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Accepted Paper:

Documenting sung stories in Lihir: a genre, a community, a mine  
Kirsty Gillespie (Queensland Museum/James Cook University)

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I present a recent documentation project for the narrative genre 'pil' and the newly-published bilingual collection 'Pil: Ancestral Stories of the Lihir Islands'. I discuss the process of putting the book together and some of the challenges.

Paper long abstract:

In the Lihir Islands of Papua New Guinea there is a form of storytelling known as pil, where a fictional narrative is punctuated by recurring song. The practice of telling pil has been identified by the people of Lihir as a tradition under threat by recent social change—change that has been accelerated by the introduction of gold mining in the islands in the mid-1990s. This perceived threat has resulted in the pil genre being included in the Lihir Cultural Heritage Plan as something to be safeguarded through documentation and transmission.

In this paper I share this narrative form, reflecting on the role of song in the stories by examining a few key examples. I present a recent documentation project for pil which has resulted in the newly-published bilingual collection entitled Pil: Ancestral Stories of the Lihir Islands; I discuss the process of putting the book together and some of the challenges. Finally, in acknowledging that a primary funding source for this work on Lihir has come from the mining company itself, I reflect on this research partnership with industry and what this means for the documentation, promotion and very viability of Lihir performance traditions now and to come.

Panel P10
Valuing research on musical traditions and performance practices
  Session 1 Tuesday 3 December, 2019, -