Bosavi: Rainforest Music From Papua New Guinea [Box set]

Various Artists (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 27, 2001)
• Number of Discs: 3
• Format: Box set
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Smithsonian Folkways
• ASIN: B000059RTY
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #231,991 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #16 in Music > World Music > Africa > Guinea

Editorial Reviews

Two generations of Bosavi musicians and 25 years of field recordings: a comprehensive and intimate musical portrait of life in a Papua New Guinea rainforest community. Includes the contemporary music of the youngest generation of guitar band composers, and performances of many traditional everyday and ritual styles featuring their parents. Recorded and annotated by Steven Feld, producer of Voices of the Rainforest and author of Sound and Sentiment. Three CDs. 193 minutes. 47 tracks. 80-page booklet with photos and extensive notes.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Primitive voices, May 24, 2001

By 

Pharoah S. Wail (Inner Space) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Bosavi: Rainforest Music From Papua New Guinea (Audio CD)

I've had this cd for a few days now and have listened to each disc three times so far. First I'll give you some general information about this boxed-set.

Disc 1 is made up of the new style of music that is currently gaining strength in Papua New Guinea... acoustic guitar bands (recorded in the 1990s). The guitar-band music has a mixture of influences, ranging from some of the traditional vocal elements of the region, the chorus unison of Christian missionary musics, and also some of the rhythmic blockiness of Western popular musics. This isn't the radio-ready electronic beats of a group like Deep Forest though. The guitar music ends up sounding like a sort of American folk music, with the lyrical and vocal elements of Papua New Guinea. One of the lead vocalists, Rebeka, has a really great voice.

Disc 2 is more traditional. It is all sounds and work-songs, recorded during everyday life. These recordings are all from the 1970s and '80s. There are songs sung by men as they move logs out of the forest, songs by women as they scrape sago (a food), etc... The songs are mainly small-group vocals, with the accompanying percussion being work-related. Like the sound of whatever tool it is that they use when they pound the sago. There are also songs that mimic the sounds of jungle creatures familiar to the people. Also thoroughout this set you will hear the sounds of jungle creatures and background chatter. If it happened while the person was singing, you hear it.

Disc 3 is the oldest, most primitive music on here, and I mean that in a good way. It is largely music that is extinct now, as it was music that accompanied ceremonies and rituals which are gone now. To Western ears, much of the music on disks 2 and 3 may sound "sloppy". These 2 disks contain what may be the singlemost primitive musical form(s) in my collection, and being that I have a fair amount of field-recordings of Indigenous musics from all over the world, that is saying something. Much of this music does not adhere to what we think of as "highly technically developed" ideas of meter, vocal unison, etc... Depending on what you want or expect from this set, this could be a good or bad thing. If you're willing to let yourself travel way back in time to humans in their natural state, this music is rather fascinating. What really strikes me about some of the music on disks 2 and 3 (especially disk 3 from about track 5 onward) is that there must be a large amount of echo where these people live. With their voices and rattles they do uncanny musical interpretations of echoes and the Doppler Effect. 2 and 3 are my favorite discs in the set. Both appeal to me more than the guitar bands.

I definitly want you to think about this set thoroughly. It is most certainly not for everyone, but will indeed speak deeply to some of you. More than being like "an album", it is an aural documentary of one region of Papua New Guinea and the changes it has undergone. No matter how it is received by anyone's personal tastes, it is a great document of a group of peoples and their disappearing traditional ways of life, song, and thought. It also comes with a thorough 72-page booklet.

(12/30/07 edit: I should change this whole review since I see this site has added all their information after I wrote the review... making much of my review seem redundant. For right now I just want to add that anyone interested in this, or who already has it but would like to hear more guitar bands, should get Songs of the Volcano. I reviewed it quite some time ago. I loved it then and love it now. I greatly prefer the guitar bands/styles on that album over the ones here on Bosavi. Buy Bosavi for the older, extinct styles, and buy Songs of the Volcano for great guitar & vocal bands from a different region of PNG).