Modern Music of Samoa

The current pop and rock have a big spectator in Samoa, as do several local ensembles, which have neglected most elements of Samoan folk music, however there are traditional artists. Some of the pop artists in New Zealand learned the current dance patterns on a trip to the island of Samoan, an essential early node in changing and interpreting United States street dance to Aotearoa. Currently, the Samoan populace has seen a rebirth of old Samoa melodies, remixed in the pattern of Hawaiian reggae, but with some folk rudiments, such as the use of the pate and string structure which is still used. New Zealand continues to release current renowned Samoan artists, such as pacific Soul and Jamoa Jam. Even folk hymns (pese lotu) have a little number of changes. Some of the pop ensembles like RSA Band and the Mount Vaea band are related with hotels; and also hotel ensembles have travelled in New Zealand and other part. Some of the renowned pop artists include Golden Aliis, Lole, The Five Stars and Jerome Gray were we are Samoa remains an unofficial national anthem. A Samoa orchestra known as Le Pasefika, going opposite to the new movement by playing only the old music, which has become the hottest-selling Samoa orchestra in the United States.

source of picture: www.incultureparent.com 

The past three years of Samoan participation in the street dance and rap music in the United States has importantly influenced the cultural creation in the places where Samoans lived, especially New Zealand. During the early 198os, Footsoulijah, four Samoan artists from Wellington, recognize the Blue Strutters, who later became the hip hop orchestra known as Boo-Yah T.R.I.B.E, for extending their lifelong determination in street dance and their ultimate movement towards hip pop. Footsoulijah is animated and it is colourful, and always done in facade exhaustions, which indicate their militaristic name. The orchestra composed the anthem Represent for My People, which comprises the chorus Always represent for my peoples/Pacific islander of foreign land/pattern lethal/take a looks as we enter the next chapter and so on. There is new dichotomy between the old and current in cultural parts of Samoa life, particularly dance. Some declare, Whereas Samoan music has accepted guitars and other musical instruments, dance that relies mainly upon the artists body (with some exclusions of fire dance, knife dance and so on) still needs the artist to keep grace and move their arms and hands in the accepted pattern but a National Geographic article from 1985 reveals a collocation of custom and innovation with decidedly diverse photographs of Samoa youth. One of the photographs has a Samoan child in folk garb, dancing in a traditional pattern; and the other shows a youth dressed in usual hip pop-pattern dancing.

Unlike other Samoans, Kosmo is one of the very famous Samoan hip hop musicians, picked up his dance moves while staying in California. He combined a mixture of a sound of strutting, a little of boogaloo and exploding and some totting into his music. He learned the dance while living with family in Carson, a village that drew vast numbers of Samoans moving from the islands in the 50s and 70s. As he exposed, the exploding and other street dance types well soaked the lives of Samoan youth coming up in the late 70s and early 80s in Carson and also the neighbouring Compton and Long Beach. He distinctively remembers all the coolest cats which were poppin down at Carson’s Scott Park. When he came back to New Zealand, his word brought him respect among his mates, most of who tried to mix dance moves from movies. But Kosmo did not see himself as good until he came back to New Zealand. Here he was just doing the essential, he knew more.

For the younger musicians, this hip hop-oriented type of dancing was not only a way of expressing oneself, but also influential sexual tool. For the young men, the dance skills also assisted them to get the young women who were always present either as critical spectator or fellow performers. Kosmo recall the entire poppers getting girls, highlighting another case of dance as a matching sexual power tool used by both sexes in universal hip hop. In the year 1990, Kosmo and two other Samoan formed the Mau, a hip hop orchestra named for the cooperation that pushed for Samoan independence under the German and New Zealand colonial government. Though the name was originated in Samoan record, it established United States influences. Familiar to the trend of black awareness in American, the motto for the Mau trend in Samoa was Samoa Mo Samoa for Samoans. The orchestra continued to articulate a diasporic Samoan cultural nationalism by getting their knowledge of Samoa record, as well as the renowned stories of the Black Power trend presently mingling in the American hip pop. Their mixture of Samoan tradition and American iconography affected many orchestras that followed.

Samoan oversea has attained some musical fame. The Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E had a short term of romance with the American mainstream, and the Samoan Sisters found more lasting popularity in New Zealand. The concerts My Idol and Samoan Star Search became renowned musical contests in Samoa. Current Samoan music concerts influence from electrical instruments such as reggae and jazz and even some house and techno patterns.