New Guinea
Fly River Drum New Guinea
Fly River – Kiwai – Torres Strait Area Drum (New Guinea, Papua New Guinea)
The wooden hourglass-shaped drum is one of the most distinctive musical instruments of the Fly River and Torres Strait region. Among the Kiwai of the Fly estuary it was regarded as the principal musical instrument and served as the major accompaniment to dancing and singing. Its use extended beyond traditional ceremonial performances and, following the arrival of Christianity, the drum was also incorporated into church music and the accompaniment of hymns.
The history of this drum type is closely connected with the extensive systems of exchange linking the Papuan communities of the Fly estuary with the islands of the Torres Strait. Drums were traded over considerable distances and were frequently modified after reaching a new community. Imported instruments could be scraped thinner, their earlier decoration removed, and new designs incised according to local artistic conventions. This process not only altered their appearance but also improved the acoustic properties of the instrument by reducing the thickness of the wooden body.
Historical sources distinguish between two principal forms of waisted drums in this region. The older and more elaborately carved form is known as warupa, while the later form is generally referred to as buruburu, or dundun in parts of the Fly River region. The warupa is characterized by its distinctive waisted body and richly decorated surface, whereas the buruburu developed into a more cylindrical form and was frequently repainted or redecorated. The present instrument, with its carefully carved geometric ornament and dark polished surface, belongs to this wider tradition of elaborately decorated Fly River drums, although its precise historical type cannot be established with certainty.
The elaborate decoration of these drums was not merely ornamental. The carved surface was part of the cultural identity of the instrument and could be renewed when a drum entered a new community through exchange. Lawrence notes that drums were still being traded from inland Papuan communities into the Torres Strait, where they were sometimes carved again and covered with brightly coloured paint for local dance performances. The drum thus represents not only a musical instrument but also an important object within a wider system of intercommunity exchange and cultural transmission.
The historical photographs associated with the Fly River and Mawatta region provide particularly valuable evidence for the manufacture and use of these instruments. One photograph records a man at Mawatta hollowing a large drum by burning the interior of the wooden body. Another shows a Kiwai man performing with an elaborately decorated old-style drum. Such documentation demonstrates the continuity between the surviving museum specimens and the instruments used in ceremonial and dance contexts during the early twentieth century.
The distribution of the drum is unusually extensive. Early ethnographic research and later museum studies document related forms from the inland rivers of the Trans-Fly region through the Lower Fly and Fly estuary to the islands of the Torres Strait. This broad distribution was not simply the result of independent development: historical evidence demonstrates that drums themselves were exchanged, transported and subsequently modified. The present instrument therefore belongs to one of the most historically significant networks of musical exchange in the region.
"The most important musical instrument of the Kiwai was the wooden hourglass-shaped drum. This remains the major accompaniment to dances and songs in the wide Torres Strait and Fly estuary region and is even used to accompany hymns in church. There are two types of drums: the older more finely carved and decorated warupa and the more modern often over-painted buruburu. Landtman’s original comment (1927: 44) was: New drums are made at Mawatta like the Budji buruburu in shape, but provided with different decoration. It is also common practice at Mawatta to remodel imported Budji drums slightly by obliterating the original ornamentation and making the woodwork thinner by scraping them outside and inside (thereby improving the sound), then incising fresh ornamentation. He was generally correct except that the drums originated further west of Boigu in the Morehead River region. This activity is still practiced and Papuan drums are still traded into the Torres Strait Islands were they are often again redecorated with bright paint."
Excerpt from: David Lawrence, Gunnar Landtman in Papua: 1910 to 1912. Canberra: ANU Press, 2010.
"The instrument which normally accompanies the singing and the dances is the slender hour-glass-shaped drum with a wooden handle which is called burubur in Agab and gama in Owera. On one end is glued the skin of a large watersnake which can be found in the lagoons of the swampy country. One or three small lumps of beeswax are applied to the center of the drumskin for the "tuning" of the drum. This can take many hours or even days during which the wax is re-moved again and again and its size and position on the drumskin modified while it is held soft and continually kneaded with fingers which are slightly moistened with the greasy perspiration from the forehead and nose. The result aimed at is the terrific booming sound which long ago gave rise to the episode of the drum which, in the famous Sido myth, called the name of the girl Sagaru during a dance. Although there are only regular drum beats, with an occasional tattoo at the end of a song, the resounding voice of the burubur adds quite a particular sound to the papuan music. The drums are not all locally made; they are often obtained by barter from the tribes further inland, the so-called "bush tribes". The bodies of the drums are blackened and polished with coconut oil."
Excerpt from: Wolfgang Laade, Music from South New Guinea. Asch Records LRM–AHM 4216, 1971. Music from South New Guinea presents the music of tribes settled between the Fly River and West Arian.
"The drum has a wide distribution, apparently having been introduced by the Tugeri (Marind-anim) from Dutch New Guinea. It is now found amongst all the Tribes from the Bensbach River to the Wiram country in the Middle Fly, down to the mouth of that river, and on to the Islands of the Torres Straits."
Excerpt from: Aldo Massola, "Drum Types of Eastern New Guinea," Memoirs of the National Museum of Victoria, No. 22, 1957.
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