Black Paradise: 'Kami menyanyi untuk hidup' (We sing for life)

BY JASON MacLEOD

"Nanen babe nanen babe, Kwin matreuban maska teufyar deiwa teimwa, Aram usker ma enap aram enap (The morning star appears in the east and will soon be followed by the sun. The beauty of the sky brings back memories of home) — from "Nanen Babe" by Black Paradise.

Black Paradise, a group of West Papuan women, are a rising cultural and musical troupe from Jayapura, the capital of West Papua. A place that would be a tropical paradise if it weren't for the greed of multinationals and the actions of the genocidal Indonesian military that has occupied West Papua for nearly 40 years.

Black Paradise's performances feature contemporary "string band" and traditional music from different regions of West Papua, including from Biak, Merauke and Jayapura near the border with PNG. Their string-band music — a feature of Melanesian culture — is based around guitars, kundu drums, the ukulele and soaring four-part harmony vocals. The women's traditional material, accompanied by dance, draws on ancient songs from their land of jagged and rugged highlands and tropical coastlines, songs from the bush and earthy throat-based vocals and rhythms played on skin drums.

The group features songs collected by West Papuan musicologist Arnold Ap. Ap ventured around West Papua recording the songs and dances of his people, before he was assassinated by the Indonesian military for promoting Papuan identity.

Black Paradise's lyrics paint pictures of liberation. All the members of Black Paradise work for an Amnesty International-type organisation, Elsham (Institute for the Study and Advocacy of Human Rights), that investigates human rights in the troubled territory, accompanies local communities as they assert their rights and educates the rest of the world about the beauty of West Papuan culture.

Black Paradise sing a song, "Nanen Babe", in the local Sarmi language — one of 300 spoken in West Papua — that evokes the ancient legend of Kumeseri, the Morning Star. Kumeseri gives Manarmakeri, a humble village man, the gift of peace and renewal. Manarmakeri leaves West Papua on a journey to gather support to herald in a new age of freedom, peace and justice.

Jakob Rumbiak, a West Papuan leader now living in Melbourne, who endured 10 years in Indonesia's dungeons and shared a cell with East Timor's president Xanana Gusmao, says: "Maybe Manarmakeri came to Australia? Maybe he wants you to join him to help free West Papua?"

Black Paradise appeared at the successful Morning Star concert in Melbourne on February 28 and performed at the International Women's Day concert on March 10 at the University of Technology Sydney.

[Jason MacLeod is an activist with the Free West Papua Collective. Visit <http://www.freewestpapua.com>.]

From Green Left Weekly, March 12, 2003.
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