When the Bamboo Begins to Sing

I arrive in Bougainville knowing little about the Reeds Festival – and discover bamboo music that shakes the ground, dances carrying the stories of the island and an unexpected role for the common flip-flop. Behind the colour and humour is something more important: a celebration helping Bougainville’s traditions remain part of everyday life.

The first musician raises a flip-flop and brings it down hard on a bundle of bamboo pipes.

Thwack.

Around him, several dozen men do the same. Bamboo booms, rubber slaps and the ground begins to tremble. I have travelled to Bougainville expecting reeds. I have not expected them to be beaten with footwear.

The musicians advance in a tight formation, lifting bundles of pipes of different lengths. Some blow across the open ends, sending out deep, breathy chords. Others strike the bamboo against the earth and beat it with flip-flops. Traditionally, coconut husks were used, but somewhere along the way the humble rubber sole was promoted from protecting feet to carrying the bass line. It was affordable, portable and finally recognised as a musical instrument.

The result is not delicate. The bamboo produces a deep, booming rhythm that makes conversation pointless and drowns out everything else. The musicians remain impressively serious, which is no small achievement when part of the orchestra is being played with flip-flops.

This the Reeds Festival in Arawa, named after Bougainville’s bamboo panpipes.

Until this morning, I had only a vague idea of what that meant. In Port Moresby, the announcement of my destination had produced more questions than information.

In Papua New Guinea, conversations about festivals usually lead to Mount Hagen or Goroka, where enormous feathered headdresses and painted faces have become the country’s unofficial ambassadors. The Reeds Festival inspired a different reaction. My friends looked puzzled. None of them had heard of it. “Why Bougainville?” they asked. “Are you sure the festival exists?” They looked at me with the concern normally reserved for people who have announced plans to keep a crocodile in the bathroom. Travelling to Bougainville required an explanation; choosing its little-known festival over the famous Mount Hagen Show required several more.

I wanted to go immediately. My husband Errol was less convinced that the festival existed, but he was interested in escaping Port Moresby’s dust for a few days. It was not quite the same motivation, but it led to the same aeroplane.

From the air, Bougainville had appeared in extravagant shades of blue and green, as if somebody had increased the saturation and then misplaced the controls. The sea flashed between reefs; forest covered the land in every direction. Bougainville carries the name of a French navigator who, like many European explorers, dealt with the difficult business of naming places by using his own.

The plane door opened, and Bougainville introduced itself through heat. After the aircraft’s heroic air-conditioning, the humidity felt almost affectionate. At the roadside, women sat beneath rainbow-coloured umbrellas with piles of betel nut and fruit. Others wove bilums while children climbed slender palms with the casual confidence of people who had never been shown a health-and-safety video.

Then came the journey south in an overloaded Toyota Land Cruiser known, with admirable honesty, as “Mad Max”. Passengers occupied every available surface. Bags, baskets and boxes were arranged according to a system understood only by gravity. A small figure of the Virgin Mary bounced on the dashboard, watching the road with the expression of someone whose professional services were about to be required.

The driver, Steven, knew every bend and regarded the accelerator as a close personal friend. When another vehicle appeared ahead, the journey became a race without anybody bothering to announce it. By the end of the trip, I had become a firm believer in guardian angels.

Steven talked about cocoa, copra, copper, gold, beaches and fishing while the island flew past. When I asked about the festival, however, his confidence weakened. He thought it was happening. Probably. By the time I reached Arawa – with all limbs still attached – I was no longer entirely certain that I had crossed Papua New Guinea for an event that was real.

But the festival was real enough.

On the festival ground, men hold bundles of bamboo pipes of different lengths and beat them with flip-flops. The sound is fast, percussive and impossible to ignore. Beyond the musicians, women wait in long grass skirts, their hair bright with flowers and their necklaces made from shells, seeds and fibres. When their group moves forward, the skirts rise and fall like waves. Their steps look effortless.

The men arrive with bows, arrows and spears. They stamp, crouch and spring forward, their shouts cutting through the bamboo. One warrior charges towards the spectators with such conviction that the front row suddenly develops great enthusiasm for the second. I lift my camera and hope that it counts as protection.

There are no towering Highland headdresses here and little of the spectacular body paint familiar from Papua New Guinea’s larger shows. Bougainville’s beauty comes from local materials and precise detail: tapa cloth, woven fibres, shells, leaves and bilums coloured with natural dyes. The clothes do not disguise the dancers. They connect them to the forests, gardens and sea around them.

Their clothing is also much better adapted to the heat than mine. By midday, bare-chested men are dancing while I am being gently poached inside my clothes. I am beginning to understand the advantages of a grass skirt. Cultural admiration gives way to practical envy.

Groups have come from different communities, bringing their own songs, movements and styles of dress. Bougainville has more than twenty languages. I understand none of the words, yet the stories are not entirely hidden. Bodies bend to plant gardens, arms pull imaginary paddles, fishermen cast towards an invisible sea.

Children hover at the edges and copy the dancers when they think nobody is watching. A girl tests the movement of her skirt. A boy repeats a warrior’s stamping step, loses his balance and immediately pretends that this was part of the choreography. Older performers correct them with a gesture, a word or a laugh.

The festival was created to bring Bougainville’s communities together and keep their traditions visible to younger generations. Written down, that purpose sounds worthy and slightly administrative. Here, it has bare feet and grass skirts. It is a grandmother dancing until the crowd cheers, a teenager wearing something made by skilled hands, a child learning when to stamp and when to turn.

That matters on an island where the recent past is never far away. The Panguna copper mine brought environmental damage and bitter arguments over who received the wealth and who carried the cost. The conflict that followed devastated communities. Around Arawa, concrete remains disappear beneath vines, and faded commercial signs stand beside roads leading towards places reclaimed by forest.

Yet Arawa does not feel trapped in its past. The island is rebuilding itself in the ordinary, stubborn manner of daily life. The Reeds Festival belongs to that recovery. It does not feel like an attempt to ignore history. It feels like a decision about what should survive it. Bougainvillea spills over old ruins; bamboo sounds across the field; people sing in languages that could easily have been pushed aside. Rebuilding, I realise, is not always done with concrete.

The audience refuses to remain an audience for long. People call to relatives, sing along and wander into the dancing whenever restraint becomes too tedious. There is no polished boundary between performers and the spectators, and no sense that Bougainville has arranged itself neatly for my camera. I am simply inside the celebration, trying to anticipate the next movement and the next photograph.

Late in the afternoon, the light softens, but the dancers do not. Another group enters. Another rhythm begins. The bamboo players raise their instruments again, and the flip-flops return to duty. By now, the sight of a musician wielding a flip-flop over a bundle of bamboo seems entirely normal.

When the music finally stops, the sudden quiet feels almost suspicious. The musicians lower their bamboo. The dancers drift towards their families. A flip-flop lies in the dust, once again looking like an ordinary piece of footwear.