Buch, Englisch, 200 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 476 g
The Music and Magic of the Sanguma Band
Buch, Englisch, 200 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 476 g
Reihe: Music and Performing Arts of Asia and the Pacific
ISBN: 978-0-8248-5156-9
Verlag: University of Hawaii Press
In Hearing the Future, Australian ethnomusicologist Denis Crowdy documents and analyzes the music and activities of the Sanguma band, arguing that their music was a vital form of cultural expression in sync with sociopolitical change then taking place in PNG. Drawing from rock, jazz, and nascent ""world music"" influences, Sanguma reached audiences far from their home nation, introducing the world to modern music, Melanesia-style, with its fusion of old and new, local and global. Performances ranged from ensembles of Melanesian log drums (garamuts) to extended songs and improvisations involving electric guitars, synthesizers, saxophone, trumpet, bamboo percussion, panpipes, and kuakumba flutes. The band sang in a variety of local vernacular languages, as well as in Tok Pisin and English. To further emphasize their ancestral style, the musicians wore decorative headdresses and body decoration from all around the nation, along with distinctive pants featuring indigenous designs.
As the optimism of the early years of the nation faded due to harsh economic and social realities, and as an increasingly commercial popular music scene came to dominate public music culture, tensions between a once heard future and the sounding present emerged. Continuing a theoretical trajectory in ethnomusicology, Crowdy explores the role of music in imagining, constructing, and representing national and regional identity. The analysis reveals inherent tensions between distinctly Melanesian ideals and the complexities in navigating the realities of local neoliberal capitalism.