Songs in this chapter fall broadly into two thematic categories: laments for the living and dirges for the dead. But this categorisation, primarily for purposes of arrangement in publication, does not correspond closely to any Tikopia principle of classification. Nearly all the songs in this chapter are of fuatanga type, that is, sung in slow, what might appear to be doleful style. But as already discussed in Chapter 8, between which and this chapter there is considerable overlap, the fuatanga form is also used for songs of praise. What it represents is an expression of emotional sensitivity in grave manner, in contrast to the gayer manner of a dance song (mako). Even here the classification is not completely exclusive; some mako too may be expressions of gravity. This chapter includes two dance songs. One, composed by Lily, Nau Rangiaco (no. 76) was a lament against her father's apparent neglect of her when she was in hospital; it was couched as a matāvaka probably because it was a kind of mako tauangutu, an accusation which was more suited for expression in dance than in elegy form. The other dance song was also a response to special circumstances. At the obsequies of Noakena, grandson of the Ariki Tafua, in 1929, the old chief and his sons rose to dance a makopo in memory of the boy's recreational activities (no. 82), a grim contrast to the general atmosphere of wailing, yet essentially a traditional funeral performance.

Any record and interpretation of cultural material by an anthropologist is bound to be imperfect. This applies particularly to aesthetics, where concepts are hard to fix, and individual reactions likely to be widely variable. So it is with Tikopia poetry and music.

In western literature statements about the nature and significance of poetry have abounded for the last two thousand years. In modern times George Steiner, for example, has given an illuminating, even exalted interpretation of poetry and music. He stresses the way in which western poetry has led towards music, passing into music when it attains its maximal intensity - which may mean when it seeks to dissociate itself from clarity and the common usages of syntax (Steiner 1969: 43, 49, 64). Steiner's insistence upon ‘the indivisible origins of poetry and music’ rests perhaps upon a conception of music in the widest sense, in which vocalisation of patterned words of itself produces a metrical and melodic arrangement. Tikopia practice conforms broadly to Steiner's principle, but in a even more integrated way. For in Tikopia a poem is composed as a song. Indeed, to treat a Tikopia song simply as a poem, a patterned arrangement of words without recognised tonal intervals, occurs for the Tikopia only as a learning device, and would be ultimately meaningless without the melodic referent. The musical frame of reference for the poem is in general pre-existent, set by traditional pattern, though a composer may exercise some individual creative power.

The songs in this chapter are a diverse set, but broadly refer to the Tikopia past, or putative past, by contrast with those of earlier chapters, where the accent is mainly on contemporary themes. In referring to songs on ‘historical’ and on ‘mythic’ themes I do not mean to imply any subtle fusions or distinctions such have been fashionable in anthropology in recent years. All the events referred to in these songs have been a construct of oral tradition, and in that sense may be regarded as belonging to a common category of verbal statement relating to an imagined ‘mythic’ past. But some elements of this imagined past are more plausible as ‘real’ events than others. The voyages of fathers, grandfathers and other kin overseas mentioned in the songs in this and other chapters conform quite closely to actual Tikopia experiences known to men who sang these texts for my recording. Moreover, independent corroboration is fairly clear in a few cases. In the early nineteenth century the explorer Peter Dillon cited voyages of the Ariki Taumako to Vanikoro in terms very similar to those used by the Tikopia to me a century later in 1929 (Dillon 1829: i, 28, 34; n, 115-39. Firth 1959: 32). Recently, Richard Feinberg has confirmed from Anuta sources, voyages between Tikopia and Anuta which I was told of by Tikopia sources (Feinberg 1988:155). In terms of plausibility then, Tikopia songs referring to these and similar events may be classed as ‘historical’, in that they deal with what has very likely been part of Tikopia experience.

Tikopia poetic art is almost entirely without love songs. This is not for want of strong attraction between man and woman or of articulate pleading for the sexual favour and the affection of someone of the other sex. Small gifts, such as portions of tobacco or areca nut, reinforce the expression of desire. But the Tikopia cultural idiom did not take a form of songs praising the qualities of the beloved, and very rarely expressed affection and longing for the person of the other.

Tikopia songs in the field of sex relations tend to assume what may be called an adversarial rather than a conjunctive form. To understand how this may have come to be so needs some knowledge of the Tikopia attitude to marriage and the categories involved.

Of prime importance to the life of Tikopia young people is the division between the married and the unmarried. Marriage has traditionally marked a clearcut break in the social life. The unmarried consist of two sets of socially identified people - bachelor men and youths (nga tamāroa) and spinster women and girls (nga fāfine taka). Together they make up the most active social component of the Tikopia population in the recreational sphere. In small bands or in large groups they play games together, they go around from one village to another in search of amusement, and above all, they are the backbone of the dance.

The first parts of this book have given a general analysis of the social and musical nature of Tikopia song, its poetics, its typology, its structure and the occasions and manner of its use. In the following chapters I adopt a more thematic approach, considering the content of each song in its concrete and symbolic connotations, and giving where possible some detail about its composition and performance. For this purpose, though some chapters such as chapter 10 cite only mako and others such as chapter 11 cite almost entirely fuatanga, the classification is primarily not by type of song but rather by the subject to which it is addressed.

Many dance songs celebrate matters of interest to Tikopia in everyday life - natural phenomena such as rain beneficial to crops, the performance of craft work, the behaviour of birds and offish, the attraction of aromatic leaves and flowers admired for bodily decoration, the pleasures of institutionalised recreation such as the dart match and especially dancing itself. Even within the celebration of such mundane affairs human interest and human commitment have had play. So some of these songs do not merely take everyday objects or actions as theme, but use the theme to convey some personal attitude, expressing strong passions of joy or grief, praise or blame, wonder or fear.

However, the general thrust of many Tikopia songs is descriptive and action oriented rather than analytical of personality.

Since so much Tikopia singing is associated with dancing, it is necessary to give an outline of the dance as an institution in Tikopia, and of the types of songs produced for dancing.

All Tikopia are extremely enthusiastic about dancing. A favourite expression meaning ‘I want to dance’ implies not so much voluntary action as that the person has been taken over by his involuntary drives - literally, the ‘dancing impulse’ has entered into him. When a dance has been ‘set up’ and the beat of the sounding board begins, even old people are often stimulated to join in. A dance may take place at any time of the year, but traditionally the most formal festival dances tended to occur in the monsoon season, which had many fine weather periods and when food supplies tended to be readily available. When dancing was at its height, on a large scale, no work was done apart from the collection of food for the occasion. People went to their orchards, brought back provisions, cooked them and carried them off to the dance. In reference to this almost obsessional behaviour the Ariki Taumako said to me: ‘The one work of Tikopia is the dance’. The Melanesian Mission teacher, a man from Motlav in the Banks Islands, said to me: ‘Their great valued possession in Tikopia is dancing, is enjoyment.’ When the community was caught up in dancing many people did not sleep at night.

A eulogy, in classical expression, was a speech of praise, especially praise of a dead person, and taking the form of a set oration. In a Tikopia context, the term may be extended to cover statements of praise or commendation made in the set form of poetry, and treated musically, as song. Moreover, in Tikopia, sensibly enough, a song eulogy has often been addressed to a living person, who can recognise the honour and suitably reward the composer. Many of these eulogies have been composed in dance form, varying as ngore, matāvaka, mori, tūngaunu, tusoko, mako po according to the composer's whim. But many others - about half of those I have cited here - have been composed as fuatanga, in lament form. This I interpret as a token, not of sadness or grief, but of emotional sensitivity. The composer has felt moved by thought of the qualities of generosity, hospitality etc. celebrated in the song, and so has couched the tribute in grave rather than in gay mode. As such the context of performance demanded is different; a dance song is chanted to accompany the physical acts of recreation, while a lament is chanted on more solemn occasions, as a feast given by a chief, or a ritual event expressing sympathy with a boy about to be initiated.

A particular kind of eulogy, in lament style, is the soa. As its name implies, this is a type of song which is based upon a relation of amity, of which prime examples are the relation between spouses, and between bond friends (for whom the reciprical term is also soa).

I thought of this work on Tikopia songs many years ago, as a study of poetry, that is, as an examination of the modes of arrangement of words in the Tikopia language in conventional verse form, leaving aside reference to music and to bodily movement such as dance, except as general descriptive background. This is still the main tenor of the work, which in some ways is an extension of the semantic aspect of my Tikopia-English Dictionary (Auckland University Press, 1985). But as research into Tikopia and other Polynesian cultures has developed, it has seemed to me that some rather more systematic contextualization of the songs is now feasible. My own textual record of poetic composition is fairly ample, being based upon collection of examples from Tikopia people at five periods over fifty years. I have also had much discussion of the meaning of many poems with many Tikopia, and have taken part in many events in which such poems were being sung. So a reasonably detailed account of the form and nature of these songs, their imagery and the social setting which helped to inspire and shape them can now be given.

The musical record is not as ample. In 19281 had no recording apparatus with which to capture Tikopia speech and singing. But thanks to the enterprise of my colleague James Spillius in 1952 and 1953, supplemented by my own recordings in 1966 and 1973, by very helpful contribution from Ishmael Tuki in Auckland in 1978, and by a few other sources, a small but fairly representative set of Tikopia musical examples, mainly of secular songs, has now been secured on tape.

