Sea breeze: Globalisation and cook islands popular ...

The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology

ISSN: 1444-2213 (Print) 1740-9314 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtap20

Sea breeze: Globalisation and cook islands popular music Kalissa Alexeyeff To cite this article: Kalissa Alexeyeff (2004) Sea breeze: Globalisation and cook islands popular music, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 5:2, 145-158, DOI: 10.1080/1444221042000247689 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1444221042000247689

Published online: 23 Aug 2006.

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The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology Vol. 5, No. 2, August 2004, pp. 145 /158

Sea Breeze: Globalisation and Cook Islands Popular Music Downloaded by [The University Of Melbourne Libraries] at 17:56 07 March 2016

Kalissa Alexeyeff

This paper examines the dynamics of Cook Islands popular music, most commonly referred to as ‘island music’. Among Cook Islands communities at home and abroad, island music is performed at informal gatherings, at nightclubs and bars. It is also a central component of large functions such as weddings and island fundraising events. String bands* who perform island music * undertake performance tours through New Zealand, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia. These bands also record audiotapes and CDs of their music, which are extremely popular among Cook Islander communities across the region. Despite island music’s centrality in many social contexts it is also the subject of much critical debate. It is viewed by some both as a ‘bastardisation’ of ‘traditional’ expressive forms and as an indicator of ‘global’ corruption; local music is seen as ‘swamped’ by Western popular music. I argue that these debates are symptomatic of anxiety about globalisation and related notions of authenticity, cultural ownership and loss. They are also ultimately concerned with negotiating locality and identity across the Cook Islands diaspora. /

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Keywords: Cook Islands; Popular Music; Expressive Culture; Globalisation; Diaspora

Sea Breeze, so peaceful Back in Aitutaki I yearn to see you I would love to be there this night When I return We will all go We will have fun Sea Breeze1 (Song lyrics by Rose Peni. Sung to the melody of ‘We Three’ by the Inkspots)

Kalissa Alexeyeff is a lecturer in the Gender Studies Program, Department of History at the University of Melbourne. Correspondence to: Gender Studies Program, Department of History, The University of Melbourne, Vict 3010, Australia. Tel: /61 (0)3 83443309. Fax: /61 (0)3 83447894. Email: k.alexeyeff@unimelb. edu.au ISSN 1444-2213 (print)/ISSN 1740-9314 (online) # 2004 The Australian National University DOI: 10.1080/1444221042000247689

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In November 1998, I travelled to Auckland, New Zealand, to attend the wedding of a Cook Islands friend. I was picked up at the airport by Mamia Savage, a woman I lived with for the majority of my 18-month anthropological fieldwork in the Cook Islands, and her sister Rose Peni who resided in the Pacific-Islander-dominated suburb of Mangere. Instead of returning home we drove to the Otara Market in South Auckland* as Rose explained, she went there every Saturday morning. This market is frequented by New Zealand Maori and Pacific Islanders. It sells island produce such as taro, cooked island food, mats, brooms, pareu (island print material worn like a sarong), audiocassettes and CDs of Pacific Island music. On Saturday mornings Pacific Island musical acts perform on a small stage erected in the middle of the market. When we arrived, Tangee, an old friend of Mamia’s from Rarotonga, was launching his third album, The Best of Me (1997). Tangee is a flamboyant performer who found considerable success in New Zealand and French Polynesia, as well as on his home island, Rarotonga. It was not until a week later, when Mamia and I were listening to The Best of Me as we drove around Auckland, that she told me Rose had composed the song ‘Sea Breeze’ which appears on the album. I was surprised that neither Mamia nor Rose had mentioned this to me earlier. Although Mamia was obviously proud of her sister’s composition she did not appear to regard it as remarkable. Both sisters and other members of their family are composers, dancers and musicians. During our dinner preparations, Mamia was more concerned with imparting to me the inspiration for the song* a bar on the island of Aitutaki (the women’s home) called the Sea Breeze. The bar overlooked the island’s wharf. It was owned by a relation and was the site of many good times with family and friends. Mamia explained Rose’s inspiration for the song in these terms:

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You know Rose has lived in Auckland for maybe 20 years. She wrote the song about how she misses Aitutaki. She wants to go back. That’s what we all want, to go home. (Mamia Savage, pers. comm.)

