 |
| The ever popular Hetei Dickson singing "Sail Away" at the Murray Barracks. |
A genteel folk and jazz artist like Tracy Chapman would probably ruminate for days before settling down to pluck out the right words at the right time on her guitar. Words surely don’t come easy in poetry, eh?
But in the Milne Bay Province they do.
There, poetry is always the right word sung at the right time. It does not matter when you sing it: in the 50s, 60s, 70s or the 80s; or right up to the present; it comes naturally through the avenue of the five key bars on the guitar; and at any time. And anytime is always the right time.
Come away to the islands
Down eastern Papua way
See what storyboard means? Whether it is Harry Belafonte, BB King or Chet Atkins one has in mind these would be synonymous with Kulusia and Hetei Dickson. Kulusia and Hetei Dickson are indeed the blues and jazz, the country and folk of the Milne Bay Province. In the 60s and 70s young people throughout Papua New Guinea came to schools and even to towns humming Kulusia or Hetei. And if those tunes weren’t about those idyllic settings of swaying palms and lovely beaches then they would be about a certain location called Logea, the centre of Milne Bay music.
How many of you men and women of the 60s and 70s today, for example, can deny ever singing or at least humming Kai, kai, kai Logea mo? Storyboard has contemporaries from the Eastern and Western Highlands who can sing Kai Logea better than he. And they can handle the five key bars very well, too. By which remark we mean to say that Kulusia and Hetei Dickson are our national heritage, our treasures in poetry, music and dance.
And that is part of an idea which storyboard went to witness at a fund raiser organized by prominent lawyer and musician, Allan Baniamai. This was two Saturdays ago at the Sergeants’ Mess of the Murray Barracks. A fair crowd gathered there, consisting mostly of little family groupings from Milne Bay. And it was nice hearing Hetei sing again.
Baniamai’s idea of such gatherings is to bring music and poetry together, a little like what John Kaniku did around Port Moresby in the 70s and 80s. In these gatherings, and as each family enjoys the food and feasting, there must be a poem read, a song sung, a little drama performed and a new format of choreography put to test – all the time ensuring that creativity stays alive and useful as a communal pastime. But most of all to promote new and upcoming Milne Bay musicians right in the midst of celebrities like Hetei Dickson.
The new and popular band being promoted at this Murray Barracks fund raiser was Peter Philemon & The Charms Band. They were fantastic in representing songs in all the languages of the Milne Bay Province. They sang all the songs. When they came to singing a song called “Niworoa”, in the Are language, a language closer to where storyboard comes from, the rain fell.
But beyond all that Allan Baniamai wanted to express something deeper: that as Papua New Guineans music has always been part of our lives for the last, one might say, 50 years. That is, speaking strictly in “contemporary” terms and from our perspective. We do have a rich culture of music prior to that, but when it comes to translating part of that onto the bars of imported instruments such as the guitar and the ukulele, our very life in that bracket of the music world has been in existence since soon after World War II.
And it was out of that imported experience that we would in the 50s and 60s have musicians such as Kulusia and Hetei Dickson emerging into national prominence. Those were also days when names such as Skeeter Davis, Slim Dusty, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, etc, proved influential in our musical sensibilities. But despite all that “influence” notice what Kulusia was doing to Milne Bay music overall. When interviewed by Radio Milne Bay in 1972, his reply to the code word “how” was as awesome as any ethnomusicologist would want to look for and discover: “I walk along the beach with a kipa board. I hold the board against the wind. How the wind strikes a strand of that kipa board is the first note of my song.”
Thus, the creation or composition of the classic Mana eo bagodu (Wind and waves).
The word “kipa” is not, by the by, a Suau word, the lingua franca of the Logea/Kwato area. It is a Cape Vogel word. The kipa board in modern terms translates as the keyboard instrument. Kipa is part of a sago palm. Shed the leaves, split the palm in half, scrape the inside a little and you’ll see the strands, as fine as guitar strings.
None of that recorded interview with Kulusia survives today, either at the studios of Radio Milne Bay, Alotau, or at those of the National Broadcasting Commission, Port Moresby. Modern technology has driven much of the old apparatus of tape recorders and tapes into the archives of negligence. No one cares about preserving these when the ear plugs and mobile phones have come upon us suddenly to control our musical lives. But thanks to Google and the blogger much of what Kulusia had said then and which is stored away in human memory can now be transcribed, however little, for the world to read about.
In the same year (1972) a string band competition was held at the Samarai Town Hall. Contestants from all over Milne Bay, including Central, participated. In the end, the winner of that competition turned out to be no one else other than “Sipoma”, meaning, yours truly, Kulusia. And the winning song was Mana eo bagodu.
Much needs to be written about Kulusia and Hetei Dickson. Also about what music and poetry have done to our lives during the last 40 or 50 years. As storyboard shared this thought with Hetei Dickson at that Murray Barracks gathering, poetry is “a lived educational experience.”
At the opening of this article storyboard mentioned Tracy Chapman – and deliberately so. Artists like Chapman revolutionized as much as preserved their folk heritage. We would like our young generations to do the same for Kulusia and Hetei, not just through music but also through poetry such as what the poet Kitaluwa from the Medical Faculty (UPNG) does and who came by to read her work at that gathering. One of her poems is represented below.
Willy wags chirped jubilantly
As she whistled through the Rosewood trees
Grass bowed in obeisance
Their white heads in motion, like waves over the sea
Windows rattled, doors banged
And fly screens screeched in protest
As she meandered her way into every niche
Sweeping, lifting and turning
Dust of forgotten past twirled and ricocheted in shame
As she mercilessly lay bare hidden tales
Then… all was still.
Just as she came
She was gone!
KITALUWA
No comments:
Post a Comment