It really says something about not just the breadth of colonialism's reach, but also the dearth of its creativity that there are countries called "Guinea" on opposite sides of the globe. Apparently, New Guinea was named by Yñigo Oritz de Retez who thought its inhabitants were similar to the inhabitants of African Guinea. Hm. I wonder what those similarities might be... I guess we'll never know (Guinea's etymology eventually leads back to "Land of the Blacks"). I don't want to rib the guy too hard, because as an explorer and seasoned seafarer, de Retez did a heck of a lot more with his life than I have, but still. Naming countries wasn't his forte.
Papua New Guinea is about half of the world's second largest island, the other approximately half, called... let me see here... Western New Guinea? Seriously? Ok, fine. Western New Guinea is part of Indonesia. As it turns out, Papua New Guinea is probably the most culturally diverse country in the world, containing a whopping 840 living languages and just as many customary communities, which the majority of the country's inhabitants still live in.
I have to say, I am again disappointed to find that most of the history of Papua New Guinea starts post-colonialism. It makes sense, because the tribes didn't have writing, but surely their oral histories must count for something, yes? Like, you could even say "Oral accounts tell such and such," with the understanding that oral histories have their own form of distortion. But we've got what we've got, I suppose.
So it goes like this: the northern half of what would become Papua New Guinea was colonized by Germany, and the southern half was colonized by Great Britain. In 1905, Britain transfers its control of British New Guinea to Australia and it is renamed Territory of Papua. Then, in 1914, Australia takes German New Guinea shortly after the outbreak of World War I. After WWI ends, the League of Nations said Australia could retain control of German New Guinea, now called Territory of Guinea, but that, for some reason, the Territory of Papua was only an external territory of Australia but still legally British. Even though the Brits gave it to Australia. End result? Papua and New Guinea, from the end of WWI to 1949, were both controlled by Australia, but required two separate administrative systems. People looked at that and nodded and said, "Yes. This is acceptable."
Throughout all this, nobody asked what the local tribes thought of all this. To be sure, nobody asked the local tribes what they thought about the Japanese coming in an taking control of the area during WWII either. In any case, after WWII, Papua and New Guinea were combined into Papua New Guinea, settling many a bureaucratic headache but also cutting off a number of opportunities for petty corruption, and the region achieved independence in 1975. Interestingly, the Papua New Guinean government did seem to ask local tribes what they wanted, and settled on a type of tenure called "customary land titles," which gives indigenous people inalienable tenure over their traditional lands.
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Today's composer is George Telek (b.??) from the village Raluana on the northernmost point of New Britain, an island to the east of Papua New Guinea. Local legend has it that, as a child, Mr. Telek chewed on a sacred betel nut and was granted dreams of his ancestors which gave him the basis for his music. While George Telek is still rooted in his village life, he is the first Papua New Guinean to achieve international fame in music. The National Broadcasting Corporation began putting out recordings of local talent in 1977, and Mr. Telek recorded 5 solo albums with them. Later, in 1986, he met Australian rock musician David Bridie, and had a long and fruitful career working together with him. The song below, Tatabai, is the result of this collaboration between the two artists.
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