The project
Heading towards 2025!
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the independence of Papua New Guinea, Tendances Mekeo is organizing a European tour for the cultural group Afaī Dancing Group , from the Mekeo tribe. The tour will take place in August 2025 between France, and Switzerland.
With the aim of raising awareness of Papuan culture in Europe, the group will participate in international folklore festivals . It will present the particularities of the Mekeo tribe and their daily life through various activities, cultural workshops, courses, exhibitions, conferences, etc.
The cultural group Afaī Dancing Group will be present in neighboring France and Switzerland for various events during the summer of 2025 between Valais, Fribourg, Neuchâtel and Geneva. He will notably participate in the 50th anniversary of the Friborg International Folklore Meetings (RFI).
Through their passage in Europe, you will be able to discover exceptional traditional ornaments, including birds of paradise, as well as very rich tribal designs testifying to a complex culture, closely linked to nature and ancestors.
We invite you to join us at one of these exceptional moments of exchange and conviviality in order to create bridges between cultures at odds with each other.
The group
The Afaī Dancing Group cultural group comes from the Mekeo tribe, in Central Province, more precisely from the villages of Inawi, Beipa and Ofoka. Most of the dancers come from the Avaïs clan. The group is made up of 30 dancers, 17 men including 2 kings with an average age of 35 years, and 13 women with an average age of 25 years, supplemented by 2 accompanists.
The traditional clothes of the Afaī group are made from:
feathers of chicken, parrot, eagle, sulphur-crested cockatoo, kingfisher, cassowary and birds of paradise.
dog teeth (necklace), pig, bat (headdress)
lizard, iguana or snake skin (drum)
shells and turtle shell (jewelry)
different kinds of jungle seeds
palm “tapa” clothes (skirt)
dried orchid and different jungle ropes
Coloring of patterns, clothes and faces is mainly chemical, but they may take with them samples of natural colors that they used in the past.
Each clan has its own dances, songs and motifs which cannot be borrowed or copied, under penalty of death, a rule still valid today. Indeed, the dances, songs and traditional costumes tell in a codified way the origin and the very essence of the clan. Copying them means stealing that essence and power.
Each clan has and cultivates legends that tell how their clan came to be and who created it. These stories remain secret and are only told to members of the family because if a stranger (= member of another clan or further away) heard them, he would have the power of life and death over the clan in question. To know the source of a “blood” is to know how to block this source, steal it or make it disappear.
Hence the need for clans to express their own history in a codified way that is illegible to any outsider, through their costumes, their paintings and their motifs. This is an oral tradition. Passing on dances, songs, stories and the art of adornment to their descendants is the only way to remember where they come from and pay homage to their ancestors, without angering the spirits.
The kings of the Afaī group can be identified by their high headdresses, visible in the photo on the right.
A king is the son of a chief who comes from a royal lineage , based on the legend of the deity Aï-ssa. Arriving one day on the highest mountain of Mekeo, Aï-ssa transmitted 12 sticks of power to 12 men, the first chief-kings, thus creating the 12 Mekeo clans. Since then, kings have passed on their staff of power to their first male child before dying. If a king dies before, the lineage becomes extinct.
The transfer of power gives rise to the most important Mekeo celebration during which the father invites all the other chiefs to attend the handover. If he forgets a clan, his son will not be recognized as leader of that lineage. During the handover festival, 50 to 80 pigs are killed to feed all the witnesses, from the clan chief to the simple villager who wants to attend.
The traditional dance groups of each clan dress up in their finest attire, sing and dance the legends of yesteryear and the history of their clan's ancestors. Once the handover is complete , the father is just an old man like any other, he gives up and loses all power.
It is the dancers who beat the rhythm, dancing and singing. Shaped like an hourglass, the drum called “kundu” is the only musical instrument of the group and is present in all the tribes of Papua New Guinea. Along with the bird of paradise, it represents an emblem of national unity.
In some tribes, kundu was used as a means of communication , for example, to warn locals of a death or to call a meeting, with different rhythms corresponding to different messages. The size and patterns of the kundu reflect the hierarchical position of a man within his clan. The skins used differ from one region to another, the lizard or snake for the coast and the lands, the cuscus, a kind of tree kangaroo for the highland tribes.
The rather small size of the kundus and the reduced diversity of drums can be explained in particular by the fauna present in the country. Despite the goats, cows and horses brought in recently by settlers, there are no large animals in Papua New Guinea. In the jungle, there are no monkeys or felines. The largest beast is the cassowary , a fowl whose hide cannot be used for a drum.
