Society & Culture / Culture & Ideas / Arts & Aesthetics

The Lost Sung Epics of the Papua New Guinea Highlands

Across the rugged valleys of the Papua New Guinea Highlands, history, romance, and ancestral mythology were never simply spoken—they were performed through mesmerizing chanted verses that lasted entire nights. These monumental sung narratives represent one of humanity's most complex and endangered oral storytelling traditions. Based on the groundbreaking research compiled in Sung Tales from the Papua New Guinea Highlands: Studies in Form, Meaning, and Cultural Context, edited by Alan Rumsey and Don Niles. Alan Rumsey is a distinguished linguistic anthropologist at the Australian National University, and Don Niles is an acclaimed ethnomusicologist leading the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies. Their work documents how highland bards weave melodic verse, indigenous memory, and cultural cosmology into living sonic epics, offering an unforgettable look at the power of oral literature.