After Tangee’s recording of ‘Sea Breeze’, the song became hugely popular among Cook Islanders at home and abroad. Its theme of yearning for homeland and the evocation of the intense, pleasurable sociability that is seen to exist there is a common theme in Cook Islands popular music written abroad. Approximately 70,000 Cook Islanders live overseas, primarily in New Zealand and Australia, while only around 14,000 live within the Cook Islands nation-state. The opportunity to earn considerably higher wages propels many Cook Islanders away. The better standard of living, range of opportunities and availability of work keeps them there. Despite her longing, returning home permanently is not a financially viable option for Rose, or presumably for many of the other 52,000 Cook Islanders who live in New Zealand. Nevertheless, the Cook Islands remains home* a place of significance which finds expression in cultural production and other social practices. For example, many return at Christmas time and important events, such as 21st birthday parties, baptisms and weddings, are postponed until the Christmas season. /

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This article examines Cook Islands popular music and its links to the production of Cook Islands sociality. Drawing upon Arjun Appadurai’s (1996, pp. 178 99) insights into the crucial role of expressive forms in post-colonial identity politics, I argue that ‘island music’, as Cook Islands popular music is called, is an important site for the negotiation of Cook Islander identities. Island music is central to the production of locality in transnational Cook Islands communities and serves to generate the ‘imagined community’ across the Cook Islands diaspora. Epeli Hau’ofa’s (1994, 1998; see also Jolly 2001) vision of the Pacific diaspora as a creative dialectic between dwelling and movement, of migration as a process of enlargement and expansion of Oceania into cities such as Auckland and Sydney, also provides impetus for the analysis. Cook Islands popular music is also integral to debates about cultural ownership, loss and authenticity, issues which are fervently contested in global identity politics. As a number of scholars of globalisation and nationalism argue, global connections and the reassertion of cultural difference are interrelated trends. As national boundaries become less significant* economically, culturally and politically* there is a tendency to reassert national autonomy and distinctiveness around ethnic, religious and cultural identities (Clifford 1994, 1997; Friedman 1994; Foster 1991). In the Cook Islands, music is a vibrant area of cultural production and is central in many aspects of Cook Islands social life. Despite this centrality, popular music* and other contemporary forms of cultural production, dance in particular* is also the subject of critical debate and ambivalent evaluation. Debates about the authenticity and merit of island music reflect Cook Islands identity politics in this global era. In the first section of this article I provide an overview of the production, consumption and distribution of island music and track the transnational circuits by which it travels. In the second section, I examine stylistic aspects of contemporary Cook Islands music, particularly the way in which local and non-local song texts and melodies are combined in island music. In the song ‘Sea Breeze’, for example, Rose has used the melody to ‘We Three (My Echo, My Shadow, and Me)’, a song popularised by the black American band the Ink Spots in 1940. The final section of my paper examines the politics of appropriation in relation to global cultural flows (Appadurai 1996, p. 30). I argue that, through music, concerns about cultural homogenisation are expressed while aspects of this music attempt to domesticate or localise the global (Iwabuchi 2002; Appadurai 1996, 2001; Miller 1995). That is, contemporary expressive forms aim to harness global forces to maintain and generate Cooks Islands sociality.


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Island Sounds Island music was the term most commonly used to describe Cook Islands popular music on Rarotonga during the late 1990s. Other terms include imene ‘ou (contemporary music) and imene tamataora (popular/entertaining songs). The genealogy of island music is complex. It is a genre which combines elements of

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indigenous musical genres and song texts with musical styles from the Polynesian region, particularly Hawai’i and French Polynesia, and from Western popular music styles. The incorporation of outside musical styles appears to have taken place between the islands of French Polynesia and the Cook Islands in pre-colonial times (Moulin 1996). Since European colonisation, aspects of Western music have also been integrated with Cook Islands musical forms. For example, in his book Doctor in Paradise, S. M. Lambert (1941, pp. 279 80) describes visiting Aitutaki in the 1920s. The ship on which he arrived was greeted by a local band playing American jazz, prewar tunes from Broadway and British hymns. A number of older people with whom I discussed older forms of musical styles stressed the dynamic relationship between local and non-local music from the 1920s to 1950s. One elderly Aitutakian woman told me:


