2007 Tolai Warwagira Festival

These are shots from the Final Tolai Warwagira festival to be held in Rabaul Town, East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea.

This festival of music and culture had been running in Rabaul for the previous 30 or so years until the twin volcanoes erupted in September of 1994 and demolished the town.

In 2008, the festival was moved to Kokopo because of excessive ash fall in Rabaul and because new facilities were opened in Kokopo.

I worked on the 2006 and 2007 festivals as the audio engineer and experienced first hand the peoples feelings of melancholy sadness on loosing the festival to Kokopo. After the twin volcanic eruptions of 1994, this festival was the only cultural and music event that kept the Rabaul Population entertained, occupied and gave a little bit of income and hope to their miserable situation. Rabaul was once called "the Jewel of the South Pacific". It was a beautiful and vibrant place.

In the last night of the 2006 festival, there was heavy ash fall and the festival was washed out with rain, ash, mud and sulphur. No one went home. We all stayed. The kids danced on to the early morning dawn. It was an eerie out-of-this world moonscape. Unfortunately the sulphur and acid destroyed my gear and none of the shots were saved on this occasion.

Luckily I saved the 2007 shots, most of which are unusable because of lighting problems. Those which came out OK are used in this slide presentation. If anyone would like a copy of the entire archive, leave a message and an email address where I can forward the photos.

The Slides are set to the music of the 007 substitute string band, from Turagunan Village. They also participated in the 2007 show.

My apologies for the quality of some of the shots. Please enjoy them and wanbel stap.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Tolai
• Warwagira
• Mask
• Festival
• Culture
• Music
• String
• band
• kokopo
• rabaul
• east
• new
• britain
• papua
• guinea
• komnairima

[komnairima]

July 1st is start. goes for 5days and then mask festival takes over. SHOuld be a good one this yr. Bona mañana.

[komnairima]

Thank you for the encouraging comments.

I am working on a couple of string band project

Now and should be posting output soon.

In July I have been given the job of audio engineer

For the warwagira festival. I will be posting

Daily then. Have a nice day.

[wantokabroad]

thanks for posting. Stringband music still the best. Any ideas on how I can get my hands on a copy of Substitute stringband. All the best with this years warwagira.

[kopexkiwi]

Komnairima, when is the warwagira? July..........any specific dates? Sore mi stap long we tumas.

[kutigoi]

Thankyou very very much for posting this beautiful clip.I just love this unique Rabaul stringband music.The shots and the music itself bring alot of Old Rabaul memories.

Beautiful-Beautifu indeed.

Can you upload more stringband music please.Love it.