Neil R. Coulter, SEM 2006, 1 “Last Speaker Ethnography: The Alamblak Garamut as an Example of Fishman’s Stage Eight” Neil R. Coulter SEM Honolulu, November 2006 …on a Friday morning, I am relaxing at our house in Amongabi village with my family. We sit on the front steps and await the sound of the garamut, a log slit-drum, which will be hit three times to signal the start of the Friday morning church meeting, a practice of the Evangelical Brotherhood Church. At about half past eight, we do hear a garamut, but it comes from the opposite direction as the mission station. [example] “Oh, bikman antap em i dai pinis nau,”1 says one of our neighbors immediately. I am shocked to realize that the “bikman” who just died was Wakari, a good friend and teacher of mine—in fact, just two weeks earlier, he had made a garamut for me, a garamut that is now sitting in my house. It is the last thing Wakari ever made in this life. The garamut at his house continues to sound out his name, informing Amongabi, and neighboring villages, of his death. Throughout that day and all through the night, family and clan relatives and others from the village will mourn Wakari with weeping and songs of mourning, and on Saturday, he will be buried in the local cemetery. The above story happened on November 19, 2004, in the Alamblak language group of Papua New Guinea’s East Sepik Province, but the images and sounds are commonplace in many villages throughout Papua New Guinea (PNG). Significant events in life are associated with distinctive sounds. In many cases, the sound that alerts village residents to an important event comes from the garamut2—a log slit-drum, struck with a stick. For many generations, men and women alike have utilized the garamut signal system for communication over long distances. The garamut is capable of communicating not only news of the major events of life—birth, marriage, death—but also mundane daily conversation. A man in the village could ask a cousin in the bush if his hunting has been 1 ‘The old man who lives up the path just died.’ ‘Garamut’ is the Tok Pisin term for this type of log slit-drum found throughout PNG, and I have chosen to use this general term throughout this paper. The Alamblak term is ‘nrwit.’ 2 Neil R. Coulter, SEM 2006, 2 successful; villagers along the river system might alert each other to the imminent arrival of government officials; a man returning to his home village from a hunt can ask his wife to begin preparing food for his arrival. My Alamblak neighbors assure me that whatever can be said in normal speech can also be said using the garamut. The Alamblak language group, numbering approximately 1500 speakers, is situated in PNG’s Sepik Hills region.3 Though contact with the town culture of Wewak is limited, due to difficult and expensive travel conditions, Alamblak daily life has changed greatly since the mid-20th century. With regard to the Alamblak soundscape, cassette players, radios, and guitars have become as common as kundus,4 bamboo flutes, and garamuts. Adults, and particularly the older men and women, frequently express to me regret over the loss of many parts of older Alamblak culture. In fact, a part of their motivation in inviting me to live and work among them was their desire to have their indigenous musics recorded for posterity. One of the first projects that my Alamblak friends suggested to me was to learn as much of the garamut language as I could. Being interested in both linguistics and music, I was eager to begin this work. The task of learning such a complex system was daunting, and I am only able here to present a very small sample of the structure and logic of the Alamblak garamut. Although anything spoken can be played on the garamut, the garamut language does not in any way match the Alamblak spoken language. 3 As surveyed in Wayne Dye, P. Townsend, and W. Townsend, “The Sepik Hill Languages: A Preliminary Report,” Oceania 39, no. 2 (1968): 146-156. 4 The kundu (Alamlak = ‘watit’) is an hourglass shaped, single membrane drum, found commonly throughout PNG. Neil R. Coulter, SEM 2006, 3 The first patterns my teacher taught me were people’s names. A person’s name, as sounded on the garamut, is more than merely a sonic representation of that person’s village or Christian name.5 To know a person’s garamut name is to understand that person’s place in the Alamblak community. In calling out to an individual, the garamut marks the clan affiliation of that individual. As an example, I will examine the garamut name of Daniel Membu, one of the older men of Amongabi village. Each individual male name contains two distinct parts; female names comprise three distinct parts, but I will comment on that later. The first part of the name signifies the man’s own clan membership. Within the Alamblak language group, there are four major clans. Within these four clan groups, there are twenty separate lineages, or families. However, neither the four major clans nor the twenty lineages form the precise referent of the garamut name. The garamut name is based instead upon the totem objects specific to each clan: a majority of the totems are birds, but some are other animals, trees, and sacred