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We did all sorts of dancing, waltz, foxtrot, one-step and local styles. The bands played papa’a [European] music with Maori words. They made the papa’a songs into songs about here . (Mama Bishop, pers. comm., emphasis added)

This last point about the importance of localisation strategies in relation to song texts will be taken up later; the point I wish to stress here is that borrowing and reconstituting non-local music in popular Cook Islands music has history which extends from Cook Islands’ pre-colonial and colonial pasts. Contemporary island music consists of songs sung by individuals or by groups and accompanied primarily by the ukulele and guitar. David Goldsworthy argues that the ukulele sound is the distinguishing element of Cook Islands contemporary music: ‘[t]he ukulele often commences the song alone, sets the tempo and rhythm, and strums chords in distinctive syncopated patterns throughout the song’ (Goldsworthy 2000, p. 513). Since the 1960s, island music has incorporated other musical instruments, such as drums, and electric instruments, such as bass guitar, keyboard and amplified ukulele. Context is the prime determinant of instrument choice. At informal gatherings acoustic instruments are used to play island music while electric instruments are utilised at formal performances, for instance those at clubs or bars or community functions. Rarotongan musicians I spoke to did not distinguish between electric and acoustic music and the term ‘string band’ was used for both acoustic and electric bands which performed island music (Goldsworthy 2001, p. 36 also makes this point). Ethnomusicologists who have studied the formal components of contemporary popular music in the Cook Islands and the Pacific region suggest that the songs incorporate aspects of Western popular music with Pacific musical features (Hayward 2000; Moyle 1991; Thomas 1981). In much Cook Islands popular music, ‘Western tonal systems, melodic and chordal structures’ (Hayward 2000, p. 511) and Western musical genres (in the Cook Islands Latin and pop are the most popular) are combined with Cook Islands Maori song texts and indigenous rhythmic, percussive and vocal styles. Goldsworthy (1996, p. 9) suggests that in Cook Islands popular music ‘[m]ost songs operate within the three chord framework of much Western popular music, but have some Polynesian aspects to their close-spaced, three-part



vocal harmony, and extended harmonic phrases’ (see also Goldsworthy 2000, 2001). These distinctive harmonic, melodic and rhythmic styles are found in other Cook Islands musical genres including chants (pe’e), secular songs (ute) and religious songs (imene tuki). On Rarotonga, the main island in the southern Cook Islands group and home to 10,000 of the nation’s 14,000 inhabitants, island music is everywhere. The radio station, Radio Cook Islands, is turned up loud in most households, workplaces and cars. The station primarily plays the music of Cook Islander, French Polynesian and New Zealand artists. Island music is also played live across a number of contexts. String bands perform island music for tourists and locals at hotels, restaurants, nightclubs and community functions such as weddings. In 1999, there were at least eight string bands which played regularly on Rarotonga. Most of these had recorded a CD or audiocassette of their songs, including original songs, covers of island songs (composed by Cook Islanders and other Pacific Islanders), and reworkings of Western popular songs. These recordings are often produced locally in one of the three studios on Rarotonga and are sold throughout the Cook Islands, New Zealand, Australia and French Polynesia. A number of the bands and solo artists undertake tours to these countries to promote their music. As well as Cook Islands string bands touring abroad, string bands comprised of New Zealand-based Cook Islanders tour the Cook Islands and their recordings are popular purchases among the local audiences. In addition to the active live music scene on Rarotonga, a number of competitions are held which involve string bands and attract large crowds. These events include an annual String Band Competition and related events such as the Composer Competition, the Song Quest and the Dancer of the Year Competition in which string bands and solo vocal artists accompany dance performances. Contemporary island music (and older island music songs from the 1960s and 1970s) also accompanies the dance genre action song (kaparima), which is performed in dance settings ranging from the above-mentioned dance competitions to community celebrations and tourist performances. Island music is also played in informal settings. Some men attend what is commonly referred to as ‘beer school’* regular drinking sessions where men drink alcohol, talk, dance and sing. Other informal settings include parties held at private homes. At the house I lived in, small parties were often spontaneously held on a Friday or Saturday night. They consisted of members of Mamia’s family, usually her sister and sister’s husband, and myself. Mamia’s sister sang and played instruments in a dance group on Rarotonga and her husband belonged to a popular Rarotongan band, Sweet, Sour and Cream. As the nights progressed, song took over from conversation, each member of the family took turns at playing a ukulele, and rhythm was added by the addition of ‘found objects’* a spoon jangled in a beer bottle, a spatula beaten against a plastic bowl. Certain songs, fast and lively ones, would result in members of the group dancing. Towards the end of the night, the pace would slacken and the players introduced sentimental songs of village life and romantic love from their home island, Aitutaki. /

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Both men and women compose island music; however, most string bands are comprised of men. There are, nevertheless, women who pursue solo careers and who are vocalists in male string bands. Individuals usually cite two main reasons for composition. The first and most common is that they compose on request. This includes being asked to compose a song for community events such as the opening of a new road or church hall. An influential Rarotongan composer, Tepoave Raitia, who was employed by the Ministry of Cultural Development to compose music and assist in the organisation of cultural events such as the Constitution Celebrations, was often approached by family members to compose songs. During the course of my fieldwork I also ‘worked’ at the Ministry of Cultural Development. In exchange for office space, I would assist members of staff including Raitia with typing, research and report writing. On a number of occasions, when I was working with him, family members ‘dropped in’ to request a composition. For example, his niece, who was entering the Miss Cook Islands beauty pageant, approached him to write a song for the dance section of the show. He composed one about the beauty of the allamanda (allamanda cathartica), the flower his niece had chosen to use as her ‘signature’ flower on her dance costume. On another occasion he was asked to compose a song for a chief ’s birthday celebrations. At the time of this request Princess Diana had just died, and Elton John’s tribute version of ‘Candle in the Wind’ was extremely popular in the Cook Islands (as was Princess Diana). Raitia toyed with using the song’s melody and some of its lyrics in his composition, in particular the lines ‘the stars spell out your name’ and ‘this torch we’ll always carry for our nation’s golden child’. He decided against this approach as the chief, who was attempting to have the powers of traditional chiefs increased (such as chiefly entitlement to large tracts of land occupied by ‘commoners’), was not at all popular among the general community at the time. He was concerned, given Princess Diana’s popularity in the Cook Islands, that a comparison of her with the unpopular chief may have been considered disrespectful to Diana’s memory. Instead, Raitia told me, he decided to take the ‘safe option’ and borrowed lines from an old chant (pe’e) associated with the chief ’s lineage which praised and affirmed the chiefly title. The second reason individuals give for composing songs is that they have been deeply affected by a particular incident. Mamia composed a song about the birth of her son and one about a friend who drowned. Another woman told me that she was upset by the breakdown of her sister’s marriage and was moved to write a song about it. During my fieldwork, this song was frequently played on the radio and people listening would often comment: ‘ah, that is the song about Mary’s and John’s separation’. It was this song, and the response it would evoke from listeners, that made me consider the way in which island music circulates information that is important to Cook Islanders. This ranges from the intimate details of relationship breakdowns and indiscretions to observations about societal change such as mass migration and identity politics.


‘Coconuts’ and Imports The subject matter of island music song texts is primarily the anatomy of personal and community events. As suggested above, the inspiration for island music can come from everyday incidents such as significant life-stage events and romantic relationships* their fruition and demise. Songs that cover these themes of romantic love and loss and the memorialisation of people, events and places belong to a category of island music called imene aro’a (songs of feeling). The term ‘aro’a’ includes notions of affection, pity, sorrow, sympathy and love. The examples given above of compositional motivation suggest that songs are written as aesthetic expressions of aro’a to members of one’s family and close friends. The other main category of island music is imene mataora, happy songs which deal with everyday events in humorous ways, often through absurd images and sexual innuendo. These two song types encompass a range of subject matter. In the following, I examine the ways in which island music incorporates non-local, usually Western, musical forms: first, by briefly examining the phenomenon of ‘borrowing’ in Cook Islands cultural production; and, second, by looking at the ways in which issues about contemporary Cook Islands life are inserted into, and transform, non-local music. While many Cook Islands songwriters compose original lyrics, borrowing melodies and texts from other songs is a common practice, as it is throughout the Pacific region, and elsewhere (Moulin 1996; Thomas 1981). In Cook Islands popular music borrowing occurs in a number of forms. Contemporary Western or Pacific songs are reworked to include local rhythmic and melodic styles and Cook Islands Maori lyrics are often included alongside English or Pacific Islands lyrics. Songs of this type, popular during the late 1990s, included Kylie Minogue’s ‘Locomotion’ and the Bellamy Brothers’ ‘If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body (Would You Hold It Against Me)’. Another form of borrowing involves reworking aspects of older Cook Islands or Pacific song melodies, for example Hawai’ian-inspired popular music hits such as ‘Pearly Shells’ and ‘Beyond the Reef ’. Island music may also include segments of Cook Islands chant (pe’e) lyrics or the melodies or song texts of an older secular song style, ute (Goldsworthy 2000, p. 514). Although some island music song texts contain English verses, the majority are sung in Cook Islands Maori. The borrowing strategy I focus on here is the common practice among island music composers of taking a non-local melody and overlaying it with what are commonly called ‘coconut lyrics’, that is, lyrics in the Cook Islands Maori language. The English word ‘coconut’ is used by Cook Islanders to describe strategies of localisation of outside objects, ideas and practices. It may have derogatory connotations but is primarily utilised as a humorous form of praise of ‘local-ness’. For instance, the perceived tendency of Islanders to disregard Western notions of punctuality is referred to as ‘coconut time’, and a person carrying three people on a motorbike and a large basket of food is described as a ‘real coconut’ due to her or his resourceful use of transport. In a similar way, ‘coconut lyrics’ are considered to be humorously inventive appropriations of Western songs; the lack of


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regard accorded to the song’s authorship is, like ‘coconut time’, I suggest, a subtle form of resistance to the penetration of Western modes of life including Western forms of expressive culture. Most of the melodies appropriated in island music come from Western popular music traditions and French Polynesian popular music (the Cook Islands’ closest eastern neighbour). Recent examples of this include the use of Michael Jackson’s song ‘Faith’ and the song ‘We Three’ which I used to begin this article. This type of incorporation also occurs in other forms of cultural production. Drumbeats composed for Cook Islands dance genres are often inspired by non-local forms. Tepoave Raitia explained: When a papa’a [Western] dance style becomes popular then someone will compose a beat from that style. There is a drum beat called ‘Rock and Roll’ and the ‘Twist’. In 1992 for the opening ceremony of the Pacific Arts Festival, this Pukapukan guy made up a beat which he called the ‘Michael Jackson’. The dance which went with the beat was moon-walking [Michael Jackson’s trademark dance move in the late 1980s]. In the 1980s here when Kung Fu was popular, dancers put Kung Fu moves in their choreography and also disco moves were big. (Tepoave Raitia, pers. comm.)

‘Coconut lyrics’ also include the insertion of humorous Cook Islands Maori lyrics into English song texts. For instance, at one string band performance I saw at a Rarotongan nightclub, the lyrics to Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman No Cry’ were supplemented with nonsensical Maori lyrics. In the chorus, for instance, the insertion was: No woman no cry Oh titi 2 oh mama [oh breast oh mama] No woman no cry Who stole my maniota [cassava].

A number of imene mataora both poke fun at, and express desire for, Western food items and other commodities. A song called ‘A Cup of Tea’ describes a man’s cravings for ‘shop food’ as opposed to homegrown food. He has little money but saves as much as he can and the song details his purchases and their consumption. In the first verse, the man starts out with a cup of tea, with milk and sugar and a packet of dry biscuits. The next day (and verse), he consumes a cup of tea but he has no sugar left and only one piece of dry biscuit. In the final verse, the man only has a cup of black tea for his evening meal. Of the food items chosen for this song, tea and dry biscuits are the staple meal for many Cook Islanders, while milk and sugar are often luxuries that many cannot afford. A song that was extremely popular at Rarotongan nightclubs in 1997 was ‘Tamaka Reebok’ (Reebok shoes). Like ‘A Cup of Tea’, it was about the unavailability and desirability of Western goods. It tells of a man who has purchased a pair of Reebok trainers and shows them off to everyone. The owner of the shoes is admired as he has shoes which help him run faster than anyone else. He is also made into an object of fun because he has purchased an expensive imported item and considers himself to be better off than other people. Songs such as these, I suggest, form part of an


ambivalent discourse in which signs of global capitalism are both admired and derided. It is a discourse informed by experiences arising from tourism (Cook Islands’ pre-eminent industry), migration and the Islands’ marginal role in regional politics. Often the West is portrayed as a place of wealth and opportunity in contrast to the poverty and ‘backwardness’ of Islands life. Concurrently, Cook Islanders present themselves as generous, easygoing and friendly in opposition to greedy and individualistic Westerners. As previously mentioned, a common subject of contemporary island music is the impact of migration* the sentiments of alienation and longing for home that it produces. I will examine a final example on this theme. The following song was written by a person whose family came from the island of Ma’uke in the southern Cook Islands but had grown up in New Zealand and had never seen their island home.3 The song title is ‘Akatokamanava’, the ancient name of the island:


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My Akatokamanava I have never seen you My rose, I am your grandchild I will come to you, The island of my ancestors Like a beautiful woman Like a beautiful, radiant rose I honour you My island Luscious rich island.

This popular song has a number of stylistic features in common with other imene aro’a songs. First, it expresses a yearning for homeland which incorporates the physical landscape and genealogical links to a place. A second feature common to much imene aro’a is the poetic comparison between women and nature. Song lyrics often liken the beauty of an island landscape to that of a beautiful woman and vice versa. Younger generations of overseas-born Cook Islanders are adapting these stylistic conventions to portray their desires to explore their roots and learn about their ancestry. In response to these songs from abroad, older Cook Islanders living at home write songs pleading for those abroad not to forget their people, traditions and customs, and to return to their homeland one day.

Contested Traditions As a medium, songs speak of real life situations; about the beautiful and not so beautiful, about the works of important men and women; about sadness and happiness and hope. The composer as an interpreter reads the pulse of the times. And because it touches human hearts, the process becomes one of recording history and of confidence building which is so necessary to recover from the trauma of the colonial experience. (Herrmann 1988, p. v)


