“We wanted to tell, before the papălagi (non-Pacific peoples), before the beachcombers, what were our sounds like?” says Podcast host and co-producer Tau’ili’ili Alpha Maiava.
“Because remember the word ‘music’, it was a categorisation by papălagi of our sounds. They heard it and were like ‘Oh, that’s happy music’, but we didn’t have music, we had sounds.”
The two-episode series explores the indigenous sound of Oceania, and features the conch shell, the wooden slit drum (pātē), and the nose flute (fangufangu/vivo ko’e).
