Introduction

If you are musically talented, you can compose songs based on traditional scales in Papua. If you no longer remember the scales, you can study again the results of scientific research on traditional Papuan music. Then, you can compose typical Papuan songs. It would be better if you could arrange its musical accompaniment as typically as possible.

Dr. J. Kunst can help you develop modern music based on Papuan ethnic music. He had conducted some research on traditional Papuan music by the end of the 1920s and in the 1930s. His works on traditional music in the former Dutch Indies, now Indonesia, and Netherlands New Guinea, now Papua and West Papua, have been studied at various universtities, both in Indonesia and abroad. He is even considered a pioneer in that branch of musicology called "ethnomusicology".

Three Times to Netherlands New Guinea

New Guinea, probably the largest island in the world, is located in South Pacific. It is divided into the independent Papua New Guinea in the east and the western half that belongs to Indonesia. The Indonesian half consists of two provinces: Papua and West Papua. The western half was named "New Guinea", "West New Guinea", "Netherlands New Guinea" or "Dutch New Guinea", and "West Papua" during the Dutch colonial period.

Though the western half had been known for centuries, it became a Dutch colony in the 19th century. On May 1, 1963, the Dutch sovereignity over the western half of that huge island was officially handed over to Indonesia, previously a Dutch colony in Southeast Asia, which claimed since its independence in 1945 that the western part belonged to it.

Dr. J. Kunst conducted his research on Papuan ethnic music at the western half of New Guinea called "Netherlands New Guinea", "Dutch New Guinea", or simply "West New Guinea" before the Second World War. Here lived hundreds of tribes with different levels of civilization. The relatively advanced Papuans - mostly of Melanesian stock - lived along the coasts while their relatively backward fellow Papuans lived in the highlands. Whatever their cultural progress was, all of them sang and played songs and music in different languages, recently totalling around 270 vernacular languages.

Most native Papuans are Christians. The largest part of them are Protestants of various denominations followed by the Catholics and Muslim adherents. However, traditional beliefs - particularly, in the highlands and other remote areas - are still practiced.

It is against such socio-cultural and political backgrounds that Dr. J. Kunst undertook his research on ethnic music, including Papuan music, before WW II. He is famous in ethnomusicology because of his monumental works on traditional music in the Dutch Indies. Three English editions of his research on traditional music, among others, of Java, Sunda (West Java), and Papua, an old name for Netherlands New Guinea, were published after his death.

His published research however does not refer to the western half of New Guinea as any of the names already mentioned. To avoid possible confusions by readers of his research, he simply used the name "New Guinea" or "Western New Guinea" to refer to this part.

I prefer to use "Netherlands New Guinea" or "Dutch New Guinea" to refer to New Guinea that Kunst used in his book. It can also be confusing to readers of this blog if the use of the name "New Guinea" as Kunst used it makes it hard for them to identify which part of the island of New Guinea is meant: Papua New Guinea in the east or Papua and West Papua in the west. However, I also use "New Guinea" to refer to the whole island.

The research of this Dutch ethnomusicologist in Dutch New Guinea was undertaken for the first time in 1926. J. Kunst participated in the Dutch-American New Guinea Expedition led by C.C.F.M. Le Roux, a Dutch ethnographer and topographer. Through the aid of Le Roux, Kunst was equipped with sixteen phonograms for recording songs and flute music of the Takutameso or Kauwerawet tribe in the highlands of Dutch New Guinea. (The recording, however, was made by Le Roux.) Kunst was not able to record the music of the Awembiaks and Dems, two pigmy tribes in the highlands. So, Le Roux and Muhammad Saleh, his assistant, who knew their songs by heart recorded their songs separately for him. Le Roux whistled them; Saleh played them on a violin.

In May 1929, Kunst had a chance to encounter Papuan music from Netherlands New Guinea. During this month, the Royal Batavia Society for Arts and Science celebrated its 150th anniversary in Batavia, now Jakarta. The anniversary was held together with the Fourth Congress of Science for the Pacific in Batavia that included an ethnographic exhibition. At this exhibition, communities from all over the Dutch Indies exhibited or performed their arts. The communities included a number of Papuans from Dutch New Guinea. They came from various tribes from the northern coasts of this area: Waropen, Yapen, and Humboldt Bay (where the present-day Jayapura, the provincial capital of Papua, is located.) Kunst had the opportunity to record various songs of these tribes.

Kunst then made an official visit - not related to music - to Netherlands New Guinea in 1932. He had the opportunity to record various songs from the Papuan communities living in Waigeo, a large island of the Raja Ampat Archipelago, and Sorong, a town located at the western tip of the whole island of New Guinea. Around this year, he got a collection of songs recorded from the Marind, Ye, and Kau-anim tribes in the southeastern coast by Verschueren, a Dutch Catholic priest. The recording was made by Verschueren in Merauke, a small town in the southern coast locted near the border with Papua New Guinea. Kunst also got a collection of twenty-four songs from the Marind-Anim tribe noted down by Mr. Soukotta, an Ambonese police officer working in that region.

His last visit to Netherlands New Guinea came when he joined another expedition to this region in 1939. The expedition was organized by the Royal Dutch Society for Geography led again by Le Roux. During this expedition, Kunst had the opportunity to record the music of tribes living in the Central Mountain Ranges and songs of the Utah people in the southwest coast of Netherlands New Guinea.

Three Research Results

After Kunst passed away, his research on traditional Papuan music for different periods of time was published as a collection of three research results by his wife. In 1927, Kunst revised the subject matter for his first research; its results, A Study on Papuan Music, were then published for the first time by the Scientific Research Committee of the Dutch Indies in 1931. The results of his second research, Songs of North New Guinea, were published by the Royal Batavia Society for Arts and Science also in 1931. The results of his third research, The Native Music of Western New Guinea, were published by the the Royal Dutch Institute for the Tropics in 1950.

The research results of J. Kunst were first published in Dutch. Later, the English editions of his revised works were published by the Royal Dutch Institute for Linguistics, Geography, and Ethnology in 1967. Martinus Nijhoff, a publisher in the Hague, published the results under the title of Music in New Guinea.

Why Ethnic Music Was Studied

During Kunst's period, researchers on primitive societies knew little about the traditional music of these people. The researchers did not have a general picture of what traditional music of remote tribes was. They, therefore, needed systematic understanding of the music of all peoples through phonography. At that time, traditional African music not much studied and understood was threatened by foreign music. If this traditional music was not soon studied and recorded through the phonogram, music experts were worried that they could be late in understanding the true nature of African music. Such worries also applied to music in the Dutch Indies, including that in Dutch New Guinea.

Concerning the people in Netherlands New Guinea, Kunst stated that ethnographers seemed to have reached a consensus. They said that the people of Netherlands New Guinea were a mixture of various races with different levels of cultural progress. They, therefore, presumed that they would dicover different and overlapping layers of cultures among the inhabitants.

Is this presumption right? Research on music in Papua during Kunst's period was very limited. As far as this limitation was concerned with what he had already known, he said traditional music in Dutch New Guinea seemed to support the supposition that the Papuans were heterogeneous. (Now, it is known that his supposition is correct.) Based on the research on music of the Papuan tribes living in the Central Mountain Ranges, Kunst concluded that there existed two groups of music with different characteristics: Kauwerawet music and music of the pygmy tribes. In general, it can be said that the songs of both groups prove that more than one wave of civilization have hit the cultural development of the Papuans in Dutch New Guinea.

Kunst's works on Papuan music will be used as my main references for this blog and its Indonesian edition. Other references and my own observation on Papuan music will be added.