Becoming a Garamut Player in Baluan, Papua New Guinea

Musical Analysis as a Pathway to Learning

Tony Lewis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315406480
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicology

The garamut is a log idiophone that is found in many of the coastal and island areas of Papua New Guinea. The instrument's primary use is as a speech surrogate and in some regions the garamut is also used in large ensembles to play complex music for dancing. In Baluan Island, within the Manus Province, this style of garamut playing is comparatively highly developed. This book follows the author's processes and methods in learning to play the music of the garamut, to the level at which he became accepted as a garamut player by the people of Baluan.

Lewis argues that analysis is essential in learning to play the rapid tempi and complex rhythms of Baluan garamut music, in a cultural context where there is no formal teaching process for the music. The transcription and analysis of the Baluan garamut repertoire is the centrepiece of this study, reflecting the cognitive structures of the learning process, and revealing the inner workings of the music's complexity as well as a striking beauty of form and structure.

The book concludes with reflections on the process of a 'cultural outsider' becoming a garamut player in Baluan and on the role of musical analysis in that process, on the ethnomusicologist's role in transmission of the music, and on the nature of continuity and change in a musical society such as Baluan.

1 Baluan chooses a researcher

Introduction and aims

This is a book about learning and discovery within the garamut drumming culture of Baluan, a remote island in the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea. It sets out the routes taken and the methods used by this cultural “outsider” – a European Australian percussionist – in order to learn to play the instrument and the repertoire, and to become accepted by the people of Baluan as a capable performer on the most important musical instrument of their culture.

The central aim of the study is to present, within the discipline of ethnomusicology, a musicological analysis of the garamut drumming of Baluan, and its structural principles in particular. The musical analysis that forms its core represents the understanding that I have constructed, and the tools that I have used to construct it, in the process of learning to play the Baluan garamut repertoire in a manner acceptable to the Baluan garamut drummers themselves. The book also encompasses some important secondary themes. As my analytical processes bring me to particular questions and issues surrounding musical transcription, the book also investigates ways in which transcription both influences and reflects musicalcultural cognition. My transcriptions raise additional issues of representation of complexity. Further, in my pursuit of performance dexterity on the garamut I have become acutely aware of my position in transmission processes, particularly while I was in the field. As a result, this book also engages with the politics and processes of transmission of musical heritage.

I first arrived on Baluan in October 2003 to begin my research, and I spent six weeks immersed in a musical culture that I found fascinating. I had come to conduct research, but also as a musician, an experienced professional percussionist with broad previous involvement in non-Western music forms, and with a background in learning contexts in which I have been the cultural “outsider”. As will become apparent in this book, the “field” that I draw from to arrive at my understanding, is broad. The geographical field includes not just Baluan and Port Moresby, but also Sydney, Auckland, Århus, West Africa, and other places. The experiential field includes many exchanges, both verbal and musical, with many people over many years – with people in Baluan and Port Moresby, and also with musicians, teachers, students, and talkers, thinkers, and doers of many kinds, throughout my professional pursuits in performance practice, study (both formal and informal), and intercultural exchange.

The garamut is a log idiophone that is found in the coastal and island areas of Papua New Guinea. “Garamut” is the name for the instrument in the Tok Pisin language (also known as Neo-Melanesian, or Melanesian Pidgin English), the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea; the origins of the name appear to be in the Kuanua language of East New Britain, where it designates both the instrument and the tree species that it is commonly carved from. The Manus Province is where the garamut is used in large ensembles to play complex music for dancing. In Baluan Island, within the Manus Province, this style of garamut playing is comparatively highly developed. I was introduced to Manus garamut in 1990, when I travelled to Auckland, New Zealand, to participate in the Commonwealth Drum Festival. The National Theatre Company of Papua New Guinea from Port Moresby (now known as the National Performing Arts Troupe, and relocated to Goroka) performed some Manus garamut music and dances at this Festival, and I therefore had the opportunity to befriend many of the company members, and engage with them as a professional colleague and collaborator. In this way I began to learn about the elements of their performance. Six months later I was fortunate to visit Manus Island (but not Baluan at that time) and I witnessed garamut groups – from which particular villages or regions I do not know – performing in the central market place in the provincial capital of Lorengau. From that experience I resolved to one day pursue a serious study of this musical tradition.

This study considers the formal organisation of a garamut ensemble in Baluan, and specific musical roles and functions of different instruments within an ensemble. It examines the rhythmic patterns and phrases played by each drum, the nature and extent of variability within these patterns, and structural indicators. It investigates the roles of composition and improvisation in the musical structure and in performance. It examines the construction and design of the instrument, as well as playing techniques and teaching methods. The book also addresses extra-musical factors that influence musical structure and performance, such as language, dance, custom, esotericism and mythology, and local flora and fauna. I use the terms “esoteric” and “esotericism” to refer to knowledge or skills that are available only to a particular sector of the community, whether access to such knowledge or skills is granted according to gender, initiate status, familial descent, or other considerations.

