The three songs on this wax cylinder (a sound carrier preceding the gramophone) have been recorded by ethnomusicologist Jaap Kunst (1891-1960) in Riangkroko, East Flores in August 1930. Kunst was a civil servant of the Dutch colonial government in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. His work as a civil servant brought him to many parts of the archipelago, and in his spare time he recorded all the music he deemed worthy of keeping. He even served as the Netherlands’ first “Government Musicologist” (Gouvernementsmusicoloog) until this position had to be cut due to a lack of funding.
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