stones. Therefore, to understand the garamut name, one must not only know the clan, but also all of the possible totems “owned” by that clan. To know whose name the garamut calls, one must also know which object has been given to that person as his totem. Traditionally, a father gave this “name” to his son or daughter. In the case of Daniel, the first name in his garamut name is gobof barir, a specific kind of hornbill. Here is the pattern on its own, played one time: [example] From this 5 Each Alamblak person has a village name, which is of local origination and is frequently a name of historical significance, and a Christian name. The Christian name often comes from the Bible, but it can also be any Western name. Neil R. Coulter, SEM 2006, 4 aural information, one can know that Daniel is part of the clan, one of whose totem objects is the gobof barir, hornbill. The second part of a man’s garamut name is also a clan totem name. This second name signifies the man’s mother’s clan affiliation. When an Alamblak woman marries, she may keep her own clan membership rather than give it up to become part of her husband’s clan. This cultural fact is demonstrated by the garamut names, which incorporate the mothers’ individual identities. Daniel’s mother’s garamut clan totem name is gabis, or flying fox, which is played through once here: [example] Again, a person who knows the Alamblak garamut system now knows that the man’s mother is a part of the clan that claims ownership of the gabis, flying fox. After the mother’s clan name is played, the man’s clan name is played again. Each of these patterns may be repeated multiple times. For example, the garamut player could hit Daniel’s clan name four times in succession, then play his mother’s clan name twice, then play Daniel’s clan name three times. The number of repetitions within a segment of the phrase does not affect the meaning. The order of the segments within a phrase must be maintained, however. So now, with that information, here again is Daniel’s garamut name, played in its entirety. [example] I mentioned above that a woman’s garamut name contains three patterns instead of two. A woman’s name is constructed in exactly the same way as a man’s—woman’s clan name, woman’s mother’s clan name, woman’s clan name—but an additional pattern is added to the end of the whole name. This is a pattern that Alamblak speakers call Neil R. Coulter, SEM 2006, 5 suim, or ‘grass skirt.’6 The suim, or grass skirt, garamut name is the pattern that functions as a feminine marker. The garamut name suim sounds like this: [example] While people’s names are very significant in the Alamblak garamut system, statements played on the garamut generally begin with a place name rather than a person’s name. Speaking through the garamut, I am often told, is the same as writing a letter: you have to write the address first, or the letter will not be delivered to the right place. Each statement on the garamut, then, will begin with the name of the place to which the player is directing his communication. However, as with a person’s name, a place name is more than the spoken name of that place. The garamut name of an Alamblak village gives a glimpse of the history of that place. As an example, we will consider the name of my host village, Amongabi. Amongabi’s garamut name is comprised of three distinct parts. The first part is a name that is common to all garamut place names. This is the name wifndangt, which signifies ‘bush.’ Wifndangt is played at the start of any place name to inform the hearers that what is to follow will be a place name. It provides no more specific information than a cue to begin the name of a place. Incidentally, if the intended recipient of the garamut call is himself in the bush, then wifndangt is the only name that needs to be played. Those who hear just this pattern will understand that the garamut player is speaking to someone who is away from the village. Wifndangt, in isolation, sounds like this: [example] The second name within the garamut name for Amongabi village is bastimbra, which is a kind of tree. Bastimbra is a clan totem. Its presence as part of a place name refers to the original owners or settlers of the land on which Amongabi now sits. The 6 Tok Pisin = ‘purpur’ Neil R. Coulter, SEM 2006, 6 first family to move into what is now Amongabi was part of the clan that owns, as one of its totems, bastimbra. This is a fact that any Alamblak person knows, and so placing the clan totem name within the place name makes the place name clear. Here is just the garamut name bastimbra: [example] The third part of Amongabi’s garamut name is the name fikatifm, which refers to a specific section of land in the Alamblak area. All Alamblak villages are built along the middle Karawari and Wagupmeri Rivers. Traditionally, Alamblak people regarded the village of Simbut as a mid-point or dividing line. I have been told that this was due to Simbut being a convenient harbor to tie up canoes on a journey. This dividing line is reflected in the garamut names for the villages. All villages in the lower half of the language group—from Murwok downriver to Tanganbit—are on the ground called fikatifm. Garamut