‘Behind every tree’?: ethnomusicology in Papua New Guinea

[Extract] Richard Alo was a Duna man from the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG). The Duna language is one of over 800 indigenous language groups in the country. These 800 languages make PNG "linguistically the most complex nation of the world" (Summer Institute of Linguistics 2007) and this diversity is very important to the musical landscape of the country, as I will discuss later in my paper. I have been studying the music of the Duna people of the Kopiago area for my doctorate, in particular looking at the contmuities apparent in their music that might otherwise (and artificially) be classified by researchers as "traditional" and "modem." In this paper, however, I want to look at the broader picture of music research in Papua New Guinea-a kind of snapshot of where we as ethnomusicologists have been, where we are now, and where we might be going. I thought this would be fitting, not only for a conference with such a title as "Islands" (Papua New Guinea being one),but considering the very location of this conference being in Queensland, the state closest to the land mass known as New Guinea, and our nearest of neighbours