ICTM Study Group on the Musics of Oceania

Circular letter September 2005

Dear Friends,
Stephen Wild will be the General Secretary of ICTM, starting January 2006. In order to concentrate his energy for this new duty, Stephen stepped down from the position of the Chair of our Study Group. We thank him for all his work he has done for the SGMO and wish him all the best in his position as Secretary General of ICTM.

I thank all the members who had confidence in me and I will certainly do my best as new Chair of SGMO. There is one concern that I would like to mention here:
I see my main duty in circulating information among the SGMO Members. But this is only possible when the members provide me with news, updates, comments, and information on publications, activities, dates of events etc. As discussed in the business meeting in Sheffield, I will try to send a SGMO-Circular four times a year (January, April, July, October) but this depends also on YOUR input.

Papers at Sheffield
I would like to thank all the SGMO Members who attempted the Sheffield conference and congratulate those who presented a paper. I think our papers were all of good quality, regarding both, content and form of presentation. I felt especially at this conference a heartily cooperativeness among the SGMO Members which – I am glad to say – is characteristic for our group.

Minutes of the last business meeting in Sheffield
Thank you Helen for having written the minutes – you find them as attached file.

Business
We have three main businesses for the near or not so near future:
a) The ICTM-SGMO business meeting in Honolulu
b) The panel of SGMO for the 39th ICTM World Conference in Vienna (4- 11 July 2007)
c) The creation of a bibliography of the members of the Study Group (SGMO-Bibliography)

a) Barbara Smith already informed us (Stephen's Newsletter of April 2005) about the SEM meeting in Honolulu, 15-19 November 2006. There will be a Pre-Conference on 14 November on Hawaiian music and – maybe after the SEM conference - a possibility to have a SGMO Business Meeting. To remind you, Barbara requested members to indicate the tentative interest in participating and suggestions for themes should be send to the SGMO Chair with copy to Barbara Smith and Jane Moulin. Barbara and Jane would organise the facilities for the business meeting at the University of Hawai'i and chair our meeting there. Jane proposed that themes might be related to the 'ukulele' – which would fit a meeting in Honolulu very nicely.

b) Don Niles has raised the question of organising a Study Group Panel on the 39th ICTM conference in Vienna. Some themes have already send in (see minutes), please continue to think or meditate about these possible themes and/or send more theme propositions to me to circulate them among the members. The program committee for the Vienna conference set the deadline for proposals on October 2006. We should therefore agree to a theme – if there is enough interest - before our meeting in Honolulu in November 2006.

c) At the business meeting in Sheffield the participants agreed about the draw up of a bibliography of the SGMO Members' publications (not of existing and/or available recordings of Oceanian music). This bibliography could be used among the SGMO Members as a kind of insider tool and would not be published (we have already the 'Annotated Bibliographies' from Mervyn McLean). The SGMO-Bibliography would help each member to learn what the others are exactly researching on and it might stimulate further discussions among the Members.

I guess all the members have their full bibliography in digital form on their computer. Thus, it would be easy to send those documents as attached files to me and I would bring them together. In order that I do not have the huge work to format every single bibliography, please respect the following rules:
Bibliography, discography and filmography should be separated (for discography and filmography, please, indicate the media carrier, for example CD, LP, VHS, DVD etc.). Each list should start with the most recent publication on top – your very first publication would be at the bottom end of your list. Please, send only the references of your publications which are relevant to Music and Dance of Oceania. Please, use the same format as used by Mervyn's Annotated Bibliography of Oceanic Music and Dance - I think all the members are using this format anyway.

Once the full SGMO-Bibliography is completed I would send it to each member as an attached file (When I receive all your lists until Christmas 2005, I could send out the full SGMO-Bibliography with the SGMO-Circular in January 2006). Considering that such a bibliography needs regularly updates it seems reasonable to have this bibliography only in virtual form. As a general rule of SGMO, all members should indicate their new and forth coming publications to the Chair who will send them out in the SGMO-Circular. Thus, it would be the responsibility of each member to up date regularly his personal SGMO-Bibliography by adding the publications announced in the SGMO-Circular to his personal SGMO-Bibliography.

Announcements
1) The ESfO (European Society for Oceanists) will have the next meeting in the first half of July 2008 in Verona (Italy). For the first time the main topic of a meeting is 'music' and the organisers might even invite a music group from the Pacific. However, the organisers would like to have members of SGMO to organise a panel. This meeting is still three years from now, this gives us so enough time to discuss a possible participation - but I would like to mention already that this would be wonderful opportunity for SGMO to meet another organisation with interest in Oceania and to reveal to them our on activities in this region.

2 ) In ICTM, a effort is made to bring the term 'dance' or 'dances' in titles on an equal important level as 'music' or 'musics'. Especially in the Pacific these two forms of human expression are strongly linked and we might consider modifying the Study Group's name accordingly: From 'Study Group of the Musics of Oceania (SGMO)' to 'Study Group of Musics and Dances of Oceania (SGMDO)'. This would be a topic to discuss and to decide upon at our next meeting in Honolulu.

3) At the last meeting the participants discussed the possibilities to create a 'forum' or 'listserv' for SGMO Members as a space for general discussions. We are looking in several possibilities and I will inform the members about this in the next SGMO-Circular in January 2006.

Two last points
1) If you know of anybody who is a member of SGMO but his name/e-mail address does not appear on list above (in the 'copy to': of your e-mail software), please, let me know. There are also members who do not have access to e-mail (for example some members in PNG); if you happen to know the postal address of such members please send it to me. (I would like to draw up a complete and up dated list of all the SGMO Members).

2) As second attached file: a list of books that need to be reviewed. Members who are interested should respond to John Barker [barker@INTERCHANGE.UBC.CA] (thank you Jane for forwarding this!)

I am thankful of any remark from your side regarding the content of this circular and wait for your bibliography, input on news, information on activities etc.

Ating hemia nomo – ale tata (I think this is it for now – good bye)

Best wishes
Raymond