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1.1.
2.2.
2.3.
2.4.
3.3.
LIST OF FIGURES
3.4. Tango Rapanui dancers performing at the 2013 Tapati Rapa Nui festival.
3.5. En ese tiempo.
3.6. Ueha ieha reka nei.
3.7. E tere tere ana ito ona au.
3.8. I hea Hotu Matu‘a e hura nei.
3.9. Conjunto Hotu Matu‘a Avareipua.
3.10. E Tu‘u e Nave.
4.1. E heraru and tere iti.
4.2. Ute Ahu Akivi (excerpt).
4.3. Ute Ahu Akivi (text).
4.4. Pahu peti.
4.5. Sau sau (text).
4.6. Sau sau (section A).
4.7. Sau sau (section B).
5.1. Ka hoko mai (first verse and chorus).
5.2. Tamai.
5.3. Nao nao (excerpt).
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Rapa Nui has its own night noises. There is always music, just a throb of it in the distance. There are voices and laughter rising above the pounding surf.
Carlotta Hacker , of the 1968 Canadian Medical Expedition to Easter Island (1968: 181)
My first encounter with the music of Easter Island (or Rapa Nui) happened half a world away, in a Chilean migrant community festival in outer suburban Melbourne, Australia. In the late 1960s, a change in immigration policy enabled the first wave of migration of Chilean workers to Australia. They were soon followed by thousands of political refugees fleeing the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1991). These groups mainly settled in Sydney and Melbourne, where they often converged with other recently arrived Latin American migrants but also maintained independent community events.
Some Chilean migrants were prominent in Melbourne’s live music scene, especially in Latin dance bands, which experienced a surge in popularity from the Gypsy Kings–inspired “world music” boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s. As a
trombonist trying to find my feet in the freelance gig economy, I found that the horn sections of these bands provided a ready source of income. I was also fortunate to have some contacts in the community, having grown up and gone to school in one of the areas where Chilean refugees and their children had settled. Overall, I spent almost a decade in and out of Latin bands in Melbourne, hanging out with Latin American musicians and later researching their contribution to Australian popular music (see Bendrups 2011b; Garrido and Bendrups 2013).
Many of these musicians also performed for community celebrations, such as Chilean Independence Day, where panLatin dance bands gave way to more nationalistic, folkloric performances. It was in this context that I first heard about Rapanui music. I soon discovered that the Chilean folk repertoire included a handful of songs that contained words from another language, performed with moves and guitar accompaniments that seemed more Hawaiian than Chilean. I thought little of it immediately, but over the years that followed, I became more curious about this cultural peculiarity. A respected musician in the Chilean-Australian migrant community once told me that the songs were from Rapa Nui, that the island was part of Chile, and that most Chileans learned a Rapanui song or two while at primary school, alongside other indigenous and folk songs. They were unlikely to be aware of the meanings of the songs, he said, or whether they had any special significance. But to leave them out, to not perform them, would be like failing to acknowledge an important part of Chile. It intrigued me that this linguistically, culturally distinct music could be so stridently defended as central to Chilean culture and identity. From the little I had read, my understanding was that Rapanui culture had disappeared long ago, with only the iconic stone heads remaining to indicate the former presence of a unique civilization. But if this were true, how was it that these Chilean-Australian musicians possessed these songs,
which sounded so different from every other kind of Chilean music I knew about?
In 2001, with the support of Philip Hayward and his research concerning small island music cultures across the Pacific, these questions became the basis for a doctoral research project. I began preparing myself for a lengthy period of ethnographic fieldwork on Rapa Nui, imagining that I would be working with a community much like the other Chilean communities I knew, but strangely transplanted to an exotic and isolated Pacific island.
Many of the available scholarly sources for traditional Rapanui music seemed to suggest that it had disappeared, or changed beyond recognition. For example, ethnographer Ramón Campbell, on returning to Rapa Nui in 1968, a few years after his initial research, encountered “purely Polynesian music, but very shambolic, with a mixture of different songs, texts, rhythms and dance. It was a potpourri completely lacking in ethnological and musical value” (Campbell 1971: 576). Similarly, folklorist Margot Loyola, who first visited Rapa Nui in 1961, returned there in 1975 and declared that “All had changed. Only the moai remained unaltered, staring into time infinite, but an evil wind blew against their faces and dark clouds obscured any rainbow” (Loyola 1988: 54). Based on these commentaries, I expected that my research would find remnants of an indigenous music culture that were somehow embedded in the musical lives of a community who now took their cultural cues from mainland, mainstream Chile.
