PNG TIME

ipblocker

7/31/2013

Pitch change



An interesting cultural thing happened today.  A man came in to borrow some recording gear and asked if we'd ever have this situation.

'When people die in my village, all of their pictures are gathered up and burned.  All memory of that person is destroyed, all evidence of them is taken away.  I have told them 'we like to keep pictures of our dead, to remind us' but the people wouldn't listen.  So I am wondering, if I do an audio recording of the Bible, and that person dies, will they want to destroy the recordings?  Has anyone ever asked you this type of question before?"

No they never have.  The only answer I could come up with was 'we can modulate the voice so it wouldn't be recognized, but of course, everyone will know for several years who was involved in the recording.'

I think that possibly, you could mix up the voices enough so that it's impossible to ignore or destroy the voices.

I still am unsure why they do this, but it definitely creates a new challenge.  It is most likely superstition based.

We want the audio to last for several generations, so destroying it would not be an option.  He is going to investigate if this is truly going to be a problem or not.  And if so, it may mean that group doesn't get a recording.