Island group in the Torres Strait, north of Cape York peninsula, Queensland, Australia, and south of the island of New Guinea. There is no indigenous term for the region, named after Luis Baez de Torres, the first known European to navigate it in 1606. While the Melanesian peoples of the Torres Strait employ the name ‘Torres Strait Islanders’, it is more common that they affiliate themselves with a particular island, village and family. Similarly, although an Islander performance can be broadly described in the common creole as in an ‘Ailan stail’, each performance also references the quite specific traditions and histories of one of the 18 communities in the Strait. The population of these diverse communities is small and is only a fraction of the total 31,000 Islanders, most of whom live on the Australian mainland. Three distinct languages are spoken: Meriam Mir in the eastern islands, Kala Lagaw Ya (and dialects) in the western islands and Torres Straits Broken, the creole language which is spoken throughout the area.
JUDE PHILP
Most Islander traditions recognize a movement of practices and customs from the western islands to the east in the distant past, when legendary heroes with supernatural powers moved from island to island bringing with them songs, dances, natural phenomena and rituals.
At Mabuiag, in the western islands, the exploits of the powerful Kuiam (born from an Aboriginal father and a Mabuiag mother) were celebrated at the island of Pulu, where Kuiam is said to have died. He gave specific songs and rites to the people of Mabuiag, and his exploits are also remembered through musical performances and stories by people of other islands in the Strait and beyond. Landtman (1927) recorded a song genre from Kiwai known as Kuiamo pipi (‘Kuiam's war song’), which, like the northern and western island songs it borrows from, is one of the few dance-song genres performed by men and women.
At Mer, in the east, the most powerful ritual cycle of the pre-colonial period (or bepo-taim) revolved around the figures of Malu and Bomai. As with many features of pre-colonial life, access to, participation in and knowledge of the ritual cycle was restricted to men and both reflected and gave meaning to the division of the island into clan groups. Each clan had particular responsibilities within the ritual cycle, including the Zagareb le, who were responsible for singing and playing the sacred drums, and members of the Beizam le, who traditionally wore the sacred masks. Similar to other island communities in the Strait, animal or plant totems were a feature of ritual life.
The majority of rituals connected with ceremonial activity involved both song and dance. Both were also a feature of secular life, and certain games, such as making string figures, also had associated songs. Music and dance was a feature of trade encounters, not only as a part of secular life but also as a trade item in itself.
Colonization began with the exploration of the Strait by British scientific expeditions from 1770, when charts for navigation of the region were compiled and expanded, allowing for safer and quicker passage to the new colonies in Australia. By the 1840s considerable numbers of Asians, Europeans, Pacific Islanders and Aboriginal peoples of Australia came or were brought to the region to fish for trepang (sea-cucumber) and to trade in turtleshell. These numbers rose with access to pearl beds in the central and western region. With this increased interest, parts of the Torres Strait were annexed to Queensland State in 1879. Islanders both participated in and were exploited by the new fisheries industries. Their welfare was soon championed by the London Missionary Society, which arrived at the eastern island of Erub in 1871, a day commemorated on 1 July as the ‘Coming of the Light’. Employing Pacific Islander teachers, the Society spread across the Strait and into Papua New Guinea, teaching in indigenous languages and rigorously imposing new structures (based around the church) on Islander life. While some traditional practices, notably warfare and indigenous belief systems, were suppressed by the government and church, many secular cultural practices were actively supported. Indeed, Mosby (1997, p.47) has argued that even inter-island warfare continued to a degree through competitive dance competitions between islands and symbolically in dances that employed elaborated fighting paraphernalia and drew from the traditions of warfare.
In 1914 the Society handed administration of the area to the Anglican church of Australia. It was a time of increased white dominance over Islanders' lives, a part of the ‘White Australia Policy’ that governed the movement of Islanders, controlling their freedom to travel from their home islands and to participate in the fishing industries. Pacific Islanders were forcibly removed from the area unless they could prove familial relations, and by the beginning of World War II the large contingent of Japanese workers had also been removed. During wartime many men joined the army, while Islanders in the lower western group were evacuated, and the ‘outer islands’ were left to survive as best they could. The end of the war marked the beginning of new opportunities for Islanders: many left the Strait to work on the mainland, while others worked in the fisheries industries, filling the vacuum left by the Japanese and Pacific Islanders. In 1967 they and their Aboriginal neighbours were ‘granted’ citizenship, and by 1992 enjoyed equal rights with settlers after winning the first successful land claim against the Australian government.
Historical events have inspired composers and choreographers of the Strait. The cautious first meeting between Islanders and missionaries is re-enacted in ‘Coming of the Light’ dances by warrior dancers employing the old songs of war (called pipi in the northern islands and kawaladi in the west). Similarly, songs that draw upon the musical traditions of the Pacific Islanders who came to the Strait tell of the history of inter-marriage and of the period at the height of the fisheries industries. Performances from Badu Island depict the movement of American fighters over their island in World War II, and the stories of their involvement feature the distinctive ‘aeroplane’ headdresses employed in the accompanying dance (Wilson, 1993, pp.101–2). Songs such as T.I., My Beautiful Home (referring to Thursday Island) explore the Islanders’ feelings of dislocation as they moved to the mainland for employment after the war.
