Chapter 05
The 1963-1964 Recordings and the Work of Returning Sound
4 min
More than two hundred recordings waited in Berlin
Gerd and Sigrid Koch worked on Tabiteuea, Nonouti and Onotoa in 1963 and 1964. Alongside film, photographs, material culture and written observation, they made a large tape collection of songs, dance chants and spoken information. A recent digitized overview identifies 229 entries across twelve mono tapes.
The island distribution is uneven. Tabiteuea yielded several dozen sound documents; Nonouti and Onotoa produced many more, sometimes concentrated into a single day. The totals map the expedition's timetable and working relationships rather than the islands' musical productivity.
For decades, most of the tapes remained hard to access and little studied. A sound can be preserved physically while absent from the community whose relatives made it. Digitization changes the medium but not automatically the relationship. Files need description, permissions, context and routes back to I-Kiribati listeners.
The collector was not the only person making the collection
An archive label often places the researcher's name first because that person deposited the material. The sound itself proves a wider authorship. Singers agreed to perform, elders explained, composers supplied texts, dancers coordinated groups and local assistants mediated language and trust. Without them there is no collection.
Recent research into the tapes pays closer attention to this distributed agency. That shift is not an academic courtesy. It changes interpretation. A group may have chosen material suitable for an outsider, reconstructed an older chant, withheld restricted knowledge or used the session to preserve something it feared losing. The microphone did not simply capture culture in a neutral state.
The case of song sequences recorded on Onotoa shows how individual elder singers and narrative knowledge can become visible when tapes are studied closely. Named people replace the false image of an anonymous island chorus. Better catalogues preserve that authorship instead of hiding it.
Recording technology made its own version
The tapes were mono and recorded at modest speed. Microphone position determined which row dominated. Wind, room noise and the limits of tape affected frequency and level. Film sound was often recorded separately and later aligned with image. These conditions are not defects to be cleaned away without thought; they are part of the historical recording.
A digital remaster can reduce noise and reveal voices, while heavy processing may remove breath and bodily contact. Narrow bandwidth describes the tape and microphone position; the original event extended beyond their range.
The catalogue is another technology. Spellings, translations and genre labels passed through German and English documentation. A title may remain incomplete. An island of origin may be reported rather than independently established. Precise archive use therefore includes uncertainty in plain language.
Six films make an exact beginning
The public film list gives a compact route. E 915 documents Tabiteuea's kawawa. E 916 places kamei, wa n Tarawa and kabuakaka together. E 917 records older men performing kamei on Onotoa. E 918 shows Tabiteuea bino. E 919 records the Nonouti tirere ngeaba. E 920 presents Onotoa batere with six girls, mixed choir and drums.
Their production dates are 1963 or 1964; publication followed in the mid-1960s. Keep those two dates separate. A performance did not begin when a film catalogue released it. Nor does a 1963 production date prove how long the form had existed.
These six films are powerful because each has a place and form. They are also narrow. Three islands cannot represent an ocean state. The camera selected a field of view, and the surviving descriptions often fail to name performers. The films should lead to questions and community knowledge, not close them.
Return changes what an archive can become
Digitized Koch films have been brought back to Kiribati for public screenings and community access. Current work on the tapes aims at preservation, research with source communities and repatriation. A returned image can prompt recognition: a village, relative, song text or movement that an overseas catalogue could not identify.
Return is not simply the delivery of a hard drive. Long-term access depends on equipment, local storage, internet conditions, rights and the ability of communities to correct descriptions. Some material may be appropriate for broad publication; other knowledge may need limits. Community authority should shape that difference.
The most respectful use is specific and modest. Name the film, island, year and visible form. Acknowledge the non-synchronous sound. Do not infer sacred status or free permission from online availability. Then look for what I-Kiribati institutions and groups say now.
Radio, cassettes and phones made other archives
Museum tapes are not the only record. Church cassettes, radio broadcasts, family videos, competition recordings and phones hold later generations. Much of this material is fragile precisely because it was ordinary. A labelled family cassette can contain names and local history more complete than an international compilation.
Radio helped link islands while remaining constrained by distance, weather and transmission. Cassettes allowed songs to travel with workers and relatives. Video made dance teachable across separation. Phones now combine recording, editing and distribution in one device, although data cost and connectivity still shape who becomes visible.
The shift from tape reel to SoundCloud does not eliminate archival problems. Digital artist names can change; uploads disappear; credits are truncated; algorithms confuse a song titled Kiribati with an I-Kiribati artist. The modern catalogue needs the same care with names and places as the old one.
