We will not sit down: exploring agency through Christian music at Lake Kopiago, Papua New Guinea

[Extract] It is commonly perceived that the introduction of Christianity into the lives of the people of Papua New Guinea and the wider Pacific has had a negative impact on ancestral culture and music-making. This view is held by both those inside and outside the country and the region, by those in academia as well as in the broader community. While it is widely true that many missions were active in dissuading the performance of some ancestral musical styles, encounters between missionaries and the people is far more complex. Papua New Guineans have themselves acted as agents in adopting and reshaping the new musical forms that were used to convey Christian teachings. This paper considers the transmission of one Christian song form into the Highlands of Papua New Guinea in the 1970s, and which now forms the basis of many songs composed in local languages, both within the church and outside of it. I based my observations on fieldwork conducted over the period of 2004-2007 in and around Lake Kopiago in the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea, which is home to the Duna (or Yuna) language group