Melanesian Music

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/

Songwriter Patti Potts Doi is one of a few Papua New Guinean songwriters based in PNG to have received multiple royalty payments from APRA (the Australasian Performing Right Association) in the last five years.

Steep Slopes
Music and change in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea

Kirsty Gillespie

Don Niles from the IPNGS Music Department has announced that Kulele 4: Occasional Papers on Pacific Music and Dance is out. It was formally launched on 17 November by Marianna Ellingson, the Director General of the newly established Office of Tourism, Arts, and Culture. Media coverage includes:

http://soabasstoryboard.blogspot.com/2010/11/kulele-pulse-and-beat-of-tourism.html

"Music of the Ancestors" is now available as an interactive DVD from Gordon's site

PNG Business has an interesting, but perhaps conservative, article about Chin H Meen's movement into iTunes and the world of copyright here.

The Masalai Blog also has a copy.

A list of IPNGS Music Department publications has now been added and includes information about the following:

Forms and Styles of Traditional Banoni Music
The Song to the Flying Fox
Lokal Musik
Mission and Music
Songs of Spirits

The book Re-counting Knowledge in Song.

On 16 November, Dr. Jacob Simet, Executive Director of the National Cultural Commission officially launched the latest book published by the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies (IPNGS), Re-counting Knowledge in Song: Change Reflected in Kaulong Music by Birgit Drüppel.

The ABC's pacific Break site has a new post

Video from Youtube:

I have just added a spam filter as I get so many emails from users that have dodgy (usually .ru) email addresses with intent to spam using comments. I have set this filter to be pretty stringent so there might be some issues over the next few weeks with posts being rejected or placed in a queue for review. If anything happens to your postings or comments please email me (Denis.Crowdy at mq.edu.au) and I'll tweak things until we get it right.

Denis Crowdy