names for these villages include the name fikatifm. Villages beginning with Simbut and going upriver to the other end of the language group do not include fikatifm in their garamut names. So for an Alamblak speaker, finishing a garamut place name with fikatifm further specifies the location. This does not seem to be necessary for the clear understanding of the garamut place name, since none of the names I have been taught contain a common second name. Nonetheless, expectation dictates necessity, and fikatifm remains in the garamut names of any of those particular villages. The garamut name fikatifm is played again here: [example] Once these three names—wifndangt, bastimbra, and fikatifm—have been played, the player can optionally repeat the first name, wifndangt, once more as a way of closing the name. This is frequently, but not always, done. For the hearers, possibly this final repetition of wifndangt helps to separate the place name from what will come next in the Neil R. Coulter, SEM 2006, 7 garamut statement. Also, as with a person’s garamut name, each of the constituent names within a garamut place name may be repeated any number of times. The initial wifndangt, for example, is frequently played twice or three times, and the following two names are also usually repeated at least once. I will play the entire garamut name for Amongabi once more, as I did before with Daniel’s name: [example] The Alamblak garamut was a tremendous method of communicating over long distances. It utilized local materials and communicated using a unique and locally created sign system. But if it is such a useful system, then why am I now referring to it as though it is deceased? I use the past tense because the Alamblak people no longer use the garamut to communicate anything other than a death announcement, as in the opening story. While some Alamblak men do recognize a small number of signals, the majority of people have lost the intricacies of the system. A man may know that a garamut place name is a place name, but he is less likely to know just which village is being referenced. At the time of my fieldwork, from 2003 through 2006, Alamblak villagers acknowledged one old man, Kondak, as the “last speaker” of the garamut. “We know just a little,” men would tell me, “but Kondak knows it all.” Acting on these recommendations, I studied garamut with Kondak in 2005, and the information presented thus far in this paper has come from those lessons. Sociolinguists have written much about the disappearance of smaller languages, sometimes using emotion-laden terminology that I personally might avoid: death, endangerment, and extinction, among others. However, this discussion in sociolinguistics offers frameworks and methodologies that may be useful in considering other weakening and disappearing elements of the soundscape, such as the Alamblak Neil R. Coulter, SEM 2006, 8 garamut. Prominent sociolinguist Joshua Fishman has written prolifically on the concept of language shift—that constant ebb and flow of the vitality of spoken languages. He also proposes ways to diagnose language strength and actions that might be taken in order to revitalize weaker languages. His Graduated Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS) is a framework for categorizing the current trajectory of a weakening language.7 On this eight-stage scale, Stage One represents a language at its greatest stability, and Stage Eight represents a language nearing complete disappearance. At Stage Eight, according to Fishman, the only people who still know the language are few and elderly. A goal for the researcher at this stage is to reconstruct the language from data obtained from the few remaining speakers—a type of research called “last speaker ethnography.” One potential complication in last speaker ethnography is determining who qualifies as the last speaker, and whether the remaining people who know the language are, in actual fact, so few as initial observation seems to show. I suggest that Andrew Dalby’s definition of language death—that “a language ‘dies’ when it is no longer used in conversation”8—is especially appropriate for garamut communication. By this definition, the Alamblak garamut is nearly gone, since people no longer converse with each other using the garamut language. Initial observation in my work with the Alamblak told me that this was the case, but I also wanted to find a more objective method for gauging people’s knowledge of the garamut language. I needed to know with more precision that Kondak really is the last 7 For a detailed explanation of Fishman’s GIDS and of language shift in general, see Joshua A. Fishman, Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd., 1991), Chapters 1-4. 