(upbeat jazzy music)
- [Man] When you walk into the galleries devoted
to the art of Oceania at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York, one of the entrance ways leads you directly
to an ensemble of slit drums from Vanuatu.
- [Woman] All three were made in the Northern Ambrym Island,
two of them made in the same village, Fanla
We have one whole slit gong,
and then two of the finial tops that have been separated
from the vertical gong structure itself.
- [Man] And that's a nice reminder
that these musical instruments
that were meant to be played together.
A slit drum would be commissioned
often by a senior person in the community
for a specific event,
but then it would join older slit drums
that had been made for other events.
- [Woman] The central figure is 14 feet high.
It was commissioned in the 1960s
by the highest ranking man in Fanla.
He's actually recognized as the creator of this piece,
even though it was carved
by a well-known carver from a nearby community.
- [Man] That's precisely the opposite of the way
we think of things where the artist
is a center of creativity.
And we don't generally spend too much time giving credit
to the person who paid for the object.
- [Woman] We can see that it's been carved
from a single piece of wood,
so quite a large tree has been used here.
And what's interesting to me is
that there's a lightness about the figure,
despite the size of the piece of wood that's been used.
- [Man] So, this is a massive tree trunk.
It's been hollowed out
only through that tiny slit.
You can imagine just how difficult it is
and how thin the wall is.
That's essential in order
to make this a percussive instrument.
And this would be played by being beaten right at the edge
of the slit with a drum stick.
And in fact, if you look at the surface,
you can see that this has been well used.
- [Woman] If we move now to look at the top,
we can see that there's this beautiful stylized face.
Its eyes, I find mesmerizing.
- [Man] They're amazing.
They really focus our attention.
And it seemed to be animated.
- [Woman] Part of what we're reading as animation
in the eyes is this painted detail.
So we have a red pigment.
We've got green.
There's black is circling the pupil--
- [Man] and a little bit of white.
- [Woman] It looks like some white for some movement there.
- [Man] And if you look very closely,
you can just make out the face would have been originally
more brightly painted as a whole.
I can see the left forehead is red and the right is green.
And then the nose and chin are reversed again.
- [Woman] The museum records that these eyes
are representing the morning star.
- [Man] The whole head is a lovely, gentle concave form
that seems to almost arc in.
It pushes towards us
at the forehead and then down at the chin.
So the whole shape is large, almost spoonlike form.
- [Woman] The face itself is framed
by these concentric tooth-like projections.
And you can see at the bottom beneath the little hands
and arms, some spirals,
and they're representing the tusks of pigs.
- [Man] Now, pigs were important.
They were animals that were used for sacrifice,
but they were also gifted.
And so these were animals that represent wealth.
- [Woman] So if we travel around to look
at the back of the gong,
we can see that there's a full human figure carved
into the back of the head
with its lower legs just extending down
into what we might think of as the body
of the instrument.
- [Man] I'm interested in the way
that the knees both point out,
which is a motif that's fairly common in Oceanic art.
- [Woman] And the hands are upraised,
So it looks like it's possibly celebratory.
- [Man] And in fact, the museum conjectures
that this may be a reference to a particular ceremony,
which is known as the grade ceremony,
which marks a moment when somebody ascends to a new level
in the social hierarchy of the village
and what this would refer to then is a man
who would be standing on a high pedestal,
celebrating this achievement by waving his hands
like a hawk.
But there's the flip side.
The village, to make sure
that he's not too self-congratulatory,
might throw some fruit at him just to remind him
that in fact, he had ascended to this position
thanks to the help of many other people in the village.
- [Woman] So this particular gong
we can then safely assume was carved for a grade ceremony.
- [Man] I'm interested in what you said
about the feeling of lightness here.
- [Woman] There's a delicacy
to the way that the carving has been handled.
The finial of this slit gong,
that lovely space between the forearms,
also the wonderful relief under the nose,
it all has a sense of rising upwards,
which is quite spectacular for an object this large.
(upbeat jazz music)