Horizontal Slitdrum

Label

Slit drums, or garamuts, like this one are carved from the trunks of tall hardwood trees harvested in the rainforest and dragged to the Sepik River, then paddled to the village. Some of these trees were cut down near the river’s edge and floated to the village after harvesting. The final stages of carving were often completed near the village in a secluded area. Here, behind a screen of palm leaves, initiated men carved the drum in the shape of a crocodile. When finished, the slit drum was celebrated in a village festival hosted by the sponsoring clan. Drummers would strike the garamut with long hardwood poles, striking on either side of the opening. Usually, the rhythmic percussion was made with two garamuts, a larger drum with a deeper tone and a smaller one with a higher pitch, played together by two drummers. If you look closely, you should see evidence that this slit drum has been heavily used.

The imagery on this garamut, like that of most Sepik slit drums, invokes the most powerful creature on the Sepik landscape, the crocodile. Crocodiles are central to many of the ancient myths from the Middle Sepik. In a single carved object we see the embodiment of complex myths that may be hard for us to understand today, but when used in the village would have been transparent to all initiated men.

From the 2019 exhibition Melanesian Art: The Sepik River and Abelam Hill Country, curated by Robert Welsch, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Franklin Pierce University

Exhibition History

Faces/Voices: The Harry A. Franklin Family Collection of Oceanic Art at Dartmouth College, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 18-March 15, 1992.

Melanesian Art: The Sepik River and Abelam Hill Country, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26-December 8, 2019.

Provenance

Collected in 1885 in Bogia, formerly Potsdamhafen, Ex-collection: Linden Museum, Stuttgart, Germany; Harry A. Franklin, Los Angeles, California; Harry A. Franklin Family, Los Angeles, California, 1983; given to present collection, 1990.

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