8 Andrew Dalby, Language in Danger: The Loss of Linguistic Diversity and the Threat to Our Future (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 220. Neil R. Coulter, SEM 2006, 9 speaker. To that end, I created two surveys. The first, a self-evaluation questionnaire, simply asked questions about people’s experience with various domains of music, including garamut. The other, a variation on the linguist’s recorded text test, asked people to listen to recorded examples of music, including garamut signals, and then identify the examples in some way.9 Of course neither of these surveys, nor my informal observations of Alamblak daily life, could be thoroughly objective, but looking generally at the results, I was satisfied that comprehensive knowledge of the garamut is nearly gone. Understanding why the Alamblak people have lost the knowledge of their garamut communication system is more complicated than the placement of the system on the GIDS. As Nicholas Evans points out for languages, last speakers may hold onto that identity as a position of prestige.10 The knowledge held by last speakers, writes Nancy Dorian, “entitles them to particular respect as a link with a more intact ethnic past.”11 Thus it may be that, among other factors contributing to the loss of garamut knowledge, Kondak, undeniably the last speaker, has kept the knowledge to himself as a way of continuing his identity as last speaker and the prestige that goes along with that identity. A host of other factors, such as schooling, increased—though still quite limited— movement between village and town, and greater interest in imported musics and technologies may also contribute to the weakened state of the Alamblak garamut. Such 9 These language survey methods are explained in detail in Frank Blair, Survey on a Shoestring: A Manual for Small-Scale Language Surveys (Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and The University of Texas at Arlington, 1990), Chapters 7 and 10. 10 This is a major point in Nicholas Evans, “The Last Speaker Is Dead—Long Live the Last Speaker!” in Linguistic Fieldwork, ed. Paul Newman and Martha Ratcliff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 250-281. 11 Nancy Dorian, qtd. in Evans, 277. Neil R. Coulter, SEM 2006, 10 complexity forces this aspect of the topic to be considered in future study and not in the present paper. But is the Alamblak garamut merely one example of many of the constant change that occurs in the balance of musics within any human community? Should I, as the outside observer, even care if the garamut communication disappears forever? After all, Alan Merriam told us that “energy poured into lament for the inevitability of change is energy wasted,” and concerns about preservation “[imply] a failure to consider the inevitability of change.”12 My job is not to persuade the Alamblak people to do one thing or another, but if a primary interest of the people themselves is the preservation and revitalization of local soundscape elements, then I need not convince them otherwise. If the local people are eager to work toward revitalization of the garamut system, then perhaps this particular change is not inevitable. In fact the Alamblak people are becoming increasingly interested in keeping hold of their local traditions. They recognize the garamut’s practical value and are determined not to let it die completely. Dalby writes, “It happens all too often—people regret that their language and culture are being lost but at the same time decide not to saddle their own children with the chore of preserving them.”13 Within the Alamblak community, it is the children who are now deciding that they want to keep the older traditions. Teenagers and young adults have committed to restore the tradition of the men’s initiation house, a context that ceased to function in the early 1970’s. This tradition, however, is being reimagined as a new context. What the young people are calling the 12 Alan P. Merriam, The Anthropology of Music (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 9. 13 Dalby, 252. Neil R. Coulter, SEM 2006, 11 “Alamblak Music and Culture Training Centre” will be a place for old and young to come together and learn. It will incorporate Alamblak traditions as well as newer influences such as guitar and keyboard. If this motivation evaporates amidst inter-clan politics and lack of widespread community cooperation, then Alamblak traditions, such as the garamut communication system, will continue their trajectory into complete disappearance. If, however, the Alamblak people do take action and work to reconstruct and practice a garamut communication system from the knowledge that still remains, they may prevent the garamut from ever having to play its own death announcement. Neil R. Coulter, SEM 2006, 12 REFERENCES Blair, Frank. Survey on a Shoestring: A Manual for Small-Scale Language Surveys. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and The University of Texas at Arlington, 1990. Dalby, Andrew. Language in Danger: The Loss of Linguistic Diversity and the Threat to Our Future. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Dye, Wayne, P. Townsend, and W. Townsend. “The Sepik Hill Languages: A Preliminary Report.” Oceania 39, no. 2 (1968): 146-156. Evans, Nicholas. “The Last Speaker Is Dead—Long Live the Last Speaker!” In Linguistic Fieldwork, ed. Paul Newman and Martha Ratcliff, 250-281. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Fishman, Joshua A. Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd., 1991. Merriam, Alan P. The Anthropology of Music. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964.