Come virtually with me to Rabaul Papua New Guinea, when village Garamut players and owners will celebrate their USA award for their drumming in my Book Trailer. The International Firebird Book Awards gave Homorable Recognition for the Book Trailer while the book won Best Book Club Pick.
Dear Firends and Readers,
A highlight of my research trip to Rabaul was recording a traditional message tapped out on garamuts (slit log drums) briningg villagers together to hear the warning of trouble coming. Knowing that the publisher of my novel Beyond the Bukubuk Tree had a musician on staff, I knew that they’d understand the beauty of the drum patterns and use the sounds appropriately.
After publication, I entered the Book Trailer in a contest. I was happy for the garamut players when the trailer won the equivalent to Finalist status.
But I was stunned by how much an International Book Award sponsored int the USA meant to the players and owners; they are hired to play at Rabaul’s major festivals.
So now I wish to bring you into what I know about the language of the garamut (slit log drums) and why I was so excited to record them when I visited Rabaul.
“We own garamuts to give call signs during special occasions within our community for custim gathering,” garamut owner eEward Malana told me the day I turned up to record a traditional message for the trailer.
My request was not for any of the celebratory messages they use in modern festivals but for a patten relevant to my war novel. I’d read several autobiographies of today’s Tolai statesmen wo were born into a tribal culture and technology and recalled garamut messages being as specific as “I killed a pig. Come help crry it.”I “Lulua … has died.” the bginning of a long mourning rituals.
More contemporeanously, a friend, Mary Clare Adam, who lived in Papua New Gunea in the 1970s, had the job of buying sacred artifacts from remte villages for the government store. She told me that when she arrived in a village it could be deserted except for one old man under a tree with a garamut. She’d tell him what artifacts she was looking for that day. He’d tap out the message, and within ten minutes the village would be full of villagers with precisely the artifacts she was ready to buy.
My novel is a war story and the brutality ofthe Japanese invasion upended everyone’s lives in occupied Rabaul. Indigenous Tola suffered as much as Australian prisoners of war and Chines rsidents pressed itno slave conditions. I asked for a garamut message meaning gather around, trouble is coming.
Click for the Book trailer, where MadeGlobal Publishing blended garamut sounds with jubgle and WWII plane sound effects.
According to scholar Alphonse Aimee (Contemporary PNG Studies: DWU Research Journal Vol. 25 November 2016) the word garaut in Tok Pisin was originated by the Tolai inhabitants of East New britain Province where the German colonists established Rabaul as their capital, taken over in World War I by the Australian military.
So the ancestors of the garamut owners and playerrs I recorded are credited with the spread of the word garamu and its enduringt culture across Papua New Guinea. No wonder they are thrilled by recognition by The International Firebord Book Awards here in the USA, and want to mount a celebration involving the tribal elders and the local church.
As Alphonae Aimee relates, garamuts were thought of as living, that spirits could speak throught them, that there could be spirit garamuts, clan garamuts and private garamuts.. With a vast toanl range, and slender sticks that could produce vibrating effects as well as reverberating booms, the garamut is a flexible instrument and ut is not surprising it is encuring in modern culture in Papua New Guinea, aling with popular songs and Pop bands and creative writing and drama.
At the bus stop with villagers after I recorded Francis Toiar and Francis Totu.
With Albert Konie, tour guide who arranged the visit and recording and who is coordinating the celebration
