The Melanesian Magic of Women's Water Music

An aquatic percussion and storytelling tradition lives on in Vanuatu

This post celebrates the extraordinary diversity of human artistic expression.

I recall many summer moments at a beach or pool when I’d cup my hands and plunge them into the water, making a deep resonant bloop sound, or slap my hands down to make a staccato splat. But I never thought to put such sounds to music.

Others clearly have, as I discovered during the Vanuatu visit by the Lindblad / National Geographic ship I’ve been lecturing on. Watch and listen (and please share this)!

A longer clip is here on YouTube. While riding out a brewing tropical cyclone on Espiritu Santo island, we were taken to a seaside village for a mesmerizing performance of Ëtëtung, or "water music" - a percussive and literally immersive storytelling art form refined over countless generations by women in the northern Banks Islands of the Vanuatu archipelago.

Splashy storytelling

The ensemble we saw was from Gaua Island in that group. You can learn more about the history and meaning of this aquatic music in a fascinating report written a few years ago by Dely Roy Nalo (an Indigenous Vanuatan citizen) and Thomas Dick for Langscape Magazine: “TEKS: Promoting and Safeguarding Biocultural Diversity through the Arts.”

It’s not surprising that Vanuatu would have such a remarkable art form tucked away on a few islands given the cultural diversity here. A proxy for that richness is languages. There are more than 130 different languages spoken across the archipelago. With a population of about 263,000, that gives Vanuatu the greatest per-capita linguistic diversity on Earth.

And then there’s the physics of water music. Scientists at Utah State University (with partners) have broken down the acoustics of this remarkable rhythm method into three kinds of sounds: slap, plunge and plow. Here’s their amazing video and description:

Female musicians from the northern islands of Vanuatu use the water surface as an instrument to create a variety of unique sounds. Water music is typically made by a line of performers standing side by side, waist deep in clear island waters. Accompanied by singing, the women work in unison, exhibiting several percussive techniques, which include striking the water surface and throwing handfuls of water which scatter into droplets before impacting the surface. Each interaction produces a unique acoustic response corresponding to the air-water-hand interaction. We highlight the connection between water interaction, cavity shape and the resulting sound which was discovered by these people through their own experimentation.

There’s more background on this tradition in a post here by the Sinchi Foundation, which works to protect and sustain indigenous rights and knowledge.

Small islands, big songs

For a wider view of the array of musical traditions across the Pacific and adjacent waters, click back to my Sustain What webcast with the founders of the "Small Island Big Song" project - BaoBao Chen of Taiwan and Tim Cole of Australia - along with Selina Leem, a spoken-word performer from the Marshall Islands.

Insert, February 15 - Back on shore from my cruise, I’ve learned that my friends at Small Island Big Song are touring the United States again, through April. I hope you can find a performance or university visit near you!

Please share this post. I have more clips coming when our limited Internet connection allows.

Postscript - Lou Gold, a longtime contact and friend living in the Brazilian Amazon forest, emailed that there is a similar pygmy water drumming practice.

More on why music matters to me: