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Singing With Cannibals

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There is a National Geographic program now airing on television called Eating With Cannibals http://on.natgeo.com/if2F4p  The host of the program is Piers Gibbon, and his journal is available on the program website. In one journal entry, he interviewed a cannibal (apparently, now reformed) in Papua New Guinea, that was from the Biami tribe.

Through the interview, Gibbon learned how the process works regarding the decision of who will be eaten: during the evening, the men chant and sing, then smoke brus (a local tobacco), and then chant and sing some more. Gradually a person's name appears in the song. If it is your name, you can start saying your goodbyes, because you have been identified as a "magic man"–someone who has magically caused harm to someone else in the village, and so you now deserve to be killed….and marinated.

The "name" of the chosen entree comes straight from the spirit world. And guess who the spirits reveal the menu to? It is none other than to the song leader of the tribe. Indeed, the shaman, the song leader, is "the decider."

Why does this interest me? I have personally been gathering research for a couple of years regarding my growing concern about the need for collaboration in the musical arts. Not to be pessimistic, but with this evidence, I may now have the scientific proof I need that my challenge to facillitate collaboration could be greater than anticipated.


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Comments

  1. My brother has been a missionary in Papua New Guinea among the Hamtai people for 57 years, but my experience is the one where cannabalism is practiced.
     
    We now have no pulpit Doxology, Creed, Gloria Patri or Lord’s Prayer, but we do have a Praise Team that eats up 15 minutes before the minister, from a corner, says, “Receive God’s Blessing. Let’s go ahead and say Hi to everybody.” Accute indigestion occurs when he rolls his “little lecturn on wheels” to the center where the PT was and speaks.
     
    The choir adds some spice to the mix and things may be achangin’!
     
    Tim, thanks for defining the hitherto un-named!
     
    EP

  2. I have been negotiating with a choir about a text to use for a commissioned piece.  The theme: American Spring.  One of the poems I proposed was rejected because the music director felt the audience might be squeamish about cannibalism.
     
    Brian Holmes

  7. When if glanced at this topic I thought it said “Singing With
    Cannabis”.

    I thought ‘Holy mackeral! That’s a radical rehearsal
    technique!”

  8. Two thumbs up Dr. Sharp, this is pretty amazing stuff, and it may even give new meaning to – “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak” (William Congreve, 1697, The Mourning Bride, Act 1 Scene 1).  How appropriate, your name is called up, and you are already in a good place because of song.  Just think of all the possibilities.    

     

     

     

  9. Dear Tim,
    I have eaten very few of the singers in my choir.
    The sopranos tend to be a bit stringy while the basses are simply too tough, but if you place a tenor and a few altos in a big pot with some nice herbs and some cheap wine, you get a nice stew.
     
    On a serious note, there is plenty of research showing we humans to be a collaborative bunch.   Read Ellen Dissanayake for her brilliant theory on the evolution of singing as a mother/child dialogue.  Read E. O. Wilson’s research on cooperation (reciprocal altruism) as the glue that holds communities together.   
     
    The model of the conductor as the shaman, sole leader of the vocal tribe, is the hierarchical model that Western cultures adhere to.   In nature, things work quite differently.   In nature, it is all about collaboration, not only within individual species, but within all life.
    Nick Page

  10. At the risk of making a funny about something so obviously NOT funny, is your argument “eat or be eaten” when it comes to musical collaboration?  That could be downright depressing, not to say utterly without taste (ugh!).
     
    Ron

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