From: nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson)
Subject: Polynesian music
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 19:34:03 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA


 [This question pertains to international music but there
  doesn't seem to be an rec.music.international or alt.music.
  international newsgroup visible from here.  I also posted
  this to rec.music.misc.  Is there a better place to post this?] 

 I just returned from French Polynesia where I had an
 interesting experience.  On Christmas we were on Bora Bora
 so we decided to go to church.  Bora Bora is a tiny island
 of about 4000 people and the main town is a little village
 of tin-roof shacks, mangy dogs and a single, rutted main 
 roads.  

 We went to a local Protestant church where the entire 
 congregation (~250) was Polynesian and my wife and I and
 another couple were the only outsiders. They gave us some
 pews off to the side.  The congregation was about 60% women,
 30% men, 10% children.  The adults were dressed in white,
 with the women wearing long dresses and white straw hats like
 something from an Impressionist painting from the 1890's.  

 We had heard the music was good but we didn't know what to
 expect (Silent Night in French?  Away in the Manger in Polynesian?)
 After some sermonizing in Polynesian the minister stopped talking.  
 Suddenly one woman sang out a verse of something Polynesian in a
 high, clear voice.  Then others joined in, right on time and on
 key.  And then still others.   

 It was the most beautiful music I had ever heard in any house of
 worship anywhere in the world.  It was nothing that I could identify
 as being in the western liturgical or hymnal tradition.  It was all
 in Polynesian, all a cappella, and totally without any choir or
 chorus director.  It had some of the most complex harmonies 
 I've ever heard.   It was amazingly smooth and "professional",
 i.e., I'm sure they could have played Carnegie Hall or Symphony
 Hall in Boston and wowed them, but this was in a little one-street
 village in the middle of nowhere, singing just for themselves, i.e.,
 not for the tourists.

 And above all it was extraordinarily moving!  From a few moments
 of when it started it brought tears to my eyes.  A week and a half
 later it still haunts me.

 I'd like to find out more about this music or try to get some on
 tape or CD.  In French Polynesia itself the only music for sale
 to tourists was of the "Hawaiian pop" variety  ("If you like a 
 ukelele lady, ukelele lady like-a you" and similar "classics")
 So naturally I went to Cambridge Massachusetts where I was able to 
 find a bigger selection of Polynesian music.  I bought a CD called 
 "Tahitian Choir", recorded by a French ethnomusicologist on the
 island of Rapa Iti, and even smaller place than Bora Bora.  It
 has the same haunting harmonies, but with a twist: on many songs
 they do a strange quarter-tone shift in the middle of a verse
 which is a bit unnerving -- like having wow on a record.

 Where can I get more of this music?  Where can I find out more
 about it? 

 Thanks in advance.
                                             

---peter

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