Responding to Archival Collections with Song

We were welcomed to the Holy Cross Church in Hackett ACT for sharing Peroveta and Sene recordings by the Reverend Doctor Tim Watson

The PNG Peroveta Singers of Canberra was formed in 1999 as a collective diaspora community initiative led by Deveni Temu who continues to be the coordinator of the group. The members are predominately from Central Province, Papua New Guinea as residents and students living in the regions of Canberra, ACT and Queanbeyan, NSW. The group’s motivation is to maintain culture, music and language whilst abroad to feel, share, perform Peroveta songs and Sene dance items connecting the members to people, places where they come from in their homeland.

Peroveta is a type of singing also known as ‘prophet songs’. Due to the influence of Christianity coming from the London Missionary Society and their South Sea Islander missionaries, this form of singing was adopted in the Southern Region provinces of Papua New Guinea and has shaped the Papuan Christian community identity and music through its unique combination of Biblical scriptures, missionary histories and local customs expressed through traditional choral music sung with soaring and interweaving parts. Sene is a Hiri Motu word which means cultural traditional items.

The PNG Peroveta Singers of Canberra, February 2023 L-R: Deveni Temi, Wari Powell, Laka Gwillam, Theresa Hogg, Hane Dietz, Erue Stevens, Marion Gilmour and Tommy Dietz

Sene Cultural Dance of Gaire Kitoro performed by (L-R) Tommy Dietz, Theresa Hogg, Deveni Temu, Wari Powell.

The Sene traditional music includes songs, chants and laments of the Central Province which are performed in ceremonies, festivals and traditional practices. The group sings the languages of Hiri Motu, Hula, Keapara, Rigo, Aroma, Marshall Lagoon and Magi-Mailu of the Central Province districts as well as Rarotongan, also known as Cook Islands Māori.

They are responding to the PARADISEC archival collections MG1 and IC1 through creating new recordings, sharing cultural knowledge about the songs leading to the creation of a new collection PC2. The MG1 collection was recorded in the late 1950’s and 1960’s by Murray Groves, an anthropologist whose 1956 PhD awarded by the University of Oxford was a comparative study of three Motuan villages, Boera, Porebada and Manumanu, near Port Moresby. His research was eventually published as a book in 2011 as ‘The Motu of Papua: tradition in a time of change’. The IC1 collection consists of recordings made by Ian Campbell in Tubuseria Village, Central Province in 1969. Ian was participating in the National Union of Australian University Students “Village” scheme operated by the colonial Australian Administration in the late 1960’s where Australian university students stayed in Papua New Guinean villages. Ian’s recordings include church music, and traditional music known as ‘sing-sing’.

Steven Gagau filming Sene performer Salote Temu

The collaboration with the PNG Peroveta Singers of Canberra is a practical example of the PARADISEC “archival loop” model used in our community outreach which fosters cultural engagement between speaker communities and the archive. We developed this model when co-writing with Amanda Harris, Nick Thieberger and Nick Ward about historical Papua New Guinean recordings in the PARADISEC collection[1]. Coming from an ‘insider-outsider’ perspective as a Tolai man working in the archive, Steven says this approach ensures there is cultural safety, accountability and value adding of archival materials from the past to the present. The Archival Loop focuses on:

We hope you enjoy the Toksave: Culture Talks episodes 13&14 and the extra materials on our Youtube Channels as much as we enjoyed creating them. Log into the PARADISEC archive to explore the PC2, TCT1, IC1 and MG1 collections in the PARADISEC archive.