I could not have been more wrong about this. The first inkling of my error was apparent en route to the island. While awaiting the midnight flight connection from Tahiti to Rapa Nui, I happened upon a group of Polynesian men who were conversing with each other in some sort of Spanish, mixed with what sounded like Tahitian. I approached the man in the queue ahead of me and attempted to strike up a conversation. His
name was Uti Hereveri, a Rapanui fisherman who was heading home after a short visit to Tahiti.
Uti smiled at my fumbling attempts at small talk in the airport queue and asked why I was traveling to his island. I explained my research topic, which he absorbed with detached amusement and then quickly inquired about where I was planning to stay. This was something I hadn’t really thought about yet. Uti insisted that I lodge with a friend of his, and then the boarding gate opened and I didn’t see him again until we landed. Arriving on Rapa Nui is exhilarating to the senses. Exiting the sterile, cool environs of the airplane, visitors are bombarded with moist tropical air carrying the scent of the grasses that coat the landscape. Approaching the terminal, as with elsewhere in Polynesia, visitors are welcomed with a musical performance of guitars and lilting melodies by musicians who probably have other things to do, but who are nonetheless committed to ensuring that the traveler’s first impression is a positive one. Visitors alighting on the runway are observed from behind the airport perimeter fence by an assembly of islanders waiting for the return of their loved ones. Outside a cramped concrete bunker of a terminal, giant scoria sculptures offer artistic representations of the island’s archaeological heritage. Uti found me in the chaos of the terminal and ushered me past security toward the exit, into the back seat of a well-weathered Volkswagen Kombi van belonging to his friend, Ana Maria “Meke” Edmunds Paoa. Meke and her family took me in, not knowing then that our relationship would endure over months of fieldwork and years of friendship.
Taking to the street to walk off my jet lag, I quickly realized that the Rapanui cultural demise promoted so readily in the global imaginary was vastly overstated. The Hangaroa streetscape bore many hallmarks of Chile, but the people were unlike any of the Chileans I had known throughout my life. The general store sold processed food from Latin America, but this
was supplemented with locally grown taro and sweet potato, and fish taken straight from the sea. I saw immense tuna that would take pride of place in a metropolitan fish market being casually carved and distributed to the hands of children waiting to take it home for family lunches. While shopkeepers willingly greeted customers in Spanish, the lilt of Rapanui language was alive on every street corner. The Rapanui had not disappeared at all.
It turned out that Uti was quite a musician, which perhaps explained his amusement at the naivety of my research topic. Furthermore, he was at that very moment heavily involved in rehearsals for the annual Tapati Rapa Nui festival, and he decided that it would be instructive to bring me along so that I could observe exactly how alive Rapanui music really was. Not yet understanding any Rapanui language, I was uncertain of what he said to explain my unannounced presence at these rehearsals, but I have no doubt that it involved good-natured barbs along the lines of “opening his eyes” and “teaching this young foreigner a lesson or two about culture.” Relationships are everything on Rapa Nui, and you only get one chance at a first impression. I was lucky that my first fumbling attempt at engagement was with Uti, a man of outstanding generosity and patience. One day on Rapa Nui had given me enough perspective to now realize that my whole research premise was misguided and that I would need to rethink my approach. I abandoned the idea of the doctorate as a study of Latin American cultural influence in Polynesia, instead focusing on documenting the living, thriving indigenous music culture into which my new friend had thrown me.
Initially, I dedicated my research efforts to seeking out and learning Rapanui songs. This turned out to be a great way to meet people, as songs tended to be associated with specific individuals within particular families. To learn a song correctly, one should really go to the most authoritative custodian. Some
xvi | P REFACE AND
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
elders were recognized as being particularly knowledgeable, or in possession of special song repertoires that they may choose to share or not share, depending on who was asking and under what circumstances. One elder, Luis Avaka “Kiko” Pate Paoa, or Papa Kiko as he was known, was repeatedly recommended to me by other musicians.
Papa Kiko had participated in almost every significant Rapanui musical event of the twentieth century (see Bendrups 2007a). He was the custodian of ancient knowledge passed down by his grandmother, Rengahopuhopu, who had been born before the arrival of missionaries and colonists on Rapa Nui (McCall and Bendrups 2008). He had taught many of the performers now leading the island’s active live music scene and had informed the important research conducted by Margot Loyola and Ramón Campbell in the 1960s (around half of the songs in Campbell’s seminal 1971 collection are attributed to Kiko Pate). His voice had appeared on dozens of commercial and archival recordings (all held overseas), and he remained active in leading the Catholic Church choir for most Sunday services.
