LŪM Journal / Culture & Living Traditions / Vanuatu

In the South Pacific, women turn the surface
of water into an instrument—carrying memory,
rhythm, and a deep understanding
of the natural world.

Words and photographs: Kike Calvo
 · 
Field documentation: 2022 & 2023

Before there is music, there is water.
A quiet lagoon. The movement of hands.
Then a palm meets the surface, and a sharp
sound interrupts the stillness.

Another beat follows. A deeper tone.
A flurry of splashes. As the women move
in coordination, an astonishing rhythm
begins to emerge.

There are no drums, strings, or conventional
musical instruments.
The water itself is the instrument.

This is Ëtëtung,
also written Etëtung or
Etetung, commonly known as
Vanuatu Women’s Water Music.

Associated particularly with Mwerlap-speaking
communities of the northern Banks Islands,
it is a living expression of women’s knowledge,
performance, environmental awareness,
and cultural identity.

Photographer and explorer Kike Calvo explored
the region and documented this tradition
on two separate expeditions, in 2022 and 2023.

His original photographs and field films invite
us to look beyond the extraordinary visual
spectacle and discover the women and communities
who sustain it.

The music is remarkable.
The history behind it is just as compelling.

What is Ëtëtung? When water becomes music

Ëtëtung is a form of rhythmic water percussion
performed by women and girls.
Standing in shallow or waist-deep water,
performers use their hands and arms to create
a surprising diversity of sounds.

A flat palm produces one tone;
a different movement creates another.

The performers listen closely to one another.
Rhythms begin, overlap, and answer each other.
Short chants or intoned phrases may accompany
the percussion.

The performance is inseparable from movement:
hands rise, water flashes in the sunlight,
and sound emerges from coordinated gestures.

Researchers working with the Leweton community
have documented musical references to the natural
soundscape—birds, waves breaking over a reef,
and even an approaching cyclone.

These connections point to something more
profound than a clever way of producing rhythm:
a relationship between music, cultural memory,
and the environment.

To understand that relationship, we must look
toward the islands from which the tradition’s
knowledge has been carried.

Gaua, Merelava, and the Mwerlap world

Vanuatu is an archipelago in Melanesia known
for its remarkable linguistic and cultural
diversity.

The tradition documented here is closely
associated with Mwerlap-speaking people
whose ancestral communities include
Gaua and Merelava,
in the northern Banks Islands.

Knowledge of water percussion has been
transmitted through generations of community
experience and participation.

Its history is not reducible to one inventor
or a precisely documented year of origin.
Like many living traditions, it exists
through the people who learn and practice it.

These communities’ relationships with the sea
are practical as well as cultural.
Water shapes travel, food gathering,
weather awareness, and everyday experience.

Ëtëtung makes that relationship audible.

A tradition carried across islands

Over time, some families from Gaua and Merelava
settled on Espiritu Santo,
including the area around Luganville.

Migration brought opportunities for education,
employment, and healthcare, but also challenges
for maintaining languages and cultural practices
at a distance from ancestral homelands.

One significant response was
Leweton Cultural Village,
a community initiative associated with
cultural leader Sandy Sur.

Since its establishment in 2008,
Leweton has created opportunities for
the community to share music, movement,
storytelling, and other knowledge with
younger generations and with visitors.

Water music became one of its best-known
expressions. But Leweton should not be
mistaken for the sole ancestral origin
of the tradition.

It is an important contemporary community
sustaining and presenting knowledge carried
from other islands.

Researcher Thomas Dick examined this relationship
in his 2014 study of

Vanuatu water music and the Mwerlap diaspora
,
highlighting the intersections of migration,
cultural identity, music, and tourism.

The women who carry the knowledge

Ëtëtung is especially associated with women.
Its techniques are learned through observation,
practice, and relationships between generations.

A younger performer learns not just how to strike
the water, but how her sound fits into a shared
musical pattern.

Knowledge lives in the hands and the ear.
The performer learns to listen, adjust,
and respond.

These are acts of artistry and transmission—
not simply the repetition of a performance
staged for outsiders.

The women who sustain Ëtëtung today are cultural
knowledge holders and active participants in how
their heritage is practiced, shared, and represented.

Their names and experiences matter as much
as the photographs or recordings made of them.

Two expeditions, two encounters: 2022 and 2023

Kike Calvo’s documentation of Ëtëtung emerged
from two separate expeditions to this part
of the South Pacific in 2022 and 2023.

His photographs preserve group scenes in the water,
intimate portraits, traditional leaf adornments,
and moments of connection with community members.

Returning to a place can offer a different kind
of attention.

Beyond the musical rhythms, there are the gestures
between performers, the careful preparation
of adornments, the interactions among generations,
and the people whose knowledge makes
the performance possible.