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The above quotation is taken from John Herrmann’s introduction to his book, E Au Imene Tamataora: Songs and Songwriters of the Cook Islands, which features the songs of seven Cook Islands composers. It supports my argument that island music is a vital area of cultural production in the Cook Islands, which provides commentary on contemporary events. In Herrmann’s terms, island music reads the ‘pulse of the times’. Herrmann also views music as a vehicle for post-colonial development, making the point noted by other Pacific scholars that the expressive and visual arts have been central to forging independent nation-states throughout the region (Sissons 1999; Jolly and Thomas 1992). The arts, it is argued, are used by people of the Pacific as a strategic resource to display their traditions and historical past, in order to consolidate their political and cultural identities in the present. The performing arts, in particular, are a key vehicle through which Pacific Islanders assert and negotiate who they are at the local, national, regional and global levels (Stevenson 1992, p. 117; Nero 1992). Since self-government was achieved in 1965, Cook Islands governments have actively fostered ‘traditional’ cultural production to promote a break with the colonial past and to fashion an independent nation. This culminated in the establishment of a National Arts Centre in 1992. The NZ$12 million complex houses the National Library, National Museum and Ministry of Cultural Development. In 1993, this Ministry had a budget of NZ$1.5 million. It housed archives, anthropology and performing arts divisions; the latter included choreographers and composers who were commissioned to create musical and dance productions. Annual competitions such as the Song Quest and Composer Competition were organised through the Ministry of Cultural Development. Despite the centrality of cultural production to Cook Islands nationalism, many art forms are subject to intense debate by producers, agents of legitimation (such as government officials, the media, scholars) and interested members of the general public. Contemporary dance and musical forms are particularly subject to evaluation of their cultural authenticity and their alignment with ‘traditional’ artistic practice. For example, present-day Cook Islands dance practice is viewed (especially by older practitioners) as increasingly commodified and ‘prostituted’ for the sake of the tourist industry. Female dancers’ ‘revealing’ costumes and ‘cabaret-style sexy movements’ are often singled out as key indicators of artistic corruption. In response, current dancers argue that their practice is far more traditional and authentic than that of the previous generation who were influenced by restrictive and repressive missionary and colonial norms.4 It was during a conversation with Herrmann, who is a talented composer, that my attention was drawn to the ambivalence surrounding contemporary forms of Cook Islands cultural production. I went to him to discuss his compositions; he gave me his book and talked enthusiastically and at length about his passion for composing. The inspiration for many of his songs stems from a concern that young people hold onto their culture and language and he feels popular music is an effective vehicle for expressing these sentiments. Mid-conversation however, Herrmann suddenly chan-



ged tack and pulled from his filing cabinet a report, Culture and Identity in Oceania: The Role of the University of the South Pacific (Beier and Beier n.d.) which suggested, in part, the need for the University of the South Pacific to foster ‘traditional’ arts and culture within the region. Herrmann showed me a section of the report which suggested there was a ‘lack of music’ on Rarotonga, which is later qualified as a lack of ‘traditional’ music. The bars, the report said, ‘are swamped by American rock and pop’ and ‘simplistic Hawai’ian string bands’ (Beier and Beier n.d., p. 53).5 After reading this section, Herrmann began to reflect on the ‘loss’ of traditional Cook Islands’ culture in general and the ‘bastardisation’ of ‘traditional’ music in particular. The origin of this cultural decay is, Herrmann thinks, primarily the influence of Western imperialism in all its forms. The ambivalence expressed in Herrmann’s views on island music struck me as contradictory; how could a person feel both passion and derision for his artistic production? His views, I was to discover, were not idiosyncratic but, rather, widely held. Contemporary music and dance were invariably discussed as prostitution of ‘traditional’ forms and as indicators of cultural homogenisation resulting from Westernisation and cultural imperialism. Dancers, musicians and choreographers would express enthusiasm for their artistic practice but discussion would inevitably be permeated by a discourse of cultural loss or decline, which is seen to be a result of Western influences. Central to these debates is the issue of cultural ownership and loss, expressed through notions of modernity and tradition. Rather than view this ambivalence as paradoxical I came to consider it as a central component of understanding the work of cultural production in post-colonial settings. As much scholarship on ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ suggests, the objectification of, and contestation over, these terms has intensified in response to colonialism, the imposition of the nation-state and globalisation (Mosko 2002, p. 89; Jolly and Thomas 1992; Linnekin and Poyer 1990). Appadurai’s (1996, 2001) analysis of expressive forms is also instructive in this regard. He views post-colonial expressive culture as a series of practices that experiment with modernity (Appadurai 1996, p. 112). Like his analyses of global media and mass migration, I view Cook Islands cultural production as a ‘work of imagination’ which is ‘neither purely emancipatory nor entirely disciplined but is a space of contestation in which individuals and groups seek to annex the global into their own practices of the modern’ (Appadurai 1996, p. 4). In these terms, Cook Islands cultural production may be viewed as practices through which ideas about Cook Islands modernity are contested. In other words, Cook Islands cultural production is negotiated through contesting, sometimes contradictory, views. For example, island music is viewed as bastardised by Western pop while at the same time government-sponsored events are held to retain and promote it. Island music is considered by many Cook Islanders as kitsch Hawai’ianand Tahitian-influenced music produced to suit touristic images of the South Seas and, simultaneously, locals enthusiastically purchase latest releases from Cook Islands artists at home and abroad. As such, I understand the dominance of ideas about loss, decay and authenticity in island music, despite its popularity among consumers and

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practitioners, as symptomatic of concerns about cultural homogenisation, loss of ownership and control over artistic practices.


