Details

Latitude

-28.322

Longitude

141.7335

Start Date

2023-02-19

End Date

2023-02-19

The PNG Peroveta Singers of Canberra was recorded in a two part series about music and dance of the Central Province of Papua New Guinea recorded by the PARADISEC team in 2023. The recordings of the Group's performances were made at the Holy Cross Anglican Church at Hackett, ACT. This episode is the first part, "PNG Peroveta (Prophet Songs)" which covers a style of singing introduced by the LMS South Sea Islands missionaries mainly from Cook islands or Kuki Airani from about 1884. Peroveta is taken from the English word, Prophet because the first Peroveta songs were from the Old Testament so Peroveta is a corruption of the word Prophet. The main person who taught Peroveta singing and songs with it's origins from the Cook Islands was Ruatoka then other local people who continued teaching the songs were Teina Materua who was part Cook Islands and Motuan. Peroveta singing traditions has spread out along the Papuan coastal villages of Central Province through LMS pastors and missionaries and reaching out further to other provinces in the Southern Region. The various Central Province languages used in the Peroveta songs Motu, Hula, Keapara, Mailu along the south east Papuan coast and Cook Islands Maori or Raratongan. The Group, formed in Canberra ACT in 1999 by the PNG diaspora community was with the aim to connect strongly to where the people come from while they are living away from their homeland, Central Province and Papua New Guinea. The interviews and recordings are in PC2 collection and in response to legacy archival recordings in the MG1 and IC1 collections. (Jodie Kell and Steven Gagau, February 2023)

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