Located in the north of Australia, New Guinea is the second largest island in the world. Its western part, formerly under Dutch colonial rule, has belonged to Indonesia since 1969, while the eastern part, a British and German colony for more than a century, became the independent state of Papua New Guinea in 1975. More than a thousand languages are spoken and very diverse cultural groups coexist, descendants of the populations that began to arrive 40,000 years ago, in successive waves.
Since its discovery at the beginning of the 16th century by Portuguese navigators, New Guinea fascinated the Western world for its inhospitable and exuberant nature and its nature that made exploration of the territory so difficult, thus contributing to preserve local traditions. Protective framework, nature has been above all the essential source of subsistence of the populations of New Guinea, provider of food and all kinds of materials (vegetables, animals and minerals), for the production of houses and objects of daily use and ritual practices. In this context, it is understood that nature is at the center of the forms of representation and symbolic systems, in which musical practices are inscribed.