Challenges in the Repatriation of Historic Recordings to Papua New Guinea

Don Niles & Vincent Palie

Music Department

Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies

For over one hundred years, visitors to Papua New Guinea have been making recordings of music in our country. Prior to independence in 1975, many of these recordings ended up in archives in the countries of their collectors, in Europe, Australia, and the United States. Few of these recordings were made by music specialists and fewer still were examined in any publications.

For the past twenty years, the Music Department of the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies has been attempting to locate such historical recordings and repatriate them. In part, the goal has been to make such recordings available in the country in which they were recorded and available to the people for whom they have most value. To a large degree we have been successful in this. Our Music Archive now has copies of most such historical recordings, as well as the results of more recent research and many commercial recordings of Papua New Guinea musics.

Yet, while returning recordings to an archive in the capital of Papua New Guinea is important, we have also explored ways of getting these recordings back to the ancestors of those people who were recorded. We have attempted to increase interest in and knowledge about such recordings through the media, as well as return copies to appropriate individuals, centres, and archives. Such activities, however, are not easily undertaken with almost non-existent financial resources and limited interest from governmental bodies.

Nevertheless, there is great interest from the descendants of those recorded. Such recordings may reveal performance practices which differ from those of today, document traditions which are now only a vague memory of elders, or reconfirm the continuity of cultural transmission over the past century. We are constantly seeking new ways to make these ancestral voices heard again.