Pikon: Mouth Harp Music of Papua

Sound: Pikon (also called pikon ane)

Location: Waena, Jayapura, Papua

In much of the highlands of Papua, the pikon mouth harp has long been the primary musical instrument: men of the wider Baliem valley region consider their instruments so important as to carry them around with them as accessories, their pikon tucked in their pierced ears, noses, or worn as necklaces. Despite their ubiquity, they’re often overlooked and underappreciated (a common theme here, of course - see past posts on the diverse and unsung mouth harp traditions of rinding, kuriding, knobe oh, yori, gongga lawe, genggong, and selober). In today’s post, I hope to dive in, however briefly, into the world of pikon to get a sense of just how deep and rich this musical tradition is. 

It helps, first, to be clear about specificities, as there’s a vast web of related mouth harp traditions spreading across all of the island of New Guinea, from the huge bamboo susap of Papua New Guinea (so iconic as to make its way onto a PNG postage stamp!) to the pikon and its relatives found mostly in the mountainous highlands of the side of the island claimed by Indonesia. These highlands have great ethnic diversity, and each group has its own mouth harp story to tell - the Yali in the east have their pingkong, while the Mee in the Paniai lakes of the western mountains have their kaido. I’ll be focusing on the pikon as played by the Dani of the wider Baliem valley, and specifically folks like my informant Pak Pospan, who identifies as Nayak (a kind of subgrouping of Dani) and hails from Tangma, a village on the southern edge of the Baliem Valley in the regency of Yahukimo.

I was lucky to meet Pak Pospan Elopere after a week-long search for pikon in the unlikeliest place, the urban fringe of Jayapura on Papua’s northern coast. I couldn’t make it to the highlands, so I started asking local friends in Jayapura if they knew any transplants from the mountains who played pikon, and finally was introduced to Pak Pospan. A warm man in his fifties, Pak Pospan has something of a reputation as a cultural custodian in his native Yahukimo, where he often is called to perform lewuni, sung lamentations performed during funerary rituals. Sitting down with me in my hotel in Waena, Pak Pospan sketched out the world of pikon as he knows it.

The pikon, he explained, is traditionally made from hece are, often mistranslated to “bamboo” in English and Indonesian but actually a type of reed grass or cane, phragmites karka. Dani men traditionally sleep in thatched huts called honai with raised beds made from the stuff, and the dry, smokey environs of the hut essentially provide ready-cured hece are to be fashioned into an instrument. The reed is split in half near the knuckle-like septum of the plant, and then a knife (traditionally a stone flint) is used to carve and tune the vibrating tongue. Near the septum, a hole is also carved to attach the string which is pulled to make the tongue vibrate (some will even attach two pikon of different sizes to either side of the string for a kind of double pikon!) 

A modern innovation is the pikon besi, or steel pikon, which is nowadays fashioned from the thin metal salvaged from chainsaws (gergaji) -. These instruments have a much louder sound, though not as sweet, Pak Pospan insisted, as their organic ancestors (both types can be heard in the recordings above.)

Outsiders rarely appreciate the sweetness and complexity of the sound and music of pikon. One ethnographic account I found states that “there are no complicated tunes played on [the pikon], just a simple alternation of high and low tones produced by changing the size of the mouth.” Even the Indonesian-language Wikipedia article for pikon (quoting an Indonesian government website) condescendingly states “suara yang dihasilkan cenderung tidak merdu karena hanya seperti suara kicau burung tanpa nada.” - “the resulting sound [of the pikon] tends not to be tuneful, as it’s just like the tuneless call of a bird.” 

In reality, any mouth harpist could tell you that the technique and style of pikon is highly sophisticated, with skilled use of the tongue, lips and breath achieving complex layering of multiple lines of purely articulated overtones. The sound is unlike any other mouth harp playing in the world, and it deserves more respect.  

As Pak Pospan demonstrated his pikon for us, each piece came with a story. In one which echoes other stories I’ve heard attached to mouth harps across the archipelago, the pikon is used as a second voice, “a kind of code,” Pak Pospan explained, in courtship ritual. In this version, a young Dani man comes to the home of a girl and uses the pikon to vocalize a plea to the girl’s father: “I’ve come to ask for your daughter, why don’t you give her?” 

Later, Pak Pospan plays another short excerpt, and another story unfolds: “In this one, a woman’s first husband has just died. She has three children, two girls and a boy. She decides to marry again, thinking ‘Oh, I’ve been widowed, I’m so ashamed…who will marry me? Who will help raise my children?’ So she walks far, so far - from one regency to another - and when she arrives, she plays the pikon like this” - Pak Pospan demonstrates - “until a man comes, hears the sound, and says ‘What’s this? A woman playing pikon? She must be looking for a man! She must be a widow!’ Asking where she’s from, the woman replies, ‘I’ve from far away, with my three children. Their father has died, who will take care of them? I’ve come looking for a man.’ The man responds, ‘Oh well then, come to my house and be my wife!’” 

The woman’s children start crying, Pak Pospan explains, so she soothes them, nyaneo, with a lullaby, singing “wao, wao, wao, wao.” Pak Pospan then plays a tune that mimics that soothing lullaby, the pikon singing “wao, wao, wao, wao.”

Pak Pospan tuning the tongue of my pikon with a stone from the hotel garden.

Nearly any song, Pak Pospan explains, could be “sung” with pikon, from songs sung to celebrate a victory after tribal warfare (perang suku) to “garden songs” played after a long day tending to vegetables in the mountain “gardens” in the hills outside a village. 

While pikon is by no means rare in Dani life today, virtuosos like Pak Pospan largely come from the older generation, with younger guys more drawn to the sounds of wisisi. Even of his generation, Pak Pospan was a standout: “I was taught by my elders,” he explained. “None of my friends could really figure it out. But I took to it!” 

I’m glad there are still folks like Pak Pospan around keeping the art of pikon alive and sharing their stories with us. Consider this the first chapter in our pikon journey, as I hope to head to the highlands next year to learn more about this fascinating tradition.

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Special thanks to Pak Pospan (wa!) and Kak Harun Rumbarar, who contributed some camera work for this session and introduced me to Pak Pospan.