, flûtes en bambou, musique, Mélanésie Middle Sepik music and musical instruments in the context of Melanesia by Raymond AMMANN* 1. Melanesian names for “musical” performances refer mostly to singing and dancing as a unit. * University of Innsbruck; raymond.ammann@uibk.ac.at Melanesia Melanesia’s language diversity can be expanded to music and dance, as each language area has its local style of songs and dances. Melanesian music and dance are so versatile and multifunctional that it is impossible to characterize it in a few sentenc- es. However, one feature that would best denote Melanesian music is its representing content. For songs, music and dances1 this content is expressed in words, structures and sound qualities. For mu- sical instruments, the representing content lies in their visual appearance. In the first part of this con- tribution, a short presentation of typical Melanesian musical features will provide the background for the understanding of the second part, in which I will point out the characteristics of the music culture at the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. Melanesian musical instruments From the four large groups of musical instru- ments defined by Hornbostel and Sachs in 1914, only the percussion instruments (idiophones) and wind instruments (aerophones) are well present- ed in Melanesia. Skin drums (membranophones) exist in parts of Melanesia and string instruments (chordophones) are very rare. They are represent- ed in the form of the musical bow and a basic zither. The Europeans brought string instruments 180 JOURNAL DE LA SOCIÉTÉ DES OCÉANISTES to the Pacific and on some islands, these were well accepted and adapted by the Melanesians for their own needs. These string instruments are mainly the guitar and the ukulele. Together with self-made percussion instruments they are played in “string bands”. Such non-electrified bands are omnipresent in Melanesia (Ammann, 1997, 1998, 2013; Webb, 1993; Crowdy, 2005) and there are local differences in the instrumental use and function. However, all over Melanesia the string bands play a mixture of traditional Melane- sian and European popular music and their songs are often in one of the local languages. Melanesian slit drums In Melanesia the most impressive musical in- struments are the large slit drums. They are found in the north of Papua New Guinea and on most of the nearby islands, their diffusion expands further south, passing the Solomon Islands and reaches as far as the island of Efate in Central Vanuatu. In the southern parts of Vanuatu and in New Caledonia slit drums did not exist2. The term slit drum refers in Melanesia to large hol- low tree trunks of several meters in length with a slender slit as well as to small hand-held pieces of bamboo with a longitudinal slit in the internode. In some regions of Vanuatu and Solomon Islands the large slit drums are played polyrhythmically in ensembles of different sized instruments. On some islands in central Vanuatu the largest drums of an ensemble are set in an upright posi- tion but on the other Melanesian islands all the drums are lying on the ground3, in some cases on a piece of wood. The standing drums in Vanuatu as well as the large lying slit drums in Papua New Guinea are decorated with fine sculptures that indicate their strong relationship to the ancestral world. The undecorated drums of Vanuatu and Solomon Islands stand in a minor relationship to the ancestral world. Still, on one hand, slit drums are played in ceremonies with the function to call the ancestor spirits and, on the other hand, they can have the profane function to send out acous- tical signals and messages to the population or even to call individual persons (see further down in this contribution). As women are excluded from the men’s ceremonial activities in Melane- sia, they are not allowed to approach ceremonial slit drums. In regions where the slit drums are of a lower taboo status, for example on the islands of Pentecost, Ambae or Maewo in Vanuatu, women can approach them. The particularity of the Melanesian slit drums be- sides their big size is their large volume of the hol- low interior combined with a very narrow slit. Such instruments are much harder to build (to hollow out the drum’s interior through a narrow slit is very difficult and time consuming) than, for example, the smaller sized slit drums in Polynesia, with a much wider opening, but their sound travels much further. In Melanesia – as well as in Polynesia – the slit drums accompany dancing and their sound needs only to reach the dancers and the audience in a radius of about 50 meters. The large Melane- sian drums on the other hand have furthermore the function to send messages and signals to the pop- ulation and therefore their sound needs to travel further than the dance field. In good conditions the sound of large slit drums can travel for kilometers, for example, from the island of Ambrym to the neighbouring island of Malakula, twenty to forty kilometres away (Ammann, 2012: 166). Melanesian flutes On a global assessment, Melanesia holds the wid- est manifestation of flute types and panpipes of a large cultural area regarding the limited land mass. Some flute types are unique and exist only in cer- tain regions and in other regions there are wide ranges of specifications of the same type of flutes. Unfortunately, today a great number of Melanesian flutes are no longer played and can only be found in museums. In comparison with the slit drums, flutes and panpipes are – with some exceptions in Papua New Guinea and some places in the Solo- mon Islands – not or not anymore used as ceremo- nial instruments. As for all flutes, their organolog- ical characteristics (length, bore, position of finger holes etc.) define the flute’s fundamental pitch, timbre and intervals. For example, the unique flute from New Georgia in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands, that was painted by Edge Par- tington and entitled “Boy playing bamboo flute, New Georgia” (Edge-Partington, 1969 [1890-91] iii: 31, fig. 2)4 measures 98.5 cm in length, is side- blown and has no finger holes. The musician covers the open distal end with the palm of hand of the stretched out left arm. Equally, the musicians who play the notched flute on the island of Ambrym in Vanuatu need to stretch out their arms, as the two finger holes are at the distal end and the flute is of such length that only the tip of the stretched out middle finger of the stretched-out arm can cover the distal finger hole. The flute is stopped at the distal end by the bamboo node (Ammann, 2012: 2. Polynesians working in New Caledonia play the Polynesian type of slit drums in their community dance groups. 3. Standing slit drums of three to four meters in length were apparently once common at the Upper Sepik River (Bogner, 1984: 11). However, there is no further substantiation to Bogners statement. 4. The picture corresponds to a photograph made by Sommerville (1897: 395). 181 MIDDLE SEPIK MUSIC AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS IN THE CONTEXT OF MELANESIA uploads/Geographie/ 18-amman-r-middle-sepik-and-musical-instruments-in-the-context-of-melanesia.pdf