The focus of the study is primarily upon the local or village uses of the garamut in Baluan, rather than the contemporary representations of Manus garamut music by urban-based groups (such as Sanguma, or the National Performing Arts Troupe), or its contemporary usage outside Papua New Guinea. The study does, however, consider variations upon the village style that have been developed by Paluai Sooksook, a group of Baluan garamut drummers based in Port Moresby, and indeed further developments within the wider diaspora.

My study is guided first and foremost by a desire to learn to play the music of the Baluan garamut. Upon first exposure, this music appears complex and elusive, but sustained immersion reveals sophistication in form and structure that differs markedly from other musical traditions that I have encountered and studied, yet at the same time, holds certain properties that appear universal to concepts of musical form. As with many oral musical cultures of the world, there is no formal teaching and learning system in Baluan. There is no explanation by a teacher of systems and structures, no counting, no apparent identification of motifs or reference points, no verbal articulation of form. There is only hearing and imitation – what Rice (1996: 4) calls “the traditional ‘non method.’ ” In this context it is incumbent upon the outsider-learner to create an understanding of form and structure in the music, to create the “cognitive categories” (ibid.), and to build a conceptual framework in order to facilitate the recognition of patterns that is central to “knowledge” of the music. The satisfaction gained from the chain of “Eureka moments” that have arisen in this pursuit is as great as the satisfaction of actually playing the music, and it has been an important catalyst to competence in performance.

Musical transcription is a valuable methodological step in the construction of musical understanding. Transcription can take many forms in the learning process, but to me its value lies in the transformation of an event that is aural and time-based, into information that is visual and non-time-based. This transformation, and more importantly the multisensory processes of listening and transcribing, and the faculties that are engaged in this process, have been, for me, crucial in the pursuit and creation of this understanding.

Transcription has the additional benefit of enabling the development of theories about structural components of individual pieces in the repertoire, and through comparisons between pieces, about the repertoire as a whole. Furthermore, transcription facilitates the transmission of the musical information revealed. My transcriptions and analysis therefore provide a means for me to clearly present my understanding of the musical structure of this repertoire to both musical scholars and performers. This understanding allows the academic researcher a means to conceptualise and discuss the musical ideas and structures within the repertoire, and it allows the musician a means to work towards performance of the repertoire. These transcriptions also provide me with a means to discuss, perform, and teach the repertoire effectively.

As the transformation of an aural event into a visual form, transcription is an inherently flawed process. “Every notational system developed has inherent limitations”, writes Becker (1980: xv), “because of the fact that there is no adequate way to translate sound into musical symbols”. While the process of this transformation is a vital part of constructing understanding, and while the visual results may have much to offer, the transcription can never be the music, and in that sense it is always characterised by its shortcomings. No transcription can tell everything, but consideration of transcription can tell the reader much about its author, as well as about the music. What it does tell is whatever the author understands to be important or significant in the aural event, subject further to the author’s access to appropriate tools for transcription. Transcription necessarily documents the perspective and cognition of its author, precisely by what the author has chosen to represent, and what the author has omitted, whether by choice or by oversight. In the case of my transcriptions that I present herein, it is no different, although I hope that I have given considerable substance within them. In Chapter 3 I argue in justification of my use of certain conventions of Western notation, including bar lines and time signatures. I could have chosen to represent the musical substance differently, and in the long process of compiling this study, I have on occasion been urged to consider other possibilities. Having considered many other possibilities, however, I have resolved to persist with the methods and symbols employed herein, as they represent an important component of my perspective on, and cognition of, this material.

I am conscious of a number of issues that my transcriptions raise, including the question of where the music of the garamut actually “exists”. Cook (2001) discusses issues of whether a piece of music exists in a “text” or “script”, in performance, or somewhere in between these. Rosenwald (1993: 62, cited in Cook, 2001: para 18) concludes that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is “something existing in the relation between its notation and the field of its performances”. There being no notated form (apart from fragments) of the garamut music of Baluan prior to mine, it could be argued whether or not the music exists in any textual form. Such arguments are academic, however, and rely upon how literally one chooses to interpret the term “text”. There is no doubt that the garamut drummers of Baluan possess the non-verbal cognitive categories that allow them to remember, perform, and “know” the music. Rice (1996: 4) uses these terms in the context of his own processes in learning the Bulgarian gaida, with specific reference to his teacher Dimitûr Grivnin: “Grivnin’s own playing I take as prima facie evidence that he possessed the cognitive categories, strategies, or schemata necessary to produce music, although these categories, in the case of the older village musicians like himself, were tacit, nonverbal ones”. Without such cognitive categories there could be no distinction between “correct” and “incorrect” performance of a piece, nor, logically, between different pieces in the repertoire. The absence of a written text, therefore, does not imply the absence of understanding of what constitutes a given piece of garamut music in Baluan. Nevertheless, my transcriptions do create a written text where none previously existed. Whether or not, and how, these texts might in the future influence performance and development of garamut music in Baluan, are questions that deserve serious consideration, and I address these in some detail in Chapter 6.

