Music
Island: Nuku Hiva
Lobsters in Lobster pot: 0
The late afternoon sun creates a dazzling white path on the water, past bobbing sail boats and into the hills, which stand mute grey-green, shadows beginning to lengthen.
It has been a big couple of weeks in the little microcosm that is my world at the moment. Since I last wrote we moved from Ua Huka, itself barely populated and stunningly beautiful, to the north side of Nuku Hiva and a bay called Anaho. Like many of the bays we have been to, this had a beige sandy beach that fronted a steep, verdant vally, mangoes and limes falling off trees everywhere, big rays swimming under the Kayak. But this place felt different. For a start, there were no cars, and the only access was by foot or horse (all the locals used horses) over the hill pass, or by boat (I had a brilliant afternoon where I walked to the village over the hill and found the only visible occupants of the village, a small, fat, laughing 10 year old and his friends, sat with an ipod and a big Bose speaker, playing soca-style drummy pop and gyrating his layers of tummy blubber. I joined them, dancing my most outrageous dance and, after almost dying of laughter, the kids joined in) It also has the only extensive coral reef in the Marquesas, and fish buzz around everywhere. Back in the day ('the day' being between 1200 and 1700 before european diseases killed around 80% of the population) this reef supported over 1000 people, providing the raw material (oyster shells) to make highly prized fishing hooks and trading them across the archipelago. Now the population is around thirty people. They live in houses raised off the ground, and (as previously discussed), don't really seem to need money very much what with hunting, fishing, foraging and gardening, but what money they do make is from producing copra, the raw material from coconuts that goes on to become coconut oil and beauty products. The air is heavy with the slick sweetness of coconut as it drys in the sun.
We arrived in the bay in the afternoon afternoon, one of two boats in the bay, and the exceptional beauty of the place combined with my return to good health post-infection put me in a wonderful mood. Six weeks into tropical boat life and my body has got the memo – 30 degrees is now normal and not uncomfortable. The bottoms of my feet have thickened so I can walk barefoot, and the tops of my feet are brown enough to no longer warrant sunscreen. My stomach is tolerant with of rainwater and local stand pipes (amazingly, all the water we drink on the boat is harvested from the rain, and we have stored almost 1500 litres for the crossing), and perhaps best of all, my attitude to mosquitos has gone from 'long trousers, deet, annoyance, and constant vigilance' to 'dear mosquito: neither you nor your bites exist'. This new attitude was imparted to me by Heretou, a musician with a voice that should be heard the world over, on the second night in Anaho, as we ate freshly butchered goat with even fresher homemade limeade. I asked him if there were mosquitos here, and whether I should put a shirt on. “it depends on your thinking,” he replied “if you don't acknowledge the mosquitoes exist, they don't bite you. It is the same with ants. If you are still and calm, then leave you alone. If you try and wipe them off, they run all over you. It is instant feedback on your state of mind'. I had had a stressful encounter with ants earlier in the day, so this resonated, and I have been trying out this new relationship with insects ever since, and it really works! I get bitten, but not as much as before, but the bites don't seem it itch hardly at all! Perhaps because I am used to them, but it really improves things, especially when I am with locals and wearing repellent and getting stressed would mark me out as different and, let's face it, deeply uncool.
Heretou and I played some really deep, communicative, funky music together in the two nights we were there, and he played me the music he is producing, which blends traditional and incandescently beautiful Tahitian and Marquesan songs (with as much as 9 part vocal harmony), with strong beats and electronic elements. Could have been shit, but was infact really good. I learnt his limeade recipe, and I was all ready to settle in, snorkel around the coral, set my lobster net, perhaps write some proper music together (he had logic pro and a good keyboard), maybe find a wife, plant some coconut trees and stay there forever, when suddenly we realised that our food shipment from Tahiti was arriving on the other side of the island the following day (4 days early), and at dawn we waved goodbye to this paradise for the provincial capital, Taoiai (tie-o-why-ee), where we are now (which is, incidently, the location of Herman Melville's Typee, a true story of being captured by a tribe with cannibalistic tendancies).
I said goodbye to Heretou at midnight, the night before we left, in a big rush as he jumped off the dinghy between waves and I span the boat around to navigate the reef (which I almost grounded the dinghy on twice and was only saved by random big waves that washed me precariously back into the channel). I thought that was it, and was sad as I felt I could learn a lot from this man, but lo and behold, he shows up a few days later in the place we are now and tells me he is going to 'get a few musicians together' for us to have a session.
Heretou is half french, half marquesan, beautiful, intelligent, light and inquisitive, and I have no doubt could do anything he wanted with his life. After travelling and spending time in Tahiti, he has chosen to build a house in Anaho, the afor mentioned paradise, and has settled down to 'learn the marquesan way of life'- finding his food, growing his food, cooking, understanding the belief and cultural systems of the people. He tells me his days have no routine but usually include a combination of
spear-fishing
- drawing
- playing and writing music
- gardening
- cooking
- reading & writing
- getting high with his friends
for money he produces copra, or does odd jobs as they come up, such as assisting some kiwi archaologists in the next valley, or being the voice of radio adverts in Tahiti. What a thought, to have each day dedicated to things that are enjoyable, and self-improving, and are based on creativity! We in the west have swapped this freedom for possessions and a promise of a better future, and I think if more people saw that another life is possible, more people would find their own way of reclaiming some of this freedom. I have done it in an extreme way, but for sure there are small things everyone can do to spