Join Patrick as he delves into the story behind Papua New Guinea's national anthem, "O Arise All You Sons," a song that embodies the spirit and pride of a nation celebrating its independence. The episode takes listeners on a geographical and historical journey, highlighting the unique relationship between Papua New Guinea and its neighboring countries, while also exploring the life of Thomas Shacklady, the anthem's composer. Through humor and insightful commentary, Patrick reflects on the significance of the anthem in fostering national identity and unity among the people of PNG. The discussion touches on the cultural richness and natural beauty of the country, as well as the historical context leading to its independence in 1975. Listeners will gain a newfound appreciation for both the anthem and the vibrant history of Papua New Guinea.

1. https://www.pngaa.net/Independence_Anniversary/national_anthem.htm 
2. https://malumnalu.blogspot.com/2008/08/thomas-shacklady-composer-of-papua-new.html 
3. http://www.paclii.org/pg/legis/consol_act/nia1971197/ 
4. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=15%2C355+km 
5. Udvardy, M. D. F. (1975). A classification of the biogeographical provinces of the world. IUCN Occasional Paper no. 18. Morges, Switzerland: IUCN.
6. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Botany_of_the_Antarctic_Voyage_of_H/9Y0LAQAAIAAJ?hl=en 
7. https://web.archive.org/web/20131103111901/http://www.anthro.utah.edu/PDFs/Papers/JAS%3DOC%26A.pdf 
8. Quanchi, Max (2005). Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Pacific Islands. The Scarecrow Press. p. 215.
9. https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=592696311&sxsrf=AM9HkKlp2upWnbTlKFBsQPALf2QNu3RIxQ:1703125996578&q=Nicholai+Miklukho-Maklai&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjzlaLgvp-DAxUvvokEHa9oDZAQ0pQJegQICRAB&biw=767&bih=706&dpr=1.25 
10. John Waiko. Short History of Papua New Guinea (1993)
11. https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CM%5CI%5CMiklukho6MaklaiNikolai.htm 
12. John Dademo Waiko, Papua New Guinea: A History of Our Times (2003)
13. https://www.postcourier.com.pg/oversight-keeps-national-anthem-law-29-years/ 
14. https://www.thenational.com.pg/change-to-anthem-lyrics-%E2%80%98illegal%E2%80%99/ 
15. https://www.google.com/books/edition/P_N_G_Government_and_Other_Community_Lif/uHgHAQAAIAAJ?hl=en 
16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5gPypxJ_ls 
17. https://sdd.spc.int/guides-and-training-material?view=preview&format=raw&fileId=218 
18. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/New_Guinea 
19. https://www.parliament.gov.pg/ninth-parliament/bio/view/governor-east-sepik 
20. https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A01408/latest/text 
21. https://theconversation.com/png-marks-40-years-of-independence-still-feeling-the-effects-of-australian-colonialism-47258#:~:text=Economic%20problems%20combined%20with%20unrest,to%20a%20single%2C%20united%20country. 
22. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/20/australias-ignorance-about-papua-new-guinea-is-a-loss-for-both-nations 
23. https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=db943a0f-7951-4b21-8d2d-23830b54e200&subId=350354#:~:text=In%20formal%20terms%2C%20democratic%20rule,of%20free%20and%20fair%20elections. 
24. https://freedomhouse.org/country/papua-new-guinea/freedom-world/2022#:~:text=Papua%20New%20Guinea%20(PNG)%20is,marred%20by%20irregularities%20and%20violence. 
25. Freudenberg, Graham (2009), A Certain Grandeur: Gough Whitlam's Life in Politics (revised ed.), Viking, ISBN 978-0-670-07375-7

https://archive.org/details/elizabethbiograp00brad_0

Hello and welcome to the Anthems podcast. I'm Patrick and I'm here to tell you the story of a song that helps to tell the story of a nation.

Today we take a trip from our last country that the travel agency swears is under 23 hours and will cost you about 835 american dollars.

What disappoints me the most about that is six and a half of those hours, assuming there are no further delays, are waiting around in India and indonesian airports, which seems like a rough way to spend in two places that have far more to offer than being shuffled around through their equivalent of the TSA. But we will hear more about them on a later show.

This show is brought to you by me and me being curious and having a map that I put a pin in each time I cover a country. And I like symmetry and proportional things, so I wanted a pin down in that area of the world.

So I picked Papua New guinea because I thought it was weird that New Zealand was only half an island. And then I read the names of the countries and thought, well, that was dumb of me.

So me not knowing the globe near Australia leads me to tell you about o arise all you suns. And it will lead me to tell you about other anthems too, because remembering all that geography is pretty tough.

Honestly, I thought that New guinea was the name and that it was an island not in the South Pacific Ocean, but somewhere vaguely off the coast of South America. Somewhere in my head I was pretty sure that they had something to do with Peru.

We'll go with that distance being 40% of the circumference of the planet. Unrelated, right? Or at least it seems that way.

But tenuous connections and places that are far away from our country of interest are a little bit of a theme here. So I'm going to go ahead and play the song, and that way we can hear a story that sets the stage in an obtuse sort of way.

Enjoy the next nearly 1 minute and 20 seconds.

Let us sing about joy to be pleased, praising God and rejoicing to me papuan beginning shout our names from the mountains to see Papua new.

Let us praise our forever name by the world you give me now give thanks to the goodness for his kindness, his wisdom and love for this land of our father so free. Papua New. Shout together for the world to heal. You're independent. And with me.

First impression was that I'm glad I went with the performed at the stadium version because that was done with feeling. It's a great way to hear an anthem if you've got someone that sings the thing well, and I enjoyed this performance a lot.

And again, as a guy that knows essentially no sports stuff, they seem like not amazing at the game, better than me or an amateur team for sure, but statistically not awesome. As usual, though, if I am wrong, please correct me.

We know how much it costs to get there from Kazakhstan, but where exactly in the world are their home games played? Papua New guinea, which I will sometimes refer to as PNG, has the almost beige distinction of being the 54th largest country in the world.

But it is the third largest island country, so that's pretty cool.

It's an easy place to find on a map if you know where Australia is on the eastern part of the north coast of the continent, it's got that bit that juts up and kind of looks like it's pointing at an island. The eastern half of that island and the two closest smaller islands, plus possibly some others and honestly, archipelagos have confused me.

Those islands are Papua New guinea. The western half of the largest island is the easternmost part of Indonesia, and we'll hear more about that place some other day.

In this case, it's specifically the australasian realm. This is a description that is based on what kinds of plants grow in the zone that don't grow in other zones.

In the australasian realm, the distinct commonality is something called antarctic flora. It's a distinct community of vascular plants that evolved on the supercontinent of Gondwana.

And I have to stop there because I just learned about this and it has absolutely epic tangent potential for me, especially because other supercontinents are a thing I have barely ever thought about.

Just like finding out that the country has tropical rainforests in the highlands, that it's situated on the Pacific Ring of Fire, it has active volcanoes, and that earthquakes are common. There is so much potential reading about that place, or even just looking at pictures, because it's another really stunning country.

He accidentally found the main island and called it Papawa, after a malay word for the kind of hair melanesian people have.

Not because of what I learned about him, as is usually the case with historical guys, but this time because of what I didn't learn about him. He has a really cool explorer name, and he only explored the one place and then just went home. There's nothing else noteworthy about the guy.

He was an early advocate for equal rights for all humans, rights for native peoples. And he wrote a treatise on the indigenous people of PNG. That is on my list of books to read. It's a long list.

When Queensland, which is a british colony in the northeast of Australia, unilaterally annexed the southeastern part of New guinea. The crown didn't officially sanction this action, but empires are gonna empire.

Germany took a different approach, and in the north, they went directly to treating the settlement fairly, explicitly as a business measure. The only solace I take from the cacao and copra plantations that they had there.

And after the war, they gave the acquired plantations to their war veterans. And these, in concert with newly discovered gold mines in the highlands began to generate a degree of prosperity.

Then the League of Nations decided that the Commonwealth should have New guinea all to itself.

Tom had a fortuitous combination of an excellent work ethic, natural talent and a love for what he was doing.

This helped him become a competent writer and composer, as well as a player of the Pflugel horn, the trumpet, the trombone, the french horn, a general percussionist and an accomplished violinist. However, you caught the year that he enlisted, right.

Four years after deciding to fight for her Majesty's Navy, Mister Shack lady became a decorated war hero in World War Two, serving with distinction on multiple ships and surviving burns from a torpedo strike on the HMS Cleopatra. Then again, he made it through alive when a german U boat sank the HMS Penelope and ultimately made it through to the end of the war.

However, like many of the other men returning from the war, Tom had a tough time finding his footing and finding work.

He ended up mostly kind of odd jobbing it around, but he never stopped the music and he organized private dance bands and played the trombone in the BBC's scottish orchestra.

He was promoted to the rank of sergeant and awarded the British Empire Medal for his service.

Then on one fateful day, when Tom achieved the rank of warrant, which is something like the highest rank of non commissioned officer in the Royal Navy, but honestly, I'm not real sure. He was transferred to Papua New guinea, specifically Port Moresby, which is the capital.

A couple of years later, he was transferred back to Australia to, among other things perform, in his words, his least favorite task of managing a swimming pool on the base. But he fell in love with the island and he kept PNG in his mind.

It opens with the statement being an act to foster and encourage the growth of a feeling of national identity and unity in Papua New guinea by providing for and then it gives us an itemized list that includes a national flag, an emblem, a pledge and an anthem, along with a whole bunch of other stuff that is not so relevant to the story but is still important to Papua New guinea. Most of the bill got sorted out in fairly short order, but the anthem was a bit different. There was a national competition.

We know about those for sure. They got narrowed down to four finalists.

However, I think we need to know what got the people of PNG to the point and then compelled them to be granted independence shortly thereafter. What really starts with the Australians not ever becoming comfortable with being a colonial power?

Despite what the constitutional convention and the australian government thought was going to happen, PNG opted to remain a member of the Commonwealth and retain a monarch. What I can find says that they kind of dug the gravitas of having a royal at the head of the nation.

They have sort of a strange arrangement for a Commonwealth nation, one that is shared only with the Solomon Islands, wherein the governor general is appointed by the head of state. What exactly the governor general does after they are appointed you'll have to read about on your own.

I think we'll move on to the song itself in a few, but first, there is a small loose end because there was some kind of an oversight of possibly due to the last minute choice of the anthem. But thats just speculation on my part.

As somebody that knows no lawyer stuff, I will need someone to explain to me because I don't know anything about PNG law, but the government there says that the schedules are not meant to cover literally everything, and then not having the anthem in them does not remove the significance of the song. Interesting stuff for me. Let's talk about the song itself. Musically, I'm kind of struggling to be excited here, if I'm being honest.

The song is written as a hymn, but plays sort of like a sloggy march in just about every interpretation of it I can find. I honestly almost just went with the Acapella version that's in reference number 16 in the show notes.

That's got the feeling of the vocal part, what you heard earlier. But the official as written music is tougher to pick out for people that never got the hang of ear training like me.

So the version with the music wins, and I'm pretty sure that is in the key of FM major, but let me know if you know for sure. Lyrically, I have a bit more to say. That will probably be the case.

More often than not, Tom was writing a real specific song for a specific contest, but we need to keep in mind that even though he was a white guy from Britain in his fifties, when he wrote oh arise all you sons, he really did love Papua New guinea. He brought a great deal of pride to his musical efforts for his adopted nation. I'll be reading this anthem as written.

Because it was written in English, the song is composed as verse, chorus, verse, chorus. There is a variation in the two choruses. On to the first verse.

O arise all you sons of this land let us sing of our joy to be free, praising God and rejoicing to be papawa New Guinea. Tom starts us off with exactly what you'd expect to hear from an anthem, making it not such a surprise that his song was the one that was chosen.

An immediate call to the people to rise and sing because they are free.

Technically, yes, I know they have a king, but it's a pretty democratic experience overall there, akin to what the people experience in the rest of the commonwealth. The verse celebrates the independence of the nation, along with the unity and pride of the people that live there.

Again, we are learning about the anthem of a very religious nation, so it's not a surprise that God is praised. They're mostly different kinds of christian, with traditional religions and animism practiced kinda under the radar, or even right alongside.

The remaining 4% of the population is divided among various other faiths. On to the first of the choruses. Shout our name from the mountains and seas. Papua New guinea. Let us raise our voices and proclaim Papua New guinea.

In the first refrain, we get an exultation to shout the country's name from the mountains and seas, and a repeat of the call to proclaim the name of the nation. Collective proclamations are an effective way to encourage national pride by symbolizing a widespread and united expression of national identity.

Not that anyone will hear you from up on the mountains, though not at least without a crazy loud megaphone, because PNG has seriously impressive mountains. The New guinea highlands cut right across the entire island and support many small agricultural communities in the elevated valleys that they make.

They're cool mountains, in case I forget to mention it.

On to verse two. Now give thanks to the Lord above for his kindness, his wisdom and love for this land of our fathers. So free Papua New Guinea.

I did say that they were a very religious country. They even have compulsory christian education in the public school system.

It's possible that we can infer from his writing that Tom knew this and was also probably fairly religious himself.

So the anthem, being effusive in its gratitude to the higher power for blessings of kindness, wisdom and love, completely tracks there will be more religious anthems. This song does imply some connection to the nation's history and heritage by acknowledging freedom and their ancestors.

Further, I wonder if this might be the anthem that says the name of the country the most times in the lyrics. Someday I will get statistics on that compiled, but for now we'll move on to the second and final refrain of this kind of a short anthem.

Shout again for the world to hear Papua New guinea. We're independent and we're free. Papua New guinea.

Here again the people shout, but this time the entire world will hear them proclaim their independence.

There were no specific events held outside of Papua New guinea to celebrate the independence, but there was a general international recognition by the undead other international organizations and by most other countries. Independence brought with it the establishment of diplomatic missions to various other places to establish formal relations.

The main event was at the capital, Moresby, where there was a transfer of flags and the first prime minister, a Michael Saumer, gave a speech.

I think this and the other refrain are a well focused verse and make for pretty good anthem writing on Toms part, even if this one is not on my playlist.

Overall, I find that arise all you sons is a carefully written and musically concise anthem that reflects themes of national pride, unity, freedom and gratitude, exactly what you would expect for a song that seeks to make a nation proud. By inciting references to the religious nature of the people and their ancestors, the song contributes to Papua New Guinea's cultural identity.

Tom managed to achieve the anthem goal of writing a song that seeks to serve as a powerful expression of the nation's values and aspirations. It was sort of a different kind of a story from what I've talked about before, but you know what?

They're all kind of different and I think that's kind of cool and kinda all we've got left is to talk about the credits. The writing, recording and production for the show are done by me and I wrote and played the theme music.

The music was used with my permission unless otherwise noted. The anthems I use are public domain or other equivalently free to play license.

My sources are contained in the show notes and again, there isn't anything not already mentioned other than please take a look at this country because it's another absolutely stunning looking place. The most direct way to get to the show notes is@anthemspodcast.com you can find me on Facebook and WhatsApp as the Anthems podcast.

For now, I try to get the episode shared onto whatever platform I can with the hashtag anthemspod. This is mostly because I have no desire, ability, or time to join all the networks of socials.

You can email me corrections, comments, suggestions, ideas, instructions on how to do awesome things and ask me questions@anthempod.com.

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