Accompanying A Newly Contacted Tribe in the Papuan Rainforest
I stumbled upon this tiny segment in a larger documentary by @drewbinsky a couple months ago on his journey to learn about tribal life in the West Papuan rainforest. The sincerity and purity in this man’s voice just shook me to my core, to such a degree that I stopped watching and haven’t even seen the rest of the documentary since.
Drew originally set out to meet the Korowai people to learn about and document the nature of their cannibalism, but was accidentally taken to a different group called the Mamuna tribe, who welcomed him with open arms, and allegedly have only recently had their first contact with humans of the modern industrialized world.
I think it says something remarkable that they have a song that I can so immediately and viscerally connect with, even though our cultural and musical references—on the surface—might be as distant as they get. On top of that, the fact that I can be sitting here in my little Canadian cabin, and not only hear, but sing alongside these people, and then share that with the world, is profound to me.
I’d love so much if this could somehow reach their ears someday. What a gift of an outcome that would be.
Here’s a link to Drew’s documentary:
And the timestamp of the song:
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#acapella #tribal #papua #drewbinsky