
This article represents a fragment of my PhD thesis, in Social and Cultural Anthropology, and describes a traditional dance and singing event, generally called Sing-Sing, which I experienced in 1994, while spending two months with the Sawiyanoo tribe in Papua New Guinea.
The Sawiyanoo live in one of the most isolated regions of Papua New Guinea, which is hard to reach. The terrain is extremely difficult to access. It is a densely wooded and partly swampy bushland in the interior, which is bordered in the south by the foothills of the highlands. During my time with the Sawiyanoo, I became friends with Lapuwo, the village leader. In Papua New Guinea, political leaders are generally called Big Men. It was an unexpected opportunity when Lapuwo approached me to say: “Chris, we will do a Sing-Sing”. I got on his nerves for weeks, asking about a Sing-Sing. Several years had passed, Lapuwo told me, since the Sawiyanoo had held a Sing-Sing, not least because of the missionaries, who felt very negatively about traditional practices that did not conform with the Christian bible teachings. That is why the Sing-Sing has lost its original meaning in many places. Basically, the Sing-Sing is a religious ritual, which honours the spirits or ancestors but is also a war dance. Today, in many parts of Papua New Guinea, it has degenerated into a folkloric dance spectacle, like the great national Sing-Sing of Mount Hagen, where groups from all over Papua New Guinea attract thousands of tourists. In this respect, the Sing-Sing of the Sawiyanoo was something special, not only for me, but for all participants. It was a journey back in time into a world where the living and the dead exist together in the present.
The Sawiyanoo, themselves, usually referred to their most important community building as house Sing-Sing. In the more densely populated areas along the Sepik, it is mainly called house Tambaran. The literature also call these buildings, which are up to fifty metres long, men’s houses, cult or ghost houses. From the planning of war to the transmission of myths, almost all social activities were closely associated with these houses, which made them dangerous places, especially for missionaries, as they represented the political and religious centres of people. In the truest sense of the word, these houses were the centre of the social world, in which the clans came together to direct the fate of the group.

May River, seen from a helicopter

The Sawiyanoo territory
After most of the preparations were accomplished, we started on the day long bush hike towards the house Sing-Sing, which is hidden and secluded in the dense rain forest. The mood among our people became increasingly exuberant and most everyone looked forward to the impending event with great excitement. Especially the juveniles, who embraced the endeavour with loud laughter and sometimes silly joking. At the same time, the older generation was rather serious about the upcoming Sing-Sing, as it still bears the religious significance of bygone times. I didn’t hide my excitement and was looking forward to the coming days full of expectations. I was somewhat surprised that this Sing-Sing had come about since the preparations for such a feast could take up to a month or more. We, on the other hand, had only ten days and – most importantly – a limited amount of food. The initiator of a Sing-Sing must be quite wealthy, because it is up to him to provide enough Kai-Kai (food), Brush (tobacco leaves) and Betel (betel nut) for all participants. In the case of a large festival, the expenses can even lead to short-term “impoverishment”. Depending on the status and power of the Big Man, the number of guests can amount to several hundred. In our case, I counted around a hundred participants. The food that my friend Jack and I could gather together, with great difficulties, was quite sparse and served as a symbolic addition to the common diet, which consisted mostly of sago and sweet potatoes. However, this did not negatively affect the mood in any way. I was deeply moved by the realisation of how little the people can get by on but were still able to get into an exuberantly high mood. Some villages joined together to celebrate this Sing-Sing. And so it happened that the people from the villages of Yonuwai, Kauvia and Waniap joined the people of Ama to dance. As mentioned earlier, we left the village of Ama on Wednesday to hike towards the camp. There, we used the coming night for further preparations, including a night hunt, to chase down one of Lapuwo’s domesticated pigs to be cooked for our Sing-Sing.
The domesticated pigs live free, like their wild conspecifics, but they still remain close to the people. This is also because the Sawiyanoo have a close relationship with their animals. For instance, women would breastfeed the piglets themselves, in case the mother didn’t have enough milk to feed them all. As a rule, domestic pigs can be found in the bush within one day. After a pig has been spotted, several men will shoot their arrows simultaneously to kill the pig. This method makes sense in several ways. On the one hand, there is a greater probability that the pig dies a stress-free and faster death and on the other hand, a wounded and therefore, aggressive pig could seriously hurt or even kill the hunter. While we were on the hunt for the pig, we came to talk about magic, in particular Magic Bilong Killing Pig (the magic of killing the pig). This magic is known only to initiated and experienced hunters. Lapuwo’s son Jack explained this to me in more detail:
“Only the magic man is capable of this magic. The magic was once owned by the forest spirits and passed on to Aworu Fua (an ancestral divine figure, who is important in the Sawiyanoo’s myth of origin). Thus, he obtained this magic and continued to pass it on to the generations to come. The root of this magic is Kolonialiyoli, a non-toxic plant, which the hunter carries with him to eat. This plant not only attracts pigs, but also other wild animals. The plant guarantees the hunter successful prey. In the past, however, the magic was stronger than nowadays. Another plant of importance is the Aliyoli plant, which enables the hunter to transform into any animal he intended to hunt. This magic has its origin at Mount Ama, I was told. Once, a long time ago, a man from the village of Ama walked into the swampland and felt a sago palm tree there. Some metres away from the felled tree he erected a fence, made of tree branches and bush materials. The fence served the man as a hiding spot with a small viewing hole from where he could spot bypassing wildlife. The man waited behind the fence until late in the afternoon when a pig came to eat from the felled sago palm. The man shot his arrow through the small viewing hole and hit the pig. The wounded pig, however, fled with the arrow in his body, heading towards Mount Ama. For the man, this particular arrow carried significant importance, because he had killed many pigs with it. Since the man did not want to abandon his highly valued arrow and the wounded pig, he followed the blood trail until the next morning. When he arrived at Mount Ama sometime later, he saw a man sitting by the river, who was just washing blood from his body. He then asked the wounded man who he was and whether he was the spirit of a Popowa (deceased person). As it turned out, the man identified himself as a magic man, who had transformed into a pig the night before, the same pig, the man had shot. After revealing his identity, the magic man took the villager with him to his village at Mount Ama. This village is invisible to everybody. No one can see this village except the man who walked along with the magic man. After they had reached the mountain, the magic man passed on his magic to the hunter. There he showed the villagers everything there is to see and to know. He then cut a piece of flesh from his buttocks, roasted it by the fire and asked the villagers to eat it. This flesh transferred the magic onto the villager. The magic man also gave him the magical plants and explained a rule to the villager: “If you see a pig eating sago in the late day, you must not kill it, because it will be a magic man. Only when you see a pig eating sago at night, you can kill it. After the instructions, he gave the man a pig and sent him back to his village. When the man arrived in the village, he tried the new magic and it worked. He showed the magic only to the big men. The young men were only allowed to learn about it during the initiation ritual.”

