Are'are Coast

Bamboo pipes of different lengths sound in sequence, their notes weaving over and under each other until thirty players are producing harmonies that no single instrument could achieve. The sound carries across the lagoon in the half-dark, reaching villages down the coast before the performance has ended. On the Are'are Coast of Malaita in the Solomon Islands, this music has been playing for longer than anyone has been writing it down.

Are'are polyphonic pan pipe music is one of the most complex forms of instrumental music documented anywhere in the world. Ensembles of up to 30 players use bamboo pipes tuned to an eight-tone scale, performing pieces that can last several hours — a musical system entirely distinct from both Western polyphony and all other Oceanic musical traditions. The tradition developed in isolation along southern Malaita's roadless coast, where villages are still reached only by canoe or on foot along coastal trails. The most elaborate performances occur during custom feast days tied to the agricultural calendar and life-cycle events; timing a visit requires advance contact with a village host, sometimes months ahead. Ethnomusicologists have studied the Are'are system extensively, but recordings cannot replicate the experience of hearing it performed in the setting where it was born — lagoon water reflecting starlight, the forest at your back, thirty pipes breathing in unison.