Tongan nose flute - from the archives
A rare instrument in the South Pacific these days is the nose-flute. But once it was more common in several islands, especially Tonga, where it was played to awaken a member of the royal family. Some lullabies have similar melodies to that played on the Tongan nose-flute.
(from my old research papers) W.
5 comments:
see 1. http://www.accu.or.jp/ich/pdf/c2005subreg_RP2.pdf#search=%22Fiji%20cultural%20mapping%22
and
http://www.fijianaffairs.gov.fj/Culture%20&%20Heritage/dbarts1.htm
About the nose flute - I have never seen one in Fiji, but Chris Saumaiwai wrote something about it one time.
My MA thesis about the music of Labasa in in the Pacific Collection at USP - but as an 'outsider' I'm still a stranger to much of the cultural information.
W.
Its early days on the cultural inventory project - I doubt there's any ethnomusicolo.. whatumacallits involved as the dept is very small and under-resourced. So far, the focus of the mapping is traditional mats which are specialised by different women in different provinces, not so much music and traditional instruments. Hopefully the old men who do play the nose flute in the hills are passing on the tradition to younger people and will not be dead by the time the mapping project gets to them!
Theres a few bands from Macuata doing well on the local scene - the harmonies are nice and the dialect is practically another language!