jaw harp, híriyùla

Jaw harp system of the Huli people in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, described in Pugh-Kitingan (1977, 1982 and 1984). The instrument itself (híriyùla in Huli) is a bamboo jaw harp, roughly 15-20 centimeters in length, consisting of a “long thin lamella… framed between two large arms” (1977:207). The language is tonal, with “three contrastive tone-patterns: low-rising, high-falling, and mid-level” (1984:95). The surrogate system uses two mechanisms to encode speech. Vowels and consonants are encoded articulatorily: “the point of articulation for a given phoneme is the same in híriyùla articulation as in speech … During performance the vocal chords are never used because the instrument provides the necessary sound energy” (210). Pugh-Kitingan does give the example of a consonant, /y/, which when played on the híriyùla may differ articulatorily from spoken Huli “due to the performer's style of híriyùla playing”, though this may also reflect differences in the performer’s spoken idiolect (211). Perceptually, at least the “vowel sounds are generally easy to distinguish from one another” on the híriyùla (210). Linguistic tone is encoded through melodic pitch: two or three of the instrument’s upper harmonics are emphasized selectively to imitate the pitch contour of spoken Huli. Using two harmonics, syllables with low-rising tone match the transition from the lower to the higher, and the reverse for syllables with high-falling tone; mid-level tones may correspond to sections that maintain the previous pitch level (1984:102). Using three harmonics, low-rising and high-falling tones are represented by transitions between two adjacent pitch levels (e.g., low to mid), and “[w]ords with mid-level tone are articulated against any of the three melodic frequencies” (102). Utterances end on the lowest pitch, with Pugh-Kitingan says “indicates sentence-terminating intonation” (102). The frequency at which the lamella is vibrated (by means of an attached piece of twine that is ‘jerked’ with one hand) roughly corresponds to syllables, though this varies between performers (1977:214). The system is performed by both men and women. Content includes descriptions of “past or current events” (210), the recitation of poetic verses, particularly those used in courtship dialogues between young people, and other topics for entertainment.

Pugh-Kitingan, J. (1977). Huli Language and Instrumental Performance. Ethnomusicology, 21(2), 205. https://doi.org/10.2307/850944,Pugh-Kitingan, J. (1982). Language communication and instrumental music in Papua New Guinea; Comments on Tse Huli and Samberigi Cases. Musicology Australia, 7(1), 104–119.,Pugh-Kitingan, J. (1984). Speech-tone realisation in Huli music. na.