History of Tuvalu music

The folk music of the Tuvalu is made up of a series of dances, which include the following such as fakaseasea, fatele and fakanau. The fatele, in its current type, is done at community occasions and to celebrate leaders and other popular personality, like visiting of the Duchess Cambridge and Duke in September 2012. The current Tuvaluan pattern has fascinated many influences and can be defined as a musical microcosm of Polynesia, where current and older patterns co-exist.

Te Vaka, an Oceanic music orchestra, which consist Tuvaluans and artists with Tuvalian ancestry; Te Vaka preforms original current Pacific music or South Pacific combination.

source of picture: en.wikipedia.org 

The folk music prior to European contact included poems done in a type of monotone reading, however this custom has since become extinct.

In the year 1960 to 1961 Gerd Koch, an anthropologist, made recordings of the folk chants on the atolls of Niutao, Nukufetau and Nanmaga. These chants were seen in the year 1964 in a musicological publication, with a collection of the chants published in the year 2000 as Chants of Tuvalu join with two CDs of the recorded chants.

The impact of the Samoan evangelists sent to Tuvalu by the London Missionary Society from the 1860s resulted in the overpowering of chants about the folk religious or magic, with the Samoan missionaries also influencing the establishment of the Tuvaluan dialect. The missionaries brought church hymns and European chant structures and songs began to influence Tuvaluan music. Though some pre-missionary chants lived and were recorded by Gerd Koch. During in the early 60s the transistor radio provide access to European pop music and the Hawaiian/Tahitian guitar beats, which influenced current Tuvaluan music, the recordings of Gerd Koch remain to be broadcast over Radio Tuvalu along with the current Polynesian music.

The folk music of Tuvalu included diverse kinds of chant with a strong emphasis on dancing songs. other kinds were play chants (chanted in the time counting game, games of skill and other games); work chants which the women done, such as while preparing coconut fibre cord; fishermen’s calling chants; chants of praise (viki or taugafatu); and cries for deceased members of the family.

The custom of funeral singing is known as kepu which is similar to that of fakaseasea.