Papa Kiko was a gracious host. He especially enjoyed serving morning or afternoon tea to visitors, producing pan amasado (small Chilean rolls) or occasionally sopaipillas (fried pastry medallions), butter, and jam with barely concealed delight. He loved candy (mona mona), soap, and stuffed toy animals, which adorned every surface in the small cement sheet house in which he lived.
All of Papa Kiko’s social graces were on display the day we met in 2002. No conversation could happen until tea was served. When the cups had been cleared away he turned to me, asking the question I’d been hoping for: “So, you’re a musician, and you want to know about Rapanui music?” This was followed quickly by: “Well, I don’t talk about music anymore. It’s all there, all done. I told Doctor Campbell everything in nineteen-sixty . . . five?
Six, I think? Lots of people ask me but I tell them the same thing. It’s done, koti (finished).” Our conversation then turned to the weather, as we watched a small raincloud forming over the Maunga Terevaka volcano. Our meetings over the course of the next few weeks followed this pattern. Papa Kiko would express his disinterest in talking about music, and then we’d talk about something else, all the while enjoying cups of tea.
A long-term Chilean resident on Rapa Nui once told me that the secret to building good relationships is permanencia (permanence), by which he meant “hanging around.” Rapa Nui is inundated with passing tourists who don’t usually stay long and who are often more interested in the island’s archeological heritage than the descendants of those who created it. Many of the mainland Chileans who move to Rapa Nui for work do so with the understanding that they are only temporary migrants, and many do not seek to build enduring social relationships. Rapa Nui is frequently awash with researchers working on projects that have little bearing on contemporary life. Meanwhile, visitors claiming to be anthropologists in the past have actually turned out to be journalists, film or music producers, or, according to local legend, CIA agents. I was just the most recent example to have arrived at Papa Kiko’s door. I needed more permanencia.
After about a month of casual visits, which began to include wide-ranging philosophical discussions about the meaning of culture and the purpose of music, Papa Kiko decided to progress our relationship by suggesting that we sing something together. I can’t remember what song it was, but in hindsight, it was probably a test of sorts. Would it be worth making the effort to teach me? Would I be a quick enough learner? Would our voices be compatible? I must have passed the test, as, shortly thereafter, Kiko declared that perhaps there were some songs missing from Campbell’s collection, and perhaps some of the songs Campbell had transcribed needed to be updated. But it would take time to think it through.
I left the island with a commitment from Papa Kiko that, when I returned in 2003, we would examine his repertoire, recording songs that might not be available elsewhere, and new versions of ones that he deemed needed correction. In 2003, over the course of about six months, I visited Papa Kiko on an almost daily basis and we worked through his personal and familial repertoire. This involved a particular process. Kiko would sing a line, then ask me to repeat it, then add the next line, and so on. Only when we reached the end of the song would he look over my annotations, and only when I could accompany him convincingly would he record it. From time to time, some of Papa Kiko’s family members and former students would join us for these sessions, sometimes carrying their own notepads to jot down lyrics they were unfamiliar with or songs they hadn’t heard for some time. After all, it’s not every day that an elder custodian attempts to remember all of the songs he or she has learned over a lifetime of singing. Working in this way with Papa Kiko became my entry point to the rich stream of knowledge through which Rapanui music is sustained. These songs provided my first lessons in the Rapanui language. They were also a means for engaging with others, as many of them were performed widely in the public domain. These songs also became a way of understanding Rapa Nui history and chronicling Rapanui survival. Some of them were very ancient, and some of them were not, but they all had something important to say about the lived experience of Rapanui people, whether in the distant or recent past. They provided a thread of continuity in a history of cultural change and adaptation.