In general, these are integrally linked, although there are several musical contexts without dance: incantations, music accompanying certain bepo-taim activities (e.g. fishing or games) and songs within storytelling. Islanders classify music according to the history to which it refers, its tempo and harmonic structure, language and the dress of the accompanying dancers. There is little purely instrumental music, although dance songs have instrumental introductions, which are generally the central rhythm of songs repeated while dancers prepare themselves. Certain ritual cycles, such as Malo-Bomai include passages of music without singing. Although with some songs there are few changes over several generations, innovation is also important: music of the Torres Strait Islanders has always drawn from the adjacent musical traditions of Papua New Guinea and Australia through long-standing trade and familial relations, as well as incorporating elements of the music entering the region as a result of colonization.
The first detailed European description of Islander performance comes from shipwrecked survivors of the mid-1800s, particularly John Ireland (King, 1838) and Barbara Thompson (Moore, 1979). Thompson described how songs were taken from one island to another as a part of trade which, along with warfare, brought the Islanders together (ibid., p.222–3). Oswald Brierly, who wrote down Thompson's recollections, also attempted to transcribe songs of the Kaurareg peoples of Muralug. One song, the Ghost Ship Dance, employed relics of European trade items in the costume and talks of Islanders’ expectations of the new European trade (ibid., 199 and 226). Samuel McFarlane, one of the first of the Society's missionaries in the Strait, described performances of games and dances by both Pacific and Torres Strait Islanders at their annual inter-island ‘May’ meetings in his reports (1872–87).
However, the most detailed analysis of music from the period of colonization comes from the psychologist and amateur musician C.S. Myers, who was part of the 1898 University of Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Strait. Using technology brought for physiological testing and linguistic analysis, Myers and the Expedition leader, A.C. Haddon, recorded songs and filmed a small excerpt of dances by Meriam and Aboriginal peoples at Mer. Myers theorized that while many songs showed influence both in the distant and more recent past, tunes belonging to their religious ceremonies were not affected by what he viewed as ‘contamination’ with European music. Importantly, Myers also documented the songs' performers and composers. He argued that in Torres Strait a person may be credited as the composer if they brought a song to an island and were the first to perform it there, citing the example of the singer Boa, who was credited as the composer of a song by the Meriam, although the song was heard by Boa at Tudu and was in fact originally from Muralug (Haddon, 1901–35 [1912], pp.239–41).
Beginning in the late 19th century, the musical influences of colonization brought new styles to the Islander repertory, both secular and religious. Islanders were taught Christian hymns by British missionaries and by Pacific Islanders, and services were reportedly carried out in a mixture of languages: Samoan, Lifuan, Englis and Meriam Mir or Kala Lagaw Ya, depending upon the Islanders concerned and the linguistic ability of the preacher (see Chalmers, 1886–91). From this mixture of styles Islanders began to compose their own hymns, analysed by Beckett as featuring a two-part harmony with lines that move independently, at times in antiphon or overlapping (Modern Music of the Torres Strait, 1981, p.2 of accompanying booklet).
Aside from church hymnody, Islanders incorporated other influences in their performances. Haddon noted that a particular dance of the Meriam was inspired by the music and action of a ferris wheel at the administrative island of Thursday Island (1888–9). Army drills also influenced segur/segul dances (see below) and inspired the creation of a separate genre, particularly popular in the western islands, where drill band competitions are a part of inter-school competitions. In the 1920s Hurley commented upon Mer Islanders' mimicry of the Thursday Island regiment, employing the stiff gait and repetitive drill motions within a dance (1924, p.36). With increased colonization, other musics (such as Polynesian and Malay genres) entered the Strait, in addition to Western popular musical styles.
Contemporary performance in the Torres Strait combines these elements in a variety of ways. Dances and their accompanying songs that relate to bepo-taim are known as kap kar (Meriam Mir) or mina kab (Kala Lagaw Ya), literally ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ dance. Secular or ‘play’ dancing and its accompanying dance-songs (which emerged strongly at the turn of the 20th century) are known as segul (Kala Lagaw Ya) or segur (Meriam Mir). Both these types of repertory are considered ‘older style’ and are currently maintained separately from other styles.
The musical style of bepo-taim is markedly different from later styles. The songs of bepo-taim are sung by men, are repetitive in their arcane wording and feature descending pitch; the vocal quality resembles crying. Laade described the framework of bepo-taim as anhemitonic pentatonic. Musical instruments consist of shell-trumpets and kundu and warup hourglass drums which are hollow, single-headed wooden drums (3–4 ft), with a tumpanium at one end and the other left open and played across the musician’s lap and beaten with one hand. The kindu drum is a long tube with a pinched ‘waist’ where a handle is attached, while the warup, exclusive to the Strait, resembles a curved hourglass and has no handle. The open end of the drum is split and resembles an open ‘jaw’. Both are tuned through heating beeswax on the tympanum to tighten the lizard skin (or formerly turtle-bladder, when lizard skin could not be obtained).
