Melanesian Music

Via Sean Linton from the Solomon Islands Indigenous Music Foundation:

From an email I received today:

MELBOURNE –Today Radio Australia launches Pacific Break 2012 ‘remastered’. This year the winner will fly to Australia to experience a new opportunity.

By Oala Moi

Background

Papua New Guinea’s copyright law is known as the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act 2000 (the 2000 Act). The 2000 Act repealed the Copyright Act 1978, in which the latter had been passed but never enacted. Presenting the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Bill 2000 (the Bill) to parliament on 18 July 2000 for a second reading, Minister for Justice Kilroy Genia said:

THE University of Papua New Guinea will confer a doctor of philosophy degree as one of the highlights of its 57th graduation on Friday. Acting director and senior ethnomusicologist at the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, Don Williams Niles, will be the recipient.

Niles’ research was based on the music and dance traditions of Mt Hagen, Western Highlands province.
His work was jointly supervised by Dr Linus digim’Rina of UPNG’s Anthropology and Sociology discipline and Alan Rumsey of the Anthropology department at the Australian National University.

Wantok Stori - Culture in Harmony with Nature is a community filmmaking project. Come and share your ideas on this theme - using photos, film, poetry, stories, drawings, links etc.
Description
The Wantok Stori - Culture In Harmony with Nature Film Project is a collaboration and exchange project between Victoria and the Solomon Islands that aims to explore and celebrate the diversity of Pacific culture. This project involves community discussion, film making and training, celebration and education.

Community Discussion -

Tony Subam, pioneering Papua New Guinean musician died on Christmas day, 2011, and this is a tribute I wrote for him that was published in the The National (Jan 6, Weekender, p5):

Tony Subam, Papua New Guinea musician, founding member of the iconic band Sanguma, and head of music at the University of Papua New Guinea, died after a short illness, most likely malaria, on Christmas Day 2011.

An excellent new book on dance in Papua New Guinea, edited by Naomi Faik-Simet and Don Niles has just been published by IPNGS. It contains edited papers from a 2010 Dance Day Symposium held at the University of Goroka. This much-needed volume is well worth checking out, particularly given that the FPA is being held this year in the Solomon Islands. Congratulations to Naomi and Don and the many contributors.

I've uploaded a review of the CD, Ae Tinil Wen Lir: Music of Lihir, which is a combination of two I was solicited to write at the end of 2009 and which weren't subsequently published. It may be of interest to those who have heard the CD.

In November/December 2011 film maker Hideki Isoda accompanied me on a field visit to the Maskelyne Islands, Vanuatu, to capture footage for a documentary (working title: The love of the noise, the love of the music!) we are making on a song and dance genre known as salvesen ami (Bislma: Salvation Army) based on late 19th century Victorian gospel hymns with an interesting local transmission history. Here is a 'trailer' Hideki recently assembled: http://www.youtube.com/sydneycon. It is not a trailer of the actual film since this hasn't been made yet.

Have just come across this great thread of comments again, and have been meaning to link to it for ages. Great info about the classic Solomon Islands song Wakabaot lon Saenataun.

http://masalai.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/walkabout-long-chinatown/