Conclusion As well as being an important site of contestation, much Cook Islands cultural production actively seeks to annex the global to notions of Cook Islands modernity. The examples of island music discussed in this article are concrete illustrations of practices which can be seen to domesticate or localise global flows in order to generate local expressive forms (Hau’ofa 1994, 1998; Appadurai 1996, 2001; Howes 1996; Miller 1995). Songs composed by Cook Islanders living abroad provide commentary on the Cook Islands diaspora and are an important vehicle through which identity is produced and maintained in a transnational context. Philip Hayward makes a similar argument in relation to contemporary music throughout the Pacific region: Despite continuing anxieties over the swamping and destruction of Pacific cultures as a result of the continuing trends towards globalization and westernization, the principal characteristic linking the various music cultures of the Pacific region in the late 20th century has been their readiness to engage with and modify outside musical influences, producing new, distinctly local forms and styles. (Hayward 2000, p. 512)

The song ‘Sea Breeze’ is one example of such localisation strategies. In it, Rose draws upon compositional methods common in island music to evoke longing for home to express her attachment to Aitutaki. It also expresses her connection to a transnational Cook Islands community. Moreover, ‘Sea Breeze’ transforms a Western popular song into what has now become a Cook Islands ‘classic’. It is no longer ‘We Three’ by the Inkspots but Rose’s song, a song which expresses deep-felt longing for her home. ‘Sea Breeze’ portrays sentiments of dislocation and alienation produced by the economic and social impacts of global capitalism. It is also an example of how island music tells stories about Cook Islands life in the contemporary moment and serves to create a ‘community of feeling’ (Appadurai 1996, p. 181) among the Cook Islands diaspora. Songs such as this serve to maintain and reinforce affective links across the Pacific Ocean. They are an important vehicle through which locality is expanded beyond national borders and re-produced in new and creative ways.

Notes [1] The original song texts quoted in this article are composed in Cook Islands Maori. The translations are mine. [2] The word ‘titi ’ is most commonly used to refer to a garment covering a woman’s breasts. It is also used among young people on Rarotonga as a ‘Maorified’ version of the English word ‘titty’. This was emphasised in the version of No Woman, No Cry by the singer caressing his ‘breasts’. [3] I was never able to ascertain the author of this song text or the ones that follow. Although it was written in the 1990s, individuals I asked about its authorship either said they did not know or


The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 157 suggested a number of people who might have composed it. As Goldsworthy (2000, p. 39) argues, ‘despite the recognised importance of composers in Cook Islands culture, the composer of many . . . songs may not be known, even by musicians who are performing the songs’. Paradoxically, disputes over authorship are common among musicians, a theme taken up further in Goldsworthy’s (2000) article. [4] For similar views concerning the demise of ‘traditional’ dance practices in Tahiti see Jane Moulin’s (2001) article ‘From Quinn’s bar to the conservatory: redefining the traditions of Tahitian dance’. My PhD thesis, Dancing from the Heart: Movement, Gender and Sociality in the Cook Islands (2003), elaborates upon the gendered and generational nature of debates about ‘cultural corruption’ and ‘bastardisation’ in relation to Cook Islands dance. [5] Georgina and Ulli Beier played a crucial role in fostering artistic production in Papua New Guinea from the mid-1960s. They were involved in establishing a cultural centre at the University of Papua New Guinea and supported individual artistic endeavours (Thomas 1995, p. 185). This quote from their report Culture and Identity in Oceania: The Role of the University of the South Pacific (n.d.) is contradictory given their promotion of introduced genres in the visual arts and fiction writing. It reflects, I believe, similar tensions about the role and nature of tradition and innovation in cultural production evidenced in debates among Cook Islanders and throughout the Pacific region. Efforts to obtain the report directly from the Beiers and from the University of the South Pacific have not been successful.

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