REPRESENTING RAPA NUI
The research for this book draws on myriad conversations, formal and informal, and months of observation and participation in Rapanui music over the course of a decade. As postulated
P REFACE AND A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
by Pacific historian Greg Dening (1996), the writing is itself a kind of performance, something crafted:
We present our narratives with some theatricality. Our narratives also present something. They are ostensibly about something past, about something that has happened. But they are also the medium of our present relationships. (34)
The presence of Papa Kiko looms large in this narrative, accompanied by other knowledgeable musicians, many now deceased, who generously shared a short part of their lives with me. Except where specifically referenced, the stories contained in this book reflect the combined knowledge of various individuals, who told them to me from different perspectives or in various fragments that I subsequently wove together and rehearsed back to them for confirmation. Where knowledge of traditional or ancient performance practices are concerned, I am indebted to elders including María Elena Hotus, Alberto Hotus, Juan “Kakapa” Haoa, Papiano Ika, Antonio Tepano Hito, Marcos Rapu, and Frontier, who were not only great teachers but also willing collaborators in the transmission of their ancestral knowledge. Where knowledge of contemporary music is concerned, I owe sincere thanks to Kio Teao, Keva Atan, Sofía Abarca, Lynn Rapu, Pascual Pakarati, Mito Manutomatoma, Pete Pate, and Tomas Tepano, among many others.
My capacity to make sense of Rapanui society and culture was enriched by the support of many crucial friends, especially the Edmunds family and the Rapu-Tuki clan of the frontera (frontier). My time in mainland Chile was made possible thanks to the generosity of the Gibert family, and I am grateful to the many Chilean academics, folklorists, and musicians who allowed me to test out ideas with them over the last two decades. Throughout all of this, I thank Dr. Kerryn Bagley for her unwavering love and support.
xx | P REFACE AND A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research for this book took place in different institutional contexts and with various sources of financial support, including a Macquarie University RAACE Scholarship and Research Grant, a University of Otago Research Grant, a Griffith University New Researcher Grant, and a La Trobe University Social Research Assistance Grant. All of the concepts, events, and repertoire items discussed in this book were encapsulated in my doctoral thesis, Continuity in Adaptation: A History of Rapanui Music (Bendrups 2006a), and some of them have also been discussed, with different scholarly emphases, in prior publications (specifically Bendrups 2006b, 2007b, 2009a, 2010, 2011c).
TYPOGRAPHIC CONVENTIONS AND STYLE
At the time of writing, a standardized orthography for Rapanui language is still emerging. As noted by Kieviet (2016: 18), various orthographical options exist for the representation of vowel length, glottal plosives, and the velar nasal phoneme in written Rapanui language. This book employs a simplified approach in which vowel lengths are not marked diacritically. Glottal plosives are indicated by an inverse “curled” apostrophe, and the velar nasal phoneme is rendered as “ng,” throughout.
All Rapanui and Spanish words (except for proper nouns), as well as song, book, and album titles, are rendered in italics. Direct quotations from Spanish and French sources, as well as Rapanui and Spanish song lyrics, have been translated into English by the author. In keeping with current convention, Rapa Nui is used throughout to refer to the island, while the conjoined “Rapanui” refers to society, culture, language, and people. The term “precontact” replaces “prehistoric” in regard to aspects of Rapanui life that predate European contact (after Moulin 1996).
The personal names of Rapanui musicians in this book appear with their permission. Following Rapanui custom,
xxii | T YPOGRAPHIC C ONVENTIONS AND S TYLE
individuals are usually referred to by nickname rather than by their full name, unless they have requested otherwise (the respected musician Sergio Teao Atan, for example, was known as “Kio Teao” or simply “Kio” in his community, and that convention is followed in this book). This practice connotes both respect and recognition, and is preferable to the use of surnames because it reflects familiarity.
This book does not contain any restricted knowledge or knowledge that is subject to any other known cultural protocols.
SINGING AND SURVIVAL
INTRODUCTION
Rapanui Music in Context
Ancient music has disappeared, with the exception of two songs which, though not very old, seem to give a faint idea of the rhythm and character of the genuine native music.
Ethnologist Alfred Mètraux , in his Ethnology of Easter Island (1940: 355)
SWISS-ARGENTINE ETHNOLOGIST ALFRED MÈTRAUX
WROTE one of the most celebrated early accounts of Rapanui culture, but there is palpable disappointment in his appraisal of the traditional Rapanui music he encountered in the 1930s. Along with the apparent disappearance of “ancient” music, the two remnant songs he described seemed to have quite unremarkable, mundane lyrics. One related a Rapanui experience of contact with (supposedly) Chinese sailors some years prior, considered noteworthy by Mètraux (1940) because “it was the first time the natives had seen men with long hair and wrist watches” (355). The other was a “short satirical song” composed around 1890, which “tells of the marital disgrace of Aru-manuvie, a famous fisherman, whose wife had been stolen by a certain Rahi” (355). Mètraux transcribed and translated the texts of these two songs in his seminal ethnology and then moved on to other topics.
