Fijians and Music

I know we are only seeing a small sample of Fijians here at Tokoriki but music is an integral part of their life and culture.  I asked one of the staff about this and he said children learn to sing from the youngest age.

Each evening at dinner 3 or 4 go from table to table singing requests and very seldom are they stumped.   Towards the end of dinner 8 to 10 gather and they sing,a capella, a Fijian farewell to those who will be leaving the next day.  They accompany themselves with guitars, a ukulele , a tambourine and a bass instrument. The latter is an 18 inch plywood cube with broomstick and heavy twin attached.  They make the twine taught and then pluck it like a bass.  I asked if it was a traditional Fijian instrument  and was told no it was just something they put together here 10 years ago!

There is a chapel on the property and the staff have a service their each Sunday to which guests are invited.  We went yesterday.  The service followed the Australian/New Zealand Methodist tradition and was primarily in Fijian although some was in English for the guests benefit.  They sing the hymns all in harmony, without any music much like the Mennonites do at home.  They only have the words and many of them didn’t even need to look at the hymn book for the words.