Steven Feld
Music Of The Kaluli

Sound And Sentiment, neverworking, enjoy!

1981. "Music Of The Kaluli" is a simple 8-minute recording of the Kaluli singing, talking, and shouting while clearing a piece of land for a garden.

Let's go back...

In 1976, a musician-anthropologist named Steven Feld traveled to the slopes of Mount Bosavi in Papua New Guinea with the intention of studying the Kaluli people for his thesis, known for their musical vocation and great solidarity and hospitality. Feld was introduced as a brother (ao) of Bambi Schieffelin and brother-in-law of Buck Schieffelin, two anthropologists long merged with the Bosavi people. He was able to dialogue and analyze these people who still live in the village of Sululib.

The Kaluli are farmers and hunters, exogamous and expert ornithologists. In fact, in their culture, they have a very intrinsic dualism with the avian nature of their untouched regions. Birds represent a metaphorical society and their songs represent forms of sentiment and ethos; in Bosavi, there are six forms of songs. Gisalo is the form unique to the Bosavi and was conceived by them, specifically in concert with the songs of the birds.

GISALO is the main ceremony for this people, which takes place in the longhouse (community house) from dusk until dawn. The lyrics are sad and evocative, reflecting a sense of loss and abandonment. The effectiveness of the compositions is determined by how much crying they provoke in the spectators, who many times, overwhelmed by such strong emotion, cause burns to the dancer, guilty of causing them too much suffering with the evocation of places, actions, or common people.

"THE MUNi BIRD MYTH" is linked to the reciprocity of relationships between sisters and brothers. In this myth, the relationship is mediated by food; the elder sister refuses to give a caught shrimp to the younger brother. This represents the utmost abnormality for the Kaluli society. The child, pleading for a shrimp and not receiving it, upon catching one himself, turns into a Muni bird (fruit dove) and flies away into the sky, followed by the lament of the regretful sister. This myth is fundamental in Kaluli thought not only for its dietary aspect but also because being alone, abandoned, is one of the most tragic aspects for this people.

The Kaluli express themselves like Muni birds during funerals or events that provoke deep sorrow. When there is a ceremony, the performer, in the eyes of the Kaluli, takes on the form of a bird, and the audience, moved by the evocative stories, bursts into deep tears (sayelema or ganayelema). The same crying and lament that we can witness during a funeral or a dramatic event, where the sounds are those of nature.

Those who listen to these songs reorganize their experiences, the words unsettle the spectator, the lyrics speak of sadness and pain, and the images provoke solitude and personal experiences, through TOKs which are devices used to refer to pathetic and evocative images.

The terminology related to the song is linked to the sound of waterfalls and the movement of water, so the sound is natural like water or bird song, the text is cultural and evocative. Participating in a ceremony is compared to being immersed in the forest or near a waterfall. Becoming a bird means passing from life to death since birds are the incarnated spirit of the dead. This is the primary metaphor for the Kaluli, the only emotional state that has the power to evoke feelings of nostalgia, sense of loss, and abandonment.

The fruit doves mediate feelings of sadness and isolation in the sounds of lament, poetry, and song.

The typical Kaluli behavior is dramatic, emotional, and demonstrative-reflective. They do not rationalize the ceremony as a Westerner might, but reflect, moved with enthusiasm and drama at the lament and the song.