Producer: Fehoco Oceanic Arts Studio Popua
Oceania, Polynesia, Tongatapu, Nuku'alofa
October 2023
Bamboo
Acquired from Jessica Afeaki, director of the Ancient Tonga Nuku'alofa Cultural Workshop, by Frank Vorpahl, guest curator of the exhibition “TALANOA – GET TOGETHER” for Völkerkundemuseum Herrnhut.
Brought to Germany from Tonga by Frank Vorpahl
The fangufangu is one of the few traditional instruments in the Tongan archipelago that is still played today, whether in school, at tourist events, or on ceremonial occasions. The fangufangu is still made on the islands of the Tonga archipelago, but is often replaced by cheaper imported flutes from Papua New Guinea.
Unlike Polynesian nose flutes from Tahiti or Aotearoa/New Zealand, the Tongan fangufangu is enclosed on both sides by naturally grown knots in the bamboo. The fangufangu can be played from either side, and the six holes in the body are used to produce four different tones, either by leaving all the holes open, or by closing one or two of the holes.
Some 250 years ago, the German Johann Reinhold Forster, the chief naturalist on Cook’s second circumnavigation, observed on the island of Nomuka in 1774 that the nose flute was used early in the morning to gently rouse high-ranking leaders from their sleep. The nose flute was an instrument for the gods, as its descendants were considered high Tongan aristocrats.
Forster’s son Georg, the naturalist draftsman on Cook’s second expedition, also recorded the evening music played on nose flutes of various sizes at community gatherings or by families outside their homes. The young Forster described the sound of the nose flute in his chronicle, “Voyage Around the World”: “The whole music was ... a monotonous alternation of three or four different tones, which sounded neither like our whole tones nor our half tones, and, judging by the value of the notes, might have been something between our half and quarter tones. A “soporific humming,” as Georg Forster noted.