Introduction

The analysis undertaken here is of recordings which may loosely be described as the Firth collection: i.e. recordings from disparate sources in the possession of Raymond Firth and made available by him for analysis. In accordance with Firth's own choice of songs elsewhere in the book no account is taken of modern songs (mostly with guitar or ukulele accompaniment). These are discussed by Firth in Chapter 1.

The starting point for analysis was to transcribe into music notation all transcribable items on tape. Over 60 songs were transcribed in full and some in part. Because of space limitations few of these transcriptions can be published here. In the interests of the general reader the analysis is likewise severely curtailed.

Manner of singing

Distinctive vocal quality in a singing style is easy to recognise but notoriously difficult to describe. Firth's description of Tikopia singing (p. 30) as tending towards harshness may be accepted but is applicable mainly to group rather than solo singing. Soloists such as Ishmael Tuki who recorded at Auckland in 1978 and the Ariki Taumako, who recorded for Firth in 1966, sang in a relatively relaxed manner though with some rasp in the latter case. Group singing has moderate nasality and tension, especially in dance-songs. As the latter approach their climax, shouts and cries are interspersed, the song gets faster and louder, and a shouted quality of voice becomes more prevalent in the singing itself, adding to the impression of harshness.

For Tikopia a death generates much musical activity. In terms sometimes used in anthropology, Tikopia attitudes to death may be described as ceremonial rather than ritual, in that the emphasis is on formal behaviour patterns rather than on observances governed primarily by mystical beliefs (cf. Firth, 1956: 46). A person who has died is given respect as the centre of funeral activities, in proportion to his or her rank or status. But unlike much western or Muslim practice, for instance, Tikopia custom is not to observe any special silence or quiet behaviour in the presence of the dead. Solemnity of demeanour is common, and a smile rather than laughter is regarded as seemly, while often real sorrow is apparent. But conversation around the corpse may be carried on in normal tones. Indeed, noise may be obligatory, as in the gunfire or more traditional percussion that signalised the death of a chief, and the continued wailing and singing of dirges that goes on in the period before the corpse is buried, and at intervals for some time thereafter.

In strong contrast to Maori and some other Oceanic peoples, though the spirit of the dead person is believed to be around for several days after the death and must be treated with precaution, the Tikopia show no fear of a corpse as such. They express no idea that a corpse may be polluting and have no taboos about the dead. Hence there are no rites of purification after handling a corpse or taking part in a funeral.

It can hardly be claimed for Tikopia poetry, as it has often been claimed for some European poetic treasuries, that it is among the deepest expressions and purest creations of mankind. Unlike French poetry, for example, that of Tikopia is not marked by oratorical beauty, power of incantation, profundity of thought - though perhaps it may be allowed the qualities of novelty and force of sentiment which mark effective poetic effort. Neither can it be awarded without question the distinction of possessing inspiration, natural grace and pure lyrical eloquence - qualities held to be characteristic of a poet such as Ronsard (Arland, 1947: 13, 17, 27). Yet one may say with Frangois Villon that poetry isn't just a correct assembly of sounds and images; it is the profound song of a man (or a woman), with its roots deep down in the human heart. By such criteria, any serious study of Tikopia poetry shows that while varying in quality, many of these songs do reveal expression of deep emotion and deal with universal human situations and problems - of struggle with nature, adjustment in personal relations, care for reputation, respect for authority, love for close kin, anguish at loss. Moreover, the songs convey such sentiments in formal language which clearly has had aesthetic value for the Tikopia. So these songs have served as a kind of treasury for them, a stock of memories of a stylised order which can be drawn upon by successive generations of Tikopia to remind them of past pains and pleasures, events in their community history, concepts of cultural individuality, in a nostalgic idiom which is highly meaningful to them.

Traditionally, Tikopia life has been permeated by the contrast between land and sea. Living on a tiny island less than three kilometres across, more than 150 km. from any larger land and 100 km. from Anuta, an even smaller dot in the ocean, the people of Tikopia were habituated to the constant sight of a horizon without a break all round, and the constant sound of the sea, from the quiet wash of the surf on a windless night to the roaring of breakers in a storm. The sea was a vital economic resource, for daily bathing, and for supply of almost their only flesh food, fish. It was also their sole avenue of communication with the outside world, by outrigger canoe, until in the nineteenth century European vessels made an occasional visit. And while it offered Tikopia men the opportunity to travel to other islands and satisfy their thirst for adventure, it continued to be a grave for large numbers of their most active young men and distinguished elders. Awareness of the sea was built into the Tikopia language. Not only has there been a large vocabulary connected with the sea, canoes and fishing, but also consciousness of the sea has entered into the most elementary directional indicators. In spatial distribution of objects, and orientation of personal activity, the most general sign has been the ascription of ngatai or ngauta - seawards or landwards - terms which can be used even if one is working on an orchard in the centre of the island or wrapped up in a blanket in a house (cf. Firth 1936: 18-21).