Making a Song And Dance about it all….E toku Imene, E toku Tamure

Uirangi Bishop Dancer of the Year

Standing in the Tereora School Hall and surrounded by 650 students, the singing began. Not just any kind of singing but the singing that you will only hear in the Cook Islands. It’s a harmony of men and women, each knowing their part and coming in at different times intervals and tones that create a sound that is almost heavenly. The students were in full swing singing like an angelic choir, and all I could do was try and find a quiet place away from the crowd so as they wouldn’t see the tears that had started to fill me eyes causing my need for solitude.

Perplexed and standing outside the School hall I could not help but think again as to why I feel the way I do when I hear that sound. That singing and those tones and timber that seem to pierce through to my marrow and resonate throughout my body and soul. Regardless as to whether I know why…I just know it happens. I begin to understand on reflection that it’s a  wonderful sense of connecting with something larger than myself. Something that reaches into the past and connects with me here in the present. Something that calls as it were from the long line of people who have walked the ground I now stand on and seemingly call out my name, asking me to join hands and connect with them.

The songs are not directly about me and neither are they directly about my family, though they are about my people and a land and a history that is indelibly intertwined with my own. It is the most exhilarating feeling to stand their and feel the notes pass through me as if they were knives tearing me asunder. Then through song taking those pieces and filling them, coming back together again full and satisfied. So full it causes an overflow that starts at my eyes and trickles down my cheek letting me know the conecting that is going on inside me.

We are a people who have told our stories and sung our traditions for centuries. We have managed to keep our identity, values and genealogies intact despite our not having the power of pen and paper. Without the access to books and libraries the strength of an oral tradition has retained the information that has kept our culture over the passing of time. Dance, also a vital part of the preservation of this tradition has helped encapsulate these ideas and values and created a visual mode much like movies and video have done to tell and preserve our stories.

So is this why I feel like I do when I hear these ancient chants?..When that harmony sounds and the beating of the “pate” drums resound. Is it the celebration of a time past that calls out to those in the now? A song composed by a composer now maybe unknown speaking of a certain event or time or place that is now immortal through song. Immortal and Immortalised every time it is sung and when sung today like a time capsule opened for the very first time.

In Auckland New Zealand every year they hold the Secondary Schools Polyfest. It’s a place where Song and Dance of the many Pacific Nations that have made New Zealand home is celebrated and displayed with a vigour, passion and competitiveness that encapsulates so much of who Pacific People are in a strange land. Like the children of Israel when they were in captivity who  said..”How shall we sing the Lords song in a strange Land”…Pacifica people, like many peoples who have journeyed from their home to strange lands, have been able to preserve their identity by celebrating their own unique songs and dance which- helps them never forget who they are.

Tears fill my eyes when I hear these songs because they are my own. They are as real for me as the ground I stand on. They are a connection to a past I am only just beginning to understand and a language I am just beginning to learn and comprehend. It is essential that people wherever they travel are able to celebrate who and what they are in ways that they understand and comprehend. It is this ability to take what is tangible to a foreign land that preserves a sense of identity and flies in the face of the misnomer that is the melting pot. Whether it be a Morris Dance, a Haka, an Irish Jig or an Imene Tuki…..sing the songs, dance the dances and celebrate and connect with a past that reaches from the tunnel of time to wherever you may be.

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