Canberra, ACT: ANU E Press, 2010. xvi, 254 pp. (Chiefly col. illus., col. maps, music.) A$24.95, paper. ISBN 978-1-9216-6642-1.
All musical traditions are influenced by the environments in which they are created and practiced. For the Duna people of Papua New Guinea’s Hela Province, their mountainous homeland of “steep slopes” has guided their music systems in a number of ways. Ethnomusicologist Kirsty Gillespie is perceptive in selecting that theme as the guiding motif of her musical ethnography. Steep Slopes is an apt picture of the decisions that many small communities face regarding the value and future vitality of their musical traditions. Continuity of traditions, let alone revitalization, in the face of attractive international options is a tough hike for any community. These early years of the twenty-first century have seen growing scholarly engagement and applied advocacy in the complexities of language and cultural endangerment. Gillespie’s book is a valuable entry into that discussion, touching on larger issues while looking at a particular language area of the Papua New Guinea highlands.
Steep Slopes comprises six chapters, framed by an introduction and conclusion. The introduction sets up Gillespie’s framework for research and study. She charts a path for her ethnography that will avoid the traditional-versus-modern dichotomy that has so often characterized discussion about endangerment and revitalization. Accepting as a given the ongoing hybridization and change inherent in all cultures, Gillespie chooses the terms “ancestral” and “introduced.” These are more useful handles for looking at Duna musical traditions, though still leaving open questions of how long it takes an introduced music to become so integrated locally that it can be regarded as ancestral. This is less an issue right now for the Duna, with their relatively recent history of contact with “the outside world,” but it becomes more difficult when looking at Papua New Guinean communities who have had much longer contact with the Christian church’s hymn-singing traditions.
Chapter 2 is a survey of details expected of any musical ethnography: general Duna conceptions of music; the role of the musician; the relationship of music and dance; a general survey of available instruments; and other related topics. I am particularly fascinated by the kẽiyaka, or praise names, that are one of the most distinctive elements in Duna song. In song texts which use repeated lines of text, the one changing element in each line will be a different kẽiyaka, with the whole song featuring a progression of these alternate praise names. Gillespie and colleague Lila San Roque develop this research further in their excellent chapter, “Music and Language in Duna Pikono,” in Sung Tales from the Papua New Guinea Highlands (Alan Rumsey and Don Niles, eds., Canberra, ANU E Press, 2011, 49-64).
In chapter 3, Gillespie looks at the influence of Christian missions, and the interactions between introduced Christian song, ancestral song and introduced popular song. Her brief overview of this history is more nuanced than in some other ethnographies, but I still felt it tended to oversimplify matters. I wasn’t convinced of the Duna people’s “seemingly forced adoption of Christianity” (82), for example, and at times throughout the chapter Gillespie almost implies a weak, ready-to-be-dominated position of the just-missionized Duna—a typical, though certainly unintentional, perspective when writing about first contact with Christian missions. However, Gillespie’s affirmation of the importance of language in any story of encounter is refreshingly accurate; I appreciated her attention to linguistic considerations, here and in other chapters. I was less convinced of the significance of connections between Christian song and Duna-composed songs in similar styles.
In chapter 4, Gillespie shares the story of the death of a young woman, which leads to thoughtful consideration of mourning songs in ancestral and introduced styles. Looking at laments in Duna culture allows Gillespie to reflect on the place of women in Duna society, family structure, and artistic methods of referring to a specific person in song. This leads into chapter 5, which focuses on land issues. In addition to agriculture, Gillespie also looks at the idea of traveling through geography in the song genre khene ipakana. Steep Slopes make a literal appearance in this chapter, as the rugged mountains are offered as a challenge to prospective lovers in courting songs.
Courtship is the primary subject of chapter 6. I was especially interested in Gillespie’s description of disco nights in the Duna villages. These dance parties are a tangible picture of the awkward, still-in-process changes in contemporary life as Duna young people, severed from traditional rites of passage, try to find their way from adolescence to adulthood.
In the final chapter before the conclusion, Gillespie considers matters of preservation and revitalization, wondering what is the future of Duna ancestral traditions. She looks especially at cultural shows, one of Papua New Guinea’s premiere settings for showcasing its artistic traditions. Based on interviews with Duna stakeholders and cultural show participants, she concludes that although the shows do provide a setting for continuity of traditions, they are not a viable context for serious preservation. The shows tend to be aimed at an undiscerning tourist audience, and the shows are not as regular as a preservation project would require.
Steep Slopes is a revised version of Gillespie’s 2007 PhD thesis, and like many other thesis ethnographies, its shortcoming is merely a too-broad scope of topics. Gillespie covers a lot of ground, but some of it receives too little attention and—though interesting information—does not contribute to the unifying theme of the book. Other of Gillespie’s publications, shorter and more focused—such as “Giving Women a Voice: Christian Songs and Female Expression at Kopiago, Papua New Guinea” (Perfect Beat 11(1):7-24, 2010)—affirm Gillespie’s strengths as a scholar. But that is a small criticism, and given the relative dearth of published research about Papua New Guinean communities and their musics, Steep Slopes is a welcome addition to the understanding of current issues in Melanesian expressive arts. Gillespie’s engagement with previous Duna scholarship, and her command of current issues in anthropology and ethnomusicology, are exemplary. Steep Slopes should be read by anyone interested in Melanesian and Pacific cultural studies, as well as advocates for cultural revitalization.
Neil R. Coulter
Summer Institute of Linguistics, Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea
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