ABSTRACT
Folk tales and songs have historically been popular forms of entertainment in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, as in many contexts in which oral communication predominates and people have a detailed knowledge of their own environment and its connections with the worlds of myth and history. This chapter provides an account of themes in some of the pikono that were circulating in the 1990s. Pikono give expression to certain cultural themes that in pre-colonial times were enshrined in institutional practices governing courting and sexuality. Pikono themes keep alive memories of how courting used to be carried out and form a focus of interest for young boys. Pikono ballads keep alive and creatively re-work cultural themes of the Duna past. Pikono are chanted melodiously in rising and falling tones, with segments or lines of quite different formal lengths, punctuated by brief drawings of breath by the performer.
