Voices of Connection: Garamut Slit Drums of New Guinea

New Guinea culture is all about finding ways to connect with others, sometimes across great distances: engaging in trade, acquiring new kin through marriage and adoption and learning other people’s customs and languages. Carved from a single tree trunk, the slit drum, or garamut, is used not only to provide the rhythm for singing and dances but also to announce meetings, issue warnings and communicate with neighboring villages by means of complex rhythms and tones beaten on the resonant body with a wooden pounder. The people of Papua New Guinea and its neighboring islands consider the sound of the drum as its “voice” that carries across long distances. A collaboration between Papua New Guinean scholars, University faculty and students and museum staff, this exhibition will highlight the garamuts in The Fralin collection and introduce audiences to the related traditions of carving garamut drums and building wooden canoes in New Guinea culture.

Image: Detail of Papuan New Guinean Artist, Slit drum, Garamut, 20th century. Wood, 12 x 63 x 14 in (30.5 x 160 x 35.6 cm). Collection of The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia. Gift of Daniel Melnick, 1979.74.4.