Melpa Kang Rom: A chanted narrative genre from Highland New Guinea and its role in contemporary electoral politics.

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Across a large region of Highland PNG there are flourishing traditions of chanted tales. These are the subject of a current ARC Discovery project based at ANU, which focuses on both the poetic features of these genres and on their political uses. We seek to augment this project through the participation of Dr. Joseph Ketan, an anthropologist with unique qualifications in that he comes from the project area, with an insider's knowledge of a local genre of chanted tales and its contexts of use in electoral campaigns, and with extensive previous research in relevant areas of political anthropology. The project will contribute to the cross-cultural study of verbal art, and to and the understanding of contemporary electoral politics in PNG.