They're Looking For

A Recording of Weird New Guinea Noises They're Looking For More Music From The South Pacific

A small Australian recording

company is looking for primi

tive music of the South Pacific. r:E company, Wattle Recordings, of Sydney, has just released a long-playing record of New Guinea music, and hopes to follow it up with recordings from other areas—if it can get hold of the raw material.

“We hope people will release material to us. We already have had some offers,” said Mr. Edgar Waters in Sydney in November.

Mr. Waters and Mr. Peter Hamilton are Wattle Recordings, which is a small-time company that has so far specialised in Australian ballads and folk songs.

It operates from a dilapidated building in Cathedral Street, one of Sydney’s old residential areas that the city’s spread is now turning over to commerce.

73 Samples

Music of New Guinea plays for about 40 minutes and sells in Sydney for 57/6.

It comprises 73 examples from 14 areas of NG —the Huon Peninsula to the Maclay Coast, Madang to Ma,nam Island, the Sepik River, Wewak to Dutch NG, the Huon Gulf to North Morobe, South-East Morobe, the NG Highlands, Vitiaz and Dampier Straits, the North Coast of New Britain, the Tolai area, the Gazelle Peninsula and the South Coast, the Bougainville area (including the Tasmans) and the

Admiralty group.

The examples include a wide variety of songs and noises—none of them likely to interest the hit paraders, but of value to music specialists, or to anybody interested in owning some genuine New Lrumea native noises.

The samples include “pig killing aiusic ’; a solo death chant sung tor a corpse being mummified over a fire of burning coral and green leaves; music made by tubes of hour-glass shaped lengths of wood

hemg dashed rhythmically end-on

P°°l water—to represent he bark of a crocodile; a Kukukuku jiribesman strumming the string of his great fighting bow, and chanty ° del Call fr ° m the Wah^

But there are many more ex amples of equal fascination, if perhaps a little tuneless by normal standards.

A Bamboo Zither The musical instruments used include drums, various kinds of flutes, panpipes, bamboo rattles, a Jew’s harp made from bamboo, and a bamboo zither.

A printed introduction accom panies the recording, explaining the sound tracks and giving notes on methods. It is a valuable addition.

Responsible for most of the tapes used in the recording is Mr. Ray Sheridan, who now lives in Rabaul,

but who is probably better known in the New Guinea music field through his association a few years ago with the Australian Broadcasting Com mission. He did several popular recorded features on NG music.

But some of the recordings used were taken by an Administration MO, Dr. W. E, Smythe.

All the tapes have been collected slowly over the last few years.

Mr. Sheridan is now working to collect NG instrumental music for recording—which should be a good seller if it turns out like some of the native instrumental recordings that are now eagerly being bought by tourists in parts of Polynesia.