Hunting down the pig

Preparing the pig for the upcoming Sing-Sing
After we had killed, cleaned, gutted and dismembered the pig, the women handled the preparation of the individual slaughters, while the men began to polish their jewellery to get ready for the dance. They sanded and cleaned their boar tusks, animal skins were laid out and the valuable applications from the feather dresses, made of the birds of paradise, were brought back into shape. Also, Kina shells and knives carved out of Kasuari thigh bones as well as bracelets came to the surface. Last but not least, some men decorated themselves with ritual objects, such as human head plates and human cranial bones, which also served as jewellery for the upcoming Sing-Sing, together with a particularly extensive collection of weapons of different kinds, such as arches, arrows and paring knives, varying from each other based on their purpose. The penis chucks were also decorated with foliage. For a while, the men ventured into the surrounding forest to look for plants, suitable for colour extraction used for body painting. Long reed grasses were split in fibre direction and bundled in dense tufts, which were attached under bracelets and ankle bracelets and also served as part of the rich festive presentation. The women made skirts from semi-dry grasses, which were also worn by the men, but only for the occasion of a Sing-Sing. Regarding the body painting, all the needed colours were now available. The colour red was obtained from a fruit similar to the Rambutan. The plant’s inside contains small red seeds, which were crushed and mixed with a little water before being applied to the skin. For brown colours, dark soil was used, whereas the white colour was extracted from lime shells and black was made out of charred wood. The green colour was obtained by chewing chalk and green leaves mixed with salvia. After all the preparations were finished, we all sat down, ate sago and chatted late into the night.
The next day, early in the morning, we left the camp and made our way to the house Sing-Sing. Along our hike, we gathered bush animals like beetles, rats, crocodiles, sago worm larvae etc. Jack discovered a lizard that was looking out for prey on one of the numerous treetops. Four young men climbed the trees and then with loud shouts, chased the lizard and caught and killed it. The lizard turned out to be a welcome enrichment to the sparse march catering. Although not lavish, I reluctantly chewed the almost raw meat, which was roasted briefly over the open fire. Over time, the men collected more bush material until we reached some abandoned garden, which had been used some 20 years ago during the shifting cultivation circle.

A baby crocodile before being cooked.

