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trying things

Livika from New Ireland, 19th century. Mounted upside down compared to the playing position.

Lounuat, also known as lunut, lounut, lounot, loanuat, lounuet, and also referred to as livika and kulepa ganez, kulepaganeg, is a unique friction woodblock (referred to in English as a friction block) or a friction-based idiophone. It is exclusively found in the Malanggan cultural region on the island of New Ireland, which is part of Papua New Guinea. Carved from a single wooden block, three tongues produce varying high-pitched sounds when stroked by hand. In the past, this sound-producing instrument, shrouded in strict taboos, was utilized in magical-religious ceremonies. The friction woodblock, kept hidden and played in secrecy, primarily featured in the mourning ritual for a significant deceased man, creating penetrating sequences of tones experienced as a spirit voice or bird call.

Distribution

The island of New Ireland, situated in Melanesia, stretches over a narrow strip for about 350 kilometers from northwest to southeast between the 2nd and 5th latitudes. Although New Ireland lies just south of the equator, regional longer dry periods occur due to the southeast trade winds, which sometimes posed problems for agriculture because of the permeable calcareous soils. In response, the population attempted to address these dry spells with rainmaking ceremonies that required specific wooden figures. However, the majority of the cult figures and other carved artworks, known in ethnology and the art world under the term "Malanggan," had ritual significance for elaborate funeral ceremonies of individual kinship groups. Malanggan serves as an overarching term encompassing traditional artistic creations (the style and the created objects) and the associated cult practices consisting of rituals and celebrations, specifically funeral rites. The lounuat represents a small aspect of the highly diverse wood carvings in the Malanggan style, which include standing figures (totok), two to five-meter-high statues carved from a single trunk, horizontal friezes, relief boards, animal figures, and dance masks. The Malanggan culture is confined to the northern regions of New Ireland up to the 3rd latitude, including the smaller islands of Lavongai, Dyaul, and the Tabar Island group.

Art historians differentiate the Uli figures from the Malanggan carvings based on stylistic characteristics found in the northern central region of New Ireland. While the first indication of Malanggan art dates back to a drawing in the travel report of the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman from the year 1643, the specific type of dual-sex Uli figures remained unknown in literature until the early 20th century. In 1900, a German government station was established in Kavieng in northern New Ireland, then known as Neumecklenburg and part of the colony of German New Guinea. The Uli figures housed in museums were collected from that time until around 1930. Along with the carved figures used for ancestor worship, this stylistic region includes two to three-meter-wide disks woven from bast ("Sun Malanggan"), circular chest ornaments (kapkap), and also the friction woodblock lounuat. The term "traditional 'earlier' cult practices" refers to the time before the cultural upheavals that began with German colonial rule at the end of the 19th century.

Augustin Krämer (1865–1941), who extensively explored the South Seas around the turn of the century and published a book in 1925 titled Die Malanggane von Tombara (The Malanggane of Tombara), believed that the Lelet mountain region in the northern central area of New Ireland was the homeland of the lounuat. However, this assertion has not been definitively proven. In the title, by using the geographical name "Tombara," Krämer incorrectly refers to the island otherwise known at that time as Neumecklenburg, which likely stems from a misunderstanding because when questioned by Europeans, the locals responded with the word taubar, which actually means "southeast trade winds." Krämer referred to the friction woodblock by the name livika, derived from vika, a term in the Oceanic language of the island's center meaning "bird" or a particular bird. Researchers at that time found that lounuat were primarily produced in a few villages in the Lelet mountains and also in the village of Hamba, located a few kilometers north in the Malanggan region.

Construction

Friction idiophone Glass Harmonica, whose rotating glass bodies are rubbed with damp fingers.

Friction idiophones form a rare group within the realm of idiophones ("self-sounding instruments"), which are set into vibration not by striking but by stroking over a smooth surface with the hand or an object. In Europe, this includes the relatively recent Nail Violin, a melodic instrument where variously long iron nails are bowed with a violin bow. Simpler is the Catalan folk music instrument ossets, which consists of several bird bones sorted by size and strung together on a cord. The musician hangs the cord around the neck, tightens it with one hand at the bottom, and strokes the bones with a ring held in the other hand. When rubbed over a smooth surface, a clear, bright tone can be produced, as with the Glass Armonica or the Glass Harmonica.