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392 MALEKULA
“ battery " of these tomes naninggol. When they are to be used
during a Nalawan ceremony or during the funeral rites of a
member of this secret society, they are arranged with their
open ends raised on a kind of trestle, their closed ends resting on
the ground. The performer, holding a reed pipe, seats himself
in front of the trestle, inserts the pipe into one of the cylinders
to the proper depth and then blows down it, when a booming
note, of the pitch characteristic of that cylinder, is given forth.
The quality of the sound is not unlike that of a hautboy.
For a typical performance about three men will be playing
simultaneously on these cylinders. The speed and dexterity
with which the reed pipes are withdrawn from one cylinder and
inserted into another of different pitch is especially remarkable.
They are usually played in conjunction with two hand-gongs
and two or, three singers. The gongs maintain the rhythm of
the piece, and are responsible for the difficult rhythmic transitions
at the end of one movement and the beginning of the next.
The singing is of a chanty nature, to which the temes naairggol
serve as an accompaniment, or, rather, with which they_a.re
integrated, somewhat in the manner of a part~song. At times
the singing stops, and the cylinders burst into a kind of musical
pyrotechnics, with trills punctuated by horn-like notes on the
small high-pitched cylinders and backed by a continuous deep
note on the larger ones, interrupted now and then by scale-like
passages and sometimes rising to a prolonged climax in which all
the cylinders merge into a long-drawn harmony—or discord}
, THE RITES or THE Nalawan
The rites themselves fall into two parts. The ï¬Årst comprises
the manufacture and erection of the necessary paraphernalia
and the payment for these to the introducer. The time thus
spent varies, but generally two days sufï¬Åce. The second part,
which is the rnore. important and the more spectacular, lasts
from the morning after the invitations have been sent out to
the neighbouring villages until the afternoon of the following
1 Deacon writes of this music ; " The total effect is unlike anything I have
ever heard, except some Japanese records oi Japanese orchestral music." And
again: “So fat I have found it hopeless to try and record the music. It is
altogether too unlike anything I am used to; moreover, it is orchestral in
character and therefore really needs a phonograph to do anything with it. It
is a powerful form of art."
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