Leonard Fong Roka
In most of central Bougainville’s Kieta area, the pre-crisis
years did not see much of this unique Solomon-wide music instruments made of the
bamboo species known by the Kieta and Nagovis people as the kabaki and its vibrant dancing moves generally
referred to as the Solomon Dance.
But this lack of interest to the then dying art was landed
hard on the Kieta and Nagovis people by the Australia-back PNG blockade on the
Bougainville and its people after 1989.
The desperate times of 1989 on Bougainville turned
Bougainvilleans into the local genres of music that were been slowly eradicated
by the glory of the Panguna mine. The crisis made the Bougainvillean urban
centers especially Arawa out of bound for the natives. Papuans and New Guineans
ruled those streets and the Bougainvillean had to remain in the bush or the
care centers under the PNG security forces protection; or otherwise remain in
the jungles, hiding.
It was in the Kaino care center that hosted us the mountain
people of Kupe since July 1989 that I began to note the drastic change in
church music patterns. Bamboo band tubes, panpipes and others rocked the
Catholic chapels made mostly of government supplied canvas.
On the Arawa’s Section 18 where mostly the Darenai villagers
of the Tumpusiong Valley they also had a few PMV pipes for their bamboo band to
enlightened their boring days under the watchful and often intimidating eyes of
the PNG security forces.
Most of these 1989-1990 care centers were more prison camps
thus music from the bamboo was a great way that our people sang and danced for
merriment.
After March 1990 the people, with the ceasefire and the
withdrawal of the PNG army, mostly youngsters, took their skills home into the
mountains. Bamboo band music rocked the mountains of Kupe as a fine home coming
music for the populace.
The art soon spontaneously spread all across Kieta and
beyond—it was a revival of a genre of Solomon music that was dying but the war
revived it for us to find some peace of mind.
In the intervening Australia-backed PNG blockade of our
island we had no means to get vital goods and services; no music from guitars
or electric instruments, thus the various Solomon-wide bamboo instruments
filled the vacuum for the music-loving Bougainvilleans.
On the 27 of October 1991, which was the feast day of the
Our Lady of Mercy church, I was just mesmerized on the wet lawns of the church
when bamboo band rocked us all. Bamboo bands from all around Kieta rocked the
day as we danced on and on.
Soon after the celebration at Arawa’s largest Catholic
Church’s Our Lady of Mercy church we went onto the ordination of a local
Catholic priest, Fr. Patrick Baria. Here just like Arawa, bamboo bands led the
way instead of electric instruments.
When the PNG army began attacking Kieta’s coastal areas,
refugees and those of us the war did not move about, gave life to the jungles
and our mountain homes with bamboo band music.
In fear of being attacked and killed by the PNG army, the
music from the bamboo band and the dancing and singing made us walk over the
enveloping fear of death.
Mortar shelling rained; helicopter gunfire made us run, but
music from the bamboo crept low beneath the thick jungle canopy of
Bougainville’s central mountain backbone, Crown Prince Range and ebbed our
intruding fear.
In important church days, in the festive seasons like New
Year and Christmas, in those dates of political significance in Bougainville’s
struggles and many more we danced and danced to the sound of bamboo band.
It was so funny, though our young and able men were out
fighting the PNG army; we were out dancing in the mountains. Sometimes armed
men would join us in the dances out of nowhere after their hours of duty.
In Kupe, each hamlet and refugee camp had its own sets. When
one hamlet or refugee camp hosted a dance, all others came to play there using
their sets. Bamboo band groups and dancers were fed with big food throughout
the night by the hosting hamlet or refugee camp.
On the next celebration we went to the next camp and did the
same.
Down on the coast where the PNG army run care centers there
was no such merry events since the BRA was too deathly in hit-and-run attacks.
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