Plesand Popular Music Production: A Typology of Home-based Recording Studios in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

This article explores how indigenous socialities underpin the production of popular music in the Papua New Guinea (PNG) capital Port Moresby, which is a major centre for popular music production in Melanesia. The primary focus concerns home-based studios that were in operation between 2007 and 2011, which produced the distinctive PNG style of popular music known as lokal musik. Their operative structures reflect a Melanesian kinship-based socio-cultural framework-called the wantok system-that connects individuals through networks of obligation, exchange and reciprocity. These affiliations are conceptually grounded in the notion of ples, which is an indigenous concept pertaining to one's identity and 'place' of origin. This article outlines how ples underpins the production of lokal music at every stage. It also shows ples to be fundamental in the local categorisations of musical styles, which share characteristics with introduced electronically produced pop, but are interpreted through musical, lyrical and instrumental variants that pertain to specific places. These places are usually linguistically and culturally distinctive, and are almost always rural. From a theoretical standpoint, this paper considers popular music within an indigenous epistemological framework and seeks to provide a new production-focused perspective on the local cultural significance of popular music in PNG.

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