As Islanders began to move to the mainland, new styles of worship became popular, notably that of the Pentecost. While Anglican church music is usually accompanied by kundu drums and acoustic guitar, Pentecostal songs are accompanied by electric guitars and modern drum kits (Reeves-Lawrence, 1998, p.59). Other innovations in performance include the substitution of modern materials for older ones, for example in dance costumes. Sometimes this extends to instruments: objects such as plastic piping or discarded oil drums have come to replace the bamboo marap drums, probably introduced by Pacific Islanders. Marup are bamboo tubes around 75 cm long, with the inner nodes knocked out and the two end nodes left; there is no tympanum. These percussion instruments, played by women, are placed horizontally on a stand and beaten with two sticks; more traditional percussion instruments and rattles worn by dancers also occur. Marap are used in all genres except bepo-taim songs. In the northern islands, segul songs are distinctive in their use of guitars; despite this modern influence, however, they are still considered part of the ‘traditional’ music of the Torres Strait.
Certain occasions are the impetus for the creation of new segur/segul songs, such as inter-island competitions, family gatherings, the greeting of visitors and important days in the Torres Strait calendar. The existence of professional performers and troupes also stimulates this creativity.
The diversity of influences in contemporary Torres Straits musical performance is illustrated by performers such as the Mills Sisters, performing from the early 1960s. Drawing on their family's Samoan roots, their strongly harmonic music incorporates ukulele and guitars, with repertory ranging from Islander ballads exploring their Pacific heritage to international pop tunes. Perhaps the most nationally famous artist is the singer and dancer Christine Anu of Saibai Island, whose music draws on mainstream dance and hip-hop styles but also employs segments or samples of Islander songs, with lyrics that mix English, the creole language ‘Broken’, and her island dialect, Kala Kawaw Ya.
P.P. King: ‘Voyage of the Colonial Schooner “Isabella” in Search of Survivors of the “Charles Eaton”’, Nautical Magazine, vii (1838)
S. McFarlane: Reports and Letters to Directors of the London Missionary Society from the Field, 1872–1887
J. Chalmers: Reports and Letters to Directors of the London Missionary Society from the Field, 1886–1891
A.C. Haddon: Journal of Fieldwork in Torres Strait, 1888–9 (MS, GB-Cu Haddon Papers)
A.C. Haddon: ‘The Secular and Ceremonial Dances of Torres Strait’, Internationales Archiv für Ethnologie, vi (1893), 131–62
A.C. Haddon: Journal of Fieldwork in Torres Strait, 1898 (MS, GB-Cu Haddon Papers)
A.C. Haddon, ed.: Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits (Cambridge, 1901–35) [incl. C. Myers: ‘Music’, Arts and Crafts, iv (1912), 239–41]
F. Hurley: Pearls and Savages (New York, 1924)
G. Landtman: The Kiwai Papuans of British New Guinea: a Nature-Born Instance of Rousseau's Ideal Community (London, 1927)
W. Laade: Music History of the Murray Islands, Torres Strait (Canberra, 1969)
M.E. Lawrie: Myths and Legends of the Torres Strait (St Lucia, 1970)
W. Laade, ed.: Oral Traditions and Written Documents on the History and Ethnography of the Northern Torres Straits Islands, i (Wiesbaden, 1971)
D. Moore: Islanders and Aborigines at Cape York (Canberra, 1979)
L. Wilson: Kerkar Lu: Contemporary Artefacts of the Torres Strait Islanders (Brisbane, 1993)
S. Jenkins: ‘Ken Thaiday’, The Eye of the Storm: Eight Contemporary Indigenous Artists, National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, 1997) [exhibition catalogue]
T. Mosby: ‘Blood Brothers’, ArtAsia Pacific, no.14 (1997), 32–49
M. Reeves-Lawrence: ‘“Bethlehem” in Torres Strait: Music, Dance and Christianity in Erub (Darnley)’, Australian Aboriginal Studies (1998), 51–63
K. Mabo and J. Beckett: ‘Dancing in Torres Strait’, Oxford Companion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art (forthcoming)
Mer Island, film, dir. A.C. Haddon (Torres Strait Islands, 1898)
The Islanders, Australia Commonwealth Film Unit videotape, dir. C. Holmes and others (Torres Strait Islands, 1968)
Traditional Music of the Torres Strait, coll. J. Beckett, rec. 1960–61, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies AIAS 11 (1972) [incl. analysis and transcriptions by T. Jones]
Modern Music of the Torres Strait, coll. J. Beckett, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies AIAS 15 (1981) [incl. translations and transcriptions by E. Bani and others]