My first Malaga entry

Dear Diary,

Since Tiri just asked me last night if I could write up some journal entries for the JN Documentary, I won’t bother with details of the last three weeks of practice. But what I can and will do is shed some light as to what the Malaga Production is all about and talk about what we did today.

Malaga in Samoan means ‘journey’. In Pacific history, journeys are commonplace; I mean how else would they find the islands? The whole production focuses on the journey of our pacific ancestors from the old to the new. It’s also symbolic of the journey that we as pacific islanders take in shifting our mentality from the traditional to the more modern and sophisticated way of life.

The whole production spans about 14 to 15 songs and several dances. You have to remember that this isn’t the first time for Mr. Igelese Ete (our choir master) to direct the Malaga (if my guess is correct, the first Malaga was in 2001 and the second in 2002). But the difference with this year’s production is the introduction of Solomon and Vanuatu songs, along with some Micronesian songs; this would make it span the whole pacific culture.

Igelese is directing the whole production but he’ll have the support and help of several lecturers and the full retinue of dancers from the Oceania Centre of Arts. Allan Alo, the head of Oceania will also choreograph dances for the choir to do (I mean like we can’t just stand there and sing for a straight one and a half hours it’d be boring).

To date, we have completed at least 3 songs: People of the Sea, We leave our islands and Vaka. We’re in the process of learning our most complicated song ever: E Homau Otua. This song is written in Tongan and it is a prayer seeking God’s blessing on the whole production. It’s a classical piece and sounds so beautiful, the only thing about it is that it’s complex and the musical score is “colourful”. The song starts with the tenors and then the bass comes in, followed by the altos then the sopranos last. I know this might sound a bit biased (okay completely biased) but the alto part is difficult. We sing off beat to every one else so if we muck up at one point, we’ve mucked up the whole song completely. Now you know why I said it’s so tough.
Next to that song is the new Tokelauan song: Agi mai. For the choir to do any justice to the song, we had to sing it with a nasal sound, the complete opposite of E Homau Otua, which demanded that we sing in a classical style. The tune is easy to learn and the words just repeat themselves. Right now, it’s one of the more popular songs of the choir, besides Vaka.

In tonight’s practice, however, we had to work deeper into E Homau Otua and did several run-throughs of Vaka, People of the Sea and We leave our islands. We didn’t have a chance to sing through Agi Mai but I can’t wait for the day when we do get to finish learning it (there’s four verses to the song).

Now for the past three weeks, we have had to take attendance records; tonight we found out why we had to. Igelese had a look at our records and all those people who had missed three or more rehearsal sessions would be forced to quit the choir. I’m so happy that Tiri and I made it through the final cut. If my guess is correct, Igelese is aiming to have 75 singers in the choir. Now this number will be cut down even further (to twenty) for the International tours of the production (one confirmed destination is South Korea) in October, this year.

So that’s my update on the production (for now). Stay tuned for more Malaga news. I’m Sailosi Toganivalu. Good Night.

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