Besides studying the song recordings of the Waropens in Batavia, Kunst also conducted further study on the music of the Waropen Coast through the printed research of Prof. Dr. G.J. Held. Held's works that Kunst used as his reference is Papoea's van Waropen, published in Leiden, Holland, in 1947. Its English edition, The Papuas of Waropen, was published in the Hague in 1957.
Held is not a professional musician like Kunst. Actually, he is a linguist graduating with honors from the prestigious Leiden University in Holland and was employed by the Dutch government to conduct language research in the Waropen Coast.
In spite of his real profession, he must have shown some specific interest, for some reason, in the traditional music of the Waropen Coast. He, therefore, spent some of his time to make recordings of the songs from Waropen. His recordings were made by using an Excelsior Phonograph granted to him by the Phonograph Archives in Berlin, Germany. His recordings of the Waropen songs were then sent to Berlin, but it is not known whether or not they were intactly kept there after World War II. Even if they are stil kept there, it is not known whether they have already been changed into block notations and texts - if there are any. As a result, Kunst studied the music of the Waropen Coast by only using the research stuff from Prof. Dr. G.J. Held. What Kunst did was studying the parts from Held's book relevant to the music from Waropen.
Characteristics of the Music from the Waropen Coast
The traditional songs of the Waropen people narrated and commented upon their myths. They include rano, a rowing song sung by males; ratara, another type of song sung by females during a wedding ceremony or the birth of a baby; and muna, a kind of song sung by both males and females at a ritual for a deceased. Although the rano, ratara, and muna were respectively sung in different styles, they were all related to myths.
The rano consists of seven types of songs. First, soitirano, sung when a bride and bridegroom were "accompanied in a procession" by a large canoe rowed by other people around a village to introduce the couple to their fellow-villagers. It was also sung when a newly made canoe was ready to be rowed for the first time. Second, ghomindano, was sung during slave-hunting raids by sea and after head hunters returned home from their voyage. Third, amairano, a morning song sung at initiation rites, rites of passages in which children were accepted as adults. Fourth, damadorano, a song at the house of an initiate, the child who during the initiation ceremony would become an adult. Fifth, nuarano, a trade song sung in particular on a canoe. Sixth, ramasasisri, a special song, usually sung in a foreign language and sung only during a voyage. Seventh, ratisara, songs about love, sung on rowed or sailing canoes and at home. After the Waropen people became Christians, they also sang the three last-mentioned types of songs when they traveled by canoes.
A rano sung sounds like a Western round. A singer or several singers sang a part of the song. Before they finished their part, another singer or several other singers sang the same part from the beginning while the first group that finished the song repeated it from the beginning. The second group did the same thing. At a certain moment, both groups stopped simultaneously or successionally.
Professor Held depicted and mulled over this kind of singing as folows:
First, one man sings the song, the men at the back of the canoe then take up the first strophe and when they have sung a part of the song, the men in the front come in with the beginning of the song. For each group of the singers, there is thus a series of pauses throughout the singing of the song. The informants compared this kind of singing to a kind of chase in which each party tries to urge on the other to overtake it. The idea probably is that the language of myths in which these songs are couched drives the canoe onwards.
The rano composition involved euwo. The last-mentioned term means "base" or "foot". This probably means the first part of the first strophe. In its round-like form, the euwo of rano can be called the first verse sung by one of the two groups that sang the rano. If there is an euwo, is there an uri, the top of rano? It was not discovered.
In which atmosphere and for what reasons did the rowers sing those rowing songs? They just sang them when they rowed their canoe. When the day was sweltering, the canoe could not sail because there was no wind blowing the sails, they felt burned up. When the sea was choppy and hit the sides of the canoe, the rowers sang at the top of their voices to overcome the howling wind. When the night fell, when the voyage ended and the rowers entered their village, they sang their rowing songs melodiously and triumphantly while using short, choppy strokes with their paddles to splash up the sea water. Such a rowing style was called kikaworo, which literally means "they chop". While the canoe was being rowed in such a manner, interested fellow-villagers stood while watching the canoe and its paddlers.
Aside from the rowing songs, there were other songs accompanied on the siwa, the traditional drum shaped like a beaker. It was the most important musical instrument for the Waropen people and was imported mainly from the Moor and Mambor islands in the southern part of the Geelvink Bay. The people on these islands were well-known for their artisanship in crafting ornamental motives on the siwa. Held did not find any evidence of the artisanship of the Waropen people in crafting their typical drums.
The siwabuino, a half-drum, was often played by females and resembled the half size of a siwa. To accompany traditional dances, both the siwa and siwabuino were tuned to two different pitches. For this tuning, hides tightened repeatedly over a small fire were stretched along the rims of the drums and stuck around them with tiny balls of resin. "Apparently, the Waropen {people] demand a high standard of sound from their drums," commented Dr. G.J. Held. "They give individual names to their drums and they can recognize them at a distance by their sound."
How can the hides produce the sound they wanted? The hides were gotten from the moiwa, iguanas, which lived in large numbers in Waropen. The hides were cleanly scraped while they were still fresh, then stretched over frames made of laths and dried in the sun. If the old, stretched hides on the drums would be replaced with new ones, artisans had to smear the rims of the drums with the sticky parings of mangrove fruits. The hides were made pliable by wetting them, pulled taut over the gummy rims and bound tightly with pieces of canes. The hides were then dried under the sun and firmly fixed to the drumheads; after that, the canes were removed.
Other musical instruments were also used in Waropen. They include various mauno or gongs, and buro, trumpets made from conch shells whose conical ends had holes bored into them. Tungge or the jewish harp was also used; it probably originated inland. The traditional flute in Waropen used two holes through which simple melodies could be played.
Held also mentioned a typical musical instrument that probably has disappeared from Waropen: the mbumbu. It was shaped into "a wooden propeller ... turned by pulling a piece of string that runs through a round nut."
