Kundu beats bring Mt Hagen Show closer

The National Weekender

By PETER S. KINJAP
PAPUA New Guinea’s cultural events are a relatively unspoiled resource with great potential for drawing the tourist dollar.
From the beginning to the end, there is a festival for PNG every year.
In Western Highlands, the famous Mount Hagen Cultural Show is showcased every year in the first of week of August.
With a history that dates back almost 60 years, the Mount Hagen Cultural Show is one of Papua New Guinea’s finest and most popular cultural events.
The show draws tribes from all over the Western Highlands and neighbouring provinces for cultural performances, singing and ancient rituals.
It’s a vibrant display of colour, culture and crafts. The cultural event was first hosted in 1961 long before Papua New Guinea’s independence in a bid to peacefully share and preserve the region’s traditions.
The rhythmic thumping of kundu drums is the first hint of the festival that lies ahead if you are around Mount Hagen city.
When the last of the early morning fog is yet to lift, the field behind the Kagamuga showground is usually a sea of towering headdresses, colourful flora and painted faces.
The Mount Hagen Cultural Show performance preparation and dress rehearsals by each tribe would take at least two hours. Across the field, you could see hundreds of people are in various states of dress (or rather, undress) – tucking leaves, arranging feathers, painting bodies, consulting mirrors.
Kagamuga local Jack Boni said, “When I was a boy, I used to climb up to the treetops so I could see over the fence and watch the festival. That was the 1970s.
“We are very proud; we love to present our culture. But it is dying out because of Western influence,” he added.
Usually held over two days, the Mount Hagen Cultural Show is one of the biggest singsings (traditional ceremonies) of the year in PNG.
Villagers from all over the region come to showcase their costumes, music, dance and art.
For visiting tourists, both domestic and international, it’s an opportunity to experience first-hand the customs of about 1,000 tribes in one of the most culturally intact places in the world.
If you happen to be one of the first to turn up at the Kagamuga showground on that day in August, you would watch the sun’s rays catching the morning dew on a black, red, yellow painted faces usually by older man. All the men, from the smallest to the biggest honour their ancestors by dressing as old men, with beards and legs daubed in white clay.
When they dance – holding their hands together and jogging on the spot in several layers of lines – the rattling of shells, bones and seed necklaces would form a mesmerising percussion to their low chant.
War-like cries and whooping sounds would draw attention of the crowd, marching in somewhat a coordinated direction – going round and round in the field forming a circle with spears and traditional axes pointing out.
Curious onlookers would be chasing one another and mock-threatening tourists with spears and axes.
Many costumes evoke ancestral spirits although most performers won’t initiate conversation.
“When you open up to people, they open up to you. If you walk with your arms folded, saying nothing, they will say nothing, too,” says Daniel Kaua, a Mount Hagen resident and show organising committee volunteer.
The Mount Hagen Cultural show committee invites tribes from nebouring provinces. The Foe tribesmen from Lake Kutubu in the Southern Highlands, only “discovered” by the West in the 1930s are among the regulars to the festival.
While Foe men are renowned for their knowledge of how to extract the highly valued viscous oil of the kara’o tree, the Foe believe the first kara’o trees sprang up from the menstrual blood of two women who once travelled the land.
The gushing oil is said to be the tree’s menstruation. The oil is mixed with charcoal or plant dye to create the paint used in celebrations and rituals: black for warriors, red for mature men and yellow for initiates or men in training.
One can’t stand the heat of an explosion of colour and rhythm, a brief of pounding feet and bouncing heads. Deep chants would run fingers down your spine and the beat of kundu drums would throb deep in the chest.
Tourists using oversised cameras would duck and weave between performers, jostling for the best angle, snapping selfies – and snapping at other tourists to get out of the way.
For their part, performers would seem proud to be celebrities for a weekend, admiring and posing with endless patience.
Every party has its foot-draggers and this one is no different. It’s a feast in the highlands.
In almost every corner of the field, performers would continue to stamp their feet and shake their arse gras (the leaves tucked into the back of their belts).
When finally all the performers have left, the showground gates are opened and locals – who have spent the day straining to see, would mingle to dance and to sing – at long last. It is their turn to stream onto the field, laughing as they soak up whatever is left of the party.
They would usually get into groups and start chanting out a momentum.
It’s the closing dance for the day known as Waipa, and usually by youngsters (both male and female) into courtship mood, filtering and giggling as they hold hands tightly and joggling in a clockwise direction chanting descants of love and acquaintances.
For this year the exotic cultural event is tentatively booked on the weekend of Aug 17 and 18. It’s different this time; much bigger and better!