I do not claim that my transcriptions and analysis are definitive of Baluan garamut performance; they constitute a starting point, and they should be studied in conjunction with further performance tuition. No music form is ever adequately transmitted through transcription alone, without some prior contextual understanding of the music and the performance tradition that the transcription represents. To present the score of a Beethoven piano Sonata to a pianist, for example, is unlikely to yield optimum results unless that pianist already has a sound grasp of the conventions that underpin both performance and transcription of the music. Becker (1980: xv) supports this notion: “Notational systems presuppose experience with the actual sound of the music”. The transcriptions and analysis represent only one approach to understanding these pieces. I do not discount other possibilities, and I address questions of ambiguity in the representation of musical ideas in transcription, in Chapter 4. I contend, however, that any analysis which leads the musician towards authentic performance of the repertoire is fulfilling its purpose, and I submit that my analysis meets this requirement. The question of what constitutes “authentic performance” is not one that can be answered quantitatively. For my own purposes here, a performance is “authentic” if it is acknowledged as acceptable by the Baluan community. With regard to the “authenticity” of my own performance on garamut, I refer later in this chapter to an occasion that took place in the Moesgård Museum in Århus, Denmark, in the presence of Sakumai Yep, chief of the Sauka clan of Baluan.

Book structure

This book is set out in six chapters that are intended to provide a progressive and cumulative understanding of garamut performance. Chapter 1 addresses the aims of the study, my methods of learning the music and assimilating the information gained in the process of this learning, my approach to methodology, and the scope of and challenges to my field research in Baluan. This chapter also presents notes on language usage in Baluan, which provide important context for material in this and subsequent chapters.

Chapters 2 and 3 begin a discussion of my research findings in the context of Baluan society, and situate these findings within Papua New Guinea, and where relevant, within a broader Pacific context. Chapter 2 focuses on sociological, circumstantial, and contextual issues, including those of organology and nomenclature, the origins, distribution, and construction and design of the garamut, gender issues and esotericism, dance, and traditional methods of learning. In Chapter 3 the focus moves to musicological considerations, beginning with an explanation of the notation system I have developed for documenting these performances. It continues with a consideration of specific aspects of the Baluan garamut in performance: speech surrogacy, performance techniques, ensemble organisation, and composition and improvisation. In this chapter I also develop ideas regarding musical structure and classification of pieces (according to macro structure), as well as the musical content. I use the term “content” to refer to the actual musical material played, the identifiable rhythmic figures and phrases. My findings in Chapters 2 and 3 are supported by video footage provided in Appendix C. These two chapters set out the information that is important to building a contextual understanding of the music of the Baluan garamut, and create a foundation for the musical analysis that follows in Chapter 4.

Chapter 4 presents musical analysis of the Baluan garamut repertoire that I documented during my fieldwork, and constitutes the body of the study. The chapter begins with a discussion of the ideas and approaches that have shaped my methods of musical analysis and transcription, and proceeds to a summary of the repertoire I have collected in the field, listed in alphabetical order. This summary identifies each piece by name and classification, lists each documented performance of each piece, and outlines the history and origins of that piece. The analysis follows.

I have documented 38 pieces in Baluan, many of these in multiple versions. Rather than provide a complete analysis of each piece, I have grouped pieces according to classification of their macro structure, and have presented a thorough analysis of one piece from each class, identifying in each case the characteristics that lead me to distinguish that class. After each detailed analysis I then provide brief summaries of selected pieces from the class in question, discussing particular features of interest, including variations between different performances of the same piece. Through such analysis of the repertoire I identify the significant features in my own understanding of each piece, and of the repertoire as a whole. By comparing different performances of the same piece, I am able to identify, to some degree, the extent of variability of performance within that piece, and I can begin to attribute variations to specific conditions, such as the context of the performance, or the personal style of an individual drummer. Such processes allow me to identify the defining characteristics of the repertoire and of the musical culture broadly.

My findings in Chapter 4 are supported by m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of maps
• List of examples
• List of video material
• 1 Baluan chooses a researcher
• 2 The garamut in Baluan
• 3 The Baluan garamut in performance
• 4 Musical analysis of Baluan garamut
• 5 The Baluan garamut in diaspora
• 6 Becoming a garamut player
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index