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| Digitisation and preservation of PNG’s audio heritage | |
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* To survive into the future,
historical recordings of PNG music must be made into digital format.
BALTHAZAR MORIGUBA writes * THE Music Archive of the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies (IPNGS) houses the world’s largest recorded collection of traditional and contemporary Papua New Guinea music. The Archive collection is unique, priceless and irreplaceable, but hearing these sounds has become problematic because of changing technologies. Papua New Guinea is very fortunate to have a place like the IPNGS doing research, collection, documentation, preservation and promotion of its diverse traditional and contemporary musical heritage. Some of these intangible heritage examples have been published through audio and book publications over the years. For reasons of financial constraint, these endangered and fragile recordings are housed in a converted shipping container. Moreover, as a result of new audio and visual technologies being developed, many of these significant and valuable historical recordings can no longer be heard unless machines are available that can play them. While there are a few of these old machines available in some parts of the world, we must quickly have such valuable historical recordings transferred to today’s technology. That is, they must be made into a digital format so that they can survive into the future. Professor Richard Moyle has a very long-standing relationship with the IPNGS, through his music and language research on Takuu Island in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. He successfully sought funding from the Pacific Development and Conservation Trust in New Zealand to help meet the expenses of my training as the Institute’s Music Technician in digitisation and preservation. This training took place at the Archive of Maori and Pacific Music of the University of Auckland. Furthermore, with this support from the Pacific Development and Conservation Trust, Professor Moyle was able to purchase the audio equipment, computer hardware and software I used during my training whilst in New Zealand. I brought all this equipment to the IPNGS after my training in New Zealand so that I can make use of this knowledge here. I spent three weeks at the Archive receiving fulltime expert training in digitization and preservation of a representative sample of the at-risk recordings from the IPNGS Archive. The Archive of Maori and Pacific Music’s Audio Conservator, Mr. Nigel Champion, is an expert in this field and he trained me in these techniques. His services were supplied courtesy of the Archive. Professor Moyle has tremendously assisted the IPNGS and Papua New Guinea itself to help preserve and digitize our priceless intangible cultural heritage for future generations of Papua New Guineans. The IPNGS is grateful to be associated with and acknowledges Professor Moyle and Mr. Champion, and the Pacific Development and Conservation Trust, the Archive of Maori and Pacific Music, and the University of Auckland. They have all come to our aid to train me to digitize and preserve what is invaluable to us: our musical heritage. I now plan to use this training to do just that. * The writer is the Music Technician at the Institute of PNG Studies |
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