The Story behind the 'Moko' Drums, Sacred Musical Instruments from the Alor-Pantar Archipelago

The article focuses on the research I published, some months ago, with Shiyue Wu, my Research Assistant at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou (Jiangsu, China), on the ancestral artefacts known as 'Moko' drums (and the related bronze gongs) from the Alor-Pantar Archipelago (and Timor's area in general), their history (and stories), the etymologies of their names, and their different and 'multi-layered' values and usages, in a work associating Language Documentation with Cultural Anthropology. Both the origins and provenance of the drums (and gongs) and the meaning and etymology of the denomination 'Moko' in itself are obscure and unknown even to the local speakers, and this makes for an intriguiging puzzle, at the linguistic and archaeological level and in the context of the history of the material culture and intangible heritage of Southeastern Indonesia - a puzzle still looking for its solution. Our studies are trying to fill this research gap by collecting, processing, and analyzing 'first hand data' through Field Linguistics' and etymological approaches. The 'Moko' drums were believed to generate melodies connecting the world of the gods with the world of the mortals, and were and (still) are also used by the Papuan peoples of the Alor-Pantar Archipelago as a prestigious local 'currency' and for traditional customs and practices, like 'bride-price' negotiations.