Young boy showing a roasted bush rat
The women immediately took care of the fire pit and roasted bananas and sago, while the men continued to decorate themselves for the upcoming Sing-Sing. Although the Sing-Sing hadn’t started yet, it was already loud and the sounds of their singing and shouting could be heard deep into the rainforest. While the men applied the final decorative touch, I, and my young friend named Samson, walked the women and children to the house Sing-Sing, where we stayed and waited for the men to arrive. After some time, we could hear some frightening voices and vigorous drumbeats from a far distance. The sounds slowly came closer, it got louder and louder until it was so loud and frightening that the remaining voices of the forest fell silent. All the men were emotionally upset and in an ecstatic state of mind. The group presented itself as fearless warriors, ready to cut off the heads of their enemies. While singing and dancing, they slowly moved towards the house Sing-Sing.
Once they entered the house, the singing and dancing continued. This was around 19:00. The men stayed in ecstasy for five more hours and finally took the first break at 24:00. Shortly after, they continued with their exhausting singing and dancing. It was not until 07:00 in the morning that they stopped to run out in front of the house Sing-Sing, to loudly and aggressively reintroduce themselves as fearless warriors before the exhausted men finally fell on their knees and right into sleep. The house Sing-Sing was impressively large. It was built on massive poles, about two metres above the swampy and muddy ground. The inside and outside were decorated by numerous wild boar and human skulls. Inside the house, there were twenty fire pits. However, the house had only two small, very narrow entrances, through which one could only meander in a stooped posture. Except for the joints in the floor, the side walls and the roof, there were no other openings to the outside. Accordingly, the smoke development was intense when all fireplaces were used. In my opinion, the strong smoke was a significant part of the overall mood and exerted a strong hallucinogenic effect. The men were especially affected, during their ecstatic dance, where they were deeply breathing. Although I was gasping, I decided not to flee into the fresh air but to stay in the room and become part of the action. The exuberance of the dancers, the entire visual impression and the monotonous rhythmic sound of the drums shaped an extraordinary experience, which gave me a new state of consciousness. Around 04:00 in the morning, I fell asleep for a short time. A dream happened to put me back in Austria. It was a short but very intense and realistic dream. I saw my writing desk in front of me and was convinced that I was in my bed at home. In my dream, I was home in Austria, when I opened my eyes, I saw unreal scenery. I saw thick smoke, warriors dancing in the pale light of the fireplaces, decorated and painted bodies, human skull bones, boar bones through pierced noses, I heard deafening singing, the sound of war drums, the stomping of the feet, the clanging of the colliding spears and arrows, the tangle of voices around me and so on. All these intense stimuli made me believe, I was in a fantastic dream. It took a while until I finally realised that this was not the dream, but the reality. The short moment when I saw my writing desk and believed I was home in Austria, was the dream. However, despite the unreal and dangerous scenery, I felt more safe than all the weeks before. I had the genuine feeling of being accepted being part of this group. I was not alone and enjoyed the protection of the group. At that moment there seemed to be no dangers in the whole world because I felt protected by fearless warriors.

Front view of the house Sing-Sing

Ecstatic dancing during the Sing-Sing
However, this feeling of safety was deceiving, because the fact was that there were numerous dangers around the house Sing-Sing, lurking in the dense swamp forests. In every conversation, danger is always a central theme for the Sawiyanoo and essentially determines the thinking and actions of the people. The survival of the group depends on knowing all the dangers and being prepared for them. In principle, everything unknown is dangerous. This is especially true for foreign terrain. Conversations about dangers show all too clearly how much the Sawiyanoo are on their own. The outside world therefore becomes a hostile environment. Especially with densely overgrown subsoil, people observe every step, no movement is thoughtless. From time to time you hear a loud outcry, as happened on our way to the house Sing-Sing. One of the men saw a snake on the side of the trail. Some panicked and behaved hysterically, and some men tried to kill the snake. Every snake not killed is a source of danger. The fear of snakes is understandable. If someone gets bitten by a snake, for example in the arm, then the arm must be amputated. That often would be the only way to save a man’s life. “Everyone would do that and if I were to be alone, I would do it myself,” Jack explained. “Should you, Chris, be bitten by a poisonous snake,” Jack continued in his remarks, “you would not need to worry. As your friend, I would of course cut your arm off”. Samson, who was listening to this conversation decided to contribute with a story. “Two years ago,” he said, ”a man went hunting at night. It was a full moon and he believed to have seen an eel in the water. The man reached for it to grab it. “ “No,” Jack corrected Samson, “he skewered him with his spear, then only he reached for him.” “So it was,” Samson added, reporting on the accident. “The eel was in reality a poisonous snake and it bit the man’s hand. He killed the snake and carried it to the village, where he showed it to his wife and reported the misfortune to her. A violent argument broke out because the man was not ready to cut off his arm. He eventually became weaker and a few days later he died. “However, the poisonous snakes are not the greatest danger, but the poison itself is”, added Michael, also a son of Lapuwo:
“Originally, the Ama people knew no poison. It was first recognised by the Nakoi people. More precisely, it was brought by a man named Iyoliya. This happened a long time ago and no one can say when exactly that was. Before the people knew poison, they lived forever and no one could kill them. The poison is called Sanguma. At that time, the man taught the Ama people the use of poison. He taught all the people until every man could apply it. The name of the plant which provides the poison is Sukalo Asu. You press the juice from its stem and drip it onto the arrowhead. The victim then falls ill and after a week dies. If something like this happens, it’s very important to find out who killed the victim. In addition to investigating the incident, his spirit is questioned too. Therefore a small fence will be erected in front of the victim’s Mat-Mat (grave). About twenty men then take a long bamboo stick in their hands (five metres or longer) and position themselves in front of the Mat-Mat. Then the spirit is questioned. The question can be: “Was it the Ama people?” Or another question could be: “Was it the Ausario people?” A knock on the bamboo means NO and a strong pulling on the bamboo means YES. Once the murderer is identified, the blood revenge begins”.