For a photographer, the music presents
a special challenge.

A still image can capture a hand lifted
above the water, a face lit by the sun,
or a sudden burst of spray.

It cannot reproduce the sound.

This is why photographs and video
belong together in an account of Ëtëtung.

From water music to a children’s book: Water Girl

The encounter with water music also finds
a place in Kike Calvo’s work as an author
and educator.

In Water Girl: The Girl Who Saved
the Planet, part of
The Adventures of Luna from
Little Explorer, Big World™,
Luna receives an unexpected message from
her friend Nari in Vanuatu.

A joyful encounter with the local women’s
water music becomes the beginning of a larger
adventure about plastic pollution,
the Pacific Ocean, and the responsibility
of protecting our planet.

The story follows Luna and her companion Alioli
across the Pacific, bringing together ocean
conservation, curiosity, and traditional navigation.

Illustrated by Hernán Gallardo,
with a foreword by Barbara Barrett,
the book introduces young readers to the idea
that a small act of care can have far-reaching
consequences.

The book and Calvo’s photographic documentation
offer two complementary ways of exploring
our relationship with the Pacific:
documentary storytelling for a broad audience,
and an imaginative adventure that encourages
children to care for the natural world.

Water Girl is an original fictional
children’s story, not a retelling of Mwerlap
oral heritage or a substitute for the community’s
own accounts of Ëtëtung.

Published in multiple bilingual editions,
the book shares its environmental message
with children and families reading in different
languages around the world.

A landscape you can hear

We often think of nature as something to be
observed through photographs.
Ëtëtung reminds us that nature can also
be a source of musical knowledge.

For people familiar with a coastal environment,
waves, wind, and animal calls convey information
as well as beauty.

Through water percussion, elements of that
soundscape become part of shared cultural expression.

Ethnomusicologists have described the tradition
in terms of acoustemology:
a way of knowing and relating to the world
through sound.

The idea is compelling.
A landscape is not merely a background for art;
it can help shape how a community understands
and expresses itself.

Water music and a changing climate

Vanuatu is exposed to destructive tropical cyclones
and other environmental pressures.

For island communities, change can affect not only
buildings and livelihoods but also the environments
in which languages, customs, and relationships
with place developed.

Researcher Catherine Grant,
working with the Leweton community, has explored
how Ëtëtung participates in discussions of

climate justice and cultural sustainability
.

The music was not created as a response
to the present-day climate crisis.
Rather, an existing tradition has acquired
additional significance as communities use
their cultural practices to express environmental
knowledge and concern.

Music can communicate what statistics
cannot fully convey:
how changes to a natural environment
are experienced by people whose identities
and memories are closely tied to it.

Living heritage is not frozen in time

Travelers sometimes imagine traditional culture
as something that should remain unchanged.
But living practices are carried by living people.

Families migrate.
Languages encounter new environments.
Performances travel to festivals and audiences
far from their places of origin.

Ëtëtung shows how a community can continue
sustaining a tradition while adapting its
presentation to contemporary circumstances.

Cultural tourism can provide opportunities
for livelihoods and teaching, but it also
raises important questions.

Who decides how the music is shared?
Who benefits from recordings and photographs?
What knowledge should remain within the community?

Respectful cultural travel begins by taking
those questions seriously.

Photographing with respect—and remembering to listen

For photographers, the colors, faces, foliage,
movement, and reflections of Ëtëtung
can be irresistible.

Yet a powerful image is only one layer
of the story.

The most meaningful documentary work considers
the people who hold the knowledge behind
what we see.

Visitors should ask before photographing or filming,
recognize community expectations, and credit
performers when names and permissions are known.

Photography can invite curiosity;
the voices of community members help turn
that curiosity into understanding.

One of the best resources for listening
to those voices is

Ol Woman Blong Wota
(The Women of the Water)
,
a collaborative film and educational account
by Sandy Sur, Ashley Burgess, Maeve McKenna,
and Catherine Grant.

Its work with the Leweton community is
a valuable reminder that cultural documentation
should include—and whenever possible prioritize—
the perspectives of the people sustaining
the tradition.

What the music leaves with us

At first, Ëtëtung surprises us because
the performers seem to create music
from nothing more than water and motion.

But the greater discovery is what those
sounds carry: knowledge of the environment,
the skill of listening together,
the experience of migration,
and the determination to keep a living tradition
meaningful across generations.

Kike Calvo’s 2022 and 2023 field documentation
provides a visual record of these encounters.
His photographs preserve faces and gestures;
the films make the rhythms audible.

The work of community members and researchers
helps us understand what lies beyond the image.

Sometimes, understanding a place begins
not by looking more closely,
but by listening.