Breath of Dirima is an ethnomusicological study of Dirima, a village of approximately three thousand, five hundred people, in the Chimbu Province, Papua New Guinea. The vocal and instrumental genres were studied to investigate the music itself, influences, changes and relevance for the lives of the people.
The procedures followed in this investigation include informal discussions with missionaries and with the local people. Forty-one vocal items and thirty-eight instrumental items were recorded. Some of these were selected for notation and analysis because of their relevance and clarity. The texts of vocal items were transcribed in the original language and translated into English by the local people. Films, slides and photographs were taken, and musical instruments were collected and measured. Many of these instruments were donated to the Australian Museum.
The results obtained indicate that every man and woman in Dirima is expected to be able to compose his or her own music and texts. Often traditional tunes are used, and new texts are composed for songs. Those who become skillful at composition are highly regarded by the people. Poetic license in relation to song texts includes word lengthening and word splitting. Most of the vocal items are strophic or in three-part, A B A, form. Frequent use is made of untranslatable syllable string verses, known as arins, at the beginning and end of songs or song series. The range of most vocal items is narrow, but the use of microtones increases the number of available pitches within the narrow range.
Most of the vocal and wind instrumental music of Dirima is monodic. Some of the music of the paired transverse bamboo flutes (nebare), however, contains some harmonic effects produced by the use of the ‘hocket’ technique. The people compose music for the various traditional wind instruments of Dirima but not for the nebare. The works in the repertoire of nebare pieces are all traditional. The extraordinary number of pitches that can be produced on one pair of nebare relates not only to the employment of harmonics, but also to the fact, illustrated by the recordings, line drawings, photographs and measurements, that the two instruments are slightly different in length and therefore in pitch.
As with any oral tradition, the music of Dirima is in a constant state of flux. The process of change has been accelerated during the last twenty years due to an increase in outside influences. The various musical genres cover the full spectrum from the purely entertaining to the formal ceremonial, marking the various stages of life.
Breath of Dirima 