Frightening and emotional war dance

Dancing and singing through the night
Now back to the Sing Sing. It continued after the men had a few hours of rest and stretched out for the rest of the day during the night until the early morning hours. The following morning, all the dancers were at the end of their strength. Everyone had lost their voices and no one was capable of a single movement. The women, who did not participate in the dance, sat at the fire pits and prepared Sago. Everybody else spent the day lying on the ground, recovering from the last two nights. In the afternoon, some dark, almost black, clouds were gathering. A violent thunderstorm brought heavy rain, which hit the house hard and in rough quantities. Soon the surrounding land was under water. Along with the rain developed a kind of “the end-of-world” feeling, which brought back the energies of the men. Finally, one of the men began to sing. It was a form of spoken song, which was addressed towards the ancestral spirits. It happened, not a long time ago, that a girl was killed by a falling tree. In the man’s song, she should now find her place in the world of the spirits. To the Sawiyanoo, the ancestral spirits are alive and they are in a constant relationship with the living. Together with the living, they constitute the community of the Sawiyanoo. The community consists not only of the visible members, but in particular, of the much more powerful invisible spirit beings. Through them, and only through them, is the community complete. “Our ancestors are now in the house” reassured Jack. “No need to worry, no one wants you any bad things.” And the men danced again. This time, however, only the people of the village of Ama were dancing. The enthusiasm was unrestrained, just like the day before. For twelve hours the men were dancing and singing. During all this time a frighteningly wild thunderstorm was raging outside. No one would leave the house and certainly no stranger would be on the way to enter the house. For twelve hours this house Sing-Sing, occupied by the living and their deceased ancestors, was the centre of a sinking world surrounded by water.

Sawiyanoo warrior in trance

Young warriors with their bows and arrows
It was shortly before I left the Sawiyanoo, just a few days after the Sing-Sing, when it was once again made clear to me how hostile and dangerous the outside world or the unknown is. Throughout my entire stay with the Sawiyanoo I felt safe and protected by the group. I was a part of the group, but this would change soon. The closer to the day of my departure, the more conversations we had about my journey. We were talking about the long and dangerous hike. I had to hike far to get to the stream, where I could continue my journey on a canoe until I would finally make it to the river May from where a government employee could pick me up with a motorboat. The whole journey would take me at least four days. Everybody was emotionally charged. “The paths will lead you through enemy territory” they said. People outside the Sawiyanoo-occupied territories were described as dangerous, cannibalistic, barbaric, uncivilised and feared. Every journey therefore becomes a dangerous undertaking and, to a certain extent, a gamble with death. Stories like those circulate throughout New Guinea. Essentially every group considers the neighbouring groups as dangerous and therefore fears them.

A Sawiyanoo warrior

Lapuwo, the Big Man of the Sawiyanoo
Finally, my escort team, that had been sent by a friend of mine from the provincial government in Wewak, had arrived and the time had come to say farewell to the Sawiyanno, and in particular, to my dearest friend Jack. Jack, in whose house I lived, was deeply worried about my upcoming trip. I would now leave the area of the Sawiyanoo, he said, and could therefore no longer be protected by them. Jack was worried about my life. He took me in his arms and began to tremble. His body was shaking, he was sweating and crying and he lamented loudly that from now on I am on my own. It was one of the most emotional moments I have ever felt. It was of such intensity as I had never experienced before. Apart from finding such a great and unique friend in one of the world’s most isolated places, this event showed something more. It made me see the boundaries between the Sawiyanoo and the rest of the world but also taught me that those boundaries can be overcome. For two months, I was an accepted member of the Sawiyanoo and it changed my life forever.