Warato’o (2012)
14 tracks, 58 minutes
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This album is what happens when you give a bunch of lads from the Solomon Islands a truckload of bamboo and tell them to get going.
Narasirato are a band of 'Are'are people from the island of Malaita. The 'Are'are know their way around bamboo, and their traditional music is comprised of all sorts of instruments made out of the stuff. With 16 musicians in their band, Narasirato make a huge sound of all different sorts of textures and timbres, just using this crazy grass. They build up layers of melodies using thin stalks as panpipes, create bass patterns by blowing into thick tubes like a horn or slapping their open ends with repurposed flip-flop soles, and beat out rhythms on the biggest logs, which are stretched over with plastic skin to make drums.
Because each pipe can only play one fixed pitch, all the different elements of sound are created by interlocking between different members of the group. There’s so much teamwork at play in this music, and it’s a testament to just how solid Narasirato are as a group. If just one musician was missing or – god forbid – got their part wrong, the whole thing would collapse. But, of course, they don’t, so it ends up as a wonderfully-timed, beautifully-pitched mass of tightly-bound breaths, thumps and thuds.
From what I’ve said, you may think that Narasirato play music that goes way back into the 'Are'are tradition, but that’s only partly true. Their music is evidently part of a long line of bamboo music, but these musicians haven’t been sealed off from the wider world; this isn’t a dry field recording*. In and among the Solomon Islander sounds are glimpses of gospel harmony, reggae rhythms, even country in some weird way (although that may just be my ears playing tricks on me), and when the lead singer gets going, he can slip into full-on soul singer mode when he wants to.
With Warato’o, Narasirato showcase a thoroughly modern take on the music that goes back through many generations of 'Are'are musicians. It also just shows how much sound you can get out of that glorious plant, bamboo – if there ever is an elemental sound of the earth and the wind, this is it.
* Brilliant field recordings of traditional 'Are'are do exist, many of them made by ethnomusicologist Hugo Zemp, including three volumes of the series Flutes De Pan Mélanésiennes 'Are'are on Disques Vogue from 1972. There’s also this cool little film, I think also by Zemp, in which a few styles of bamboo music are presented – I really love the first guy:
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