Jungle drums
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Thu 29 Aug 2013 10:34
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Vanuatu has retained more of its traditional
pre-European contact way of life than most countries we have visited. As usual
the early missionaries tragically went out of their way to destroy as much as
they could, but they came later to Vanuatu than elsewhere and the country
was never actually colonised as such. So there are some remnants of what went
before, more than just folk memories. We went to a three day dance festival on
Ambrym entitled 'Back to our roots'. Not just a tourist attraction, but a
self-explanatory demonstration for the locals as well and a real grading
ceremony.
One totemic emblem of Vanuatu is the tam-tam. This
is called a drum locally, but really I think it's a sort of gong. A tree is
hollowed out, with various sizes and types of wood giving a different note, and
then beaten with another piece of wood. The resulting noise is surprisingly
loud, and enables a real beat to the dancing. Traditionally these were used as a
real jungle telegraph but although some of the signals are still known and
played they have been entirely supplanted by the mobile telephone here as
elsewhere!
Here are two guys belting it out:
 The small trunk on the ground gives a higher note
while the big post is a deep bass. The faces represent previous highly graded
individuals. Ambrym had a very complicated grading system for men, with twelve
grades or ranks. In order to progress to a higher grade a man had to make
payment of pigs (lots and lots of pigs, to be sacrificed) plus other
rituals which I don't really understand. On Ambrym the system persists even now;
there is just one individual in the twelth grade, and during the festival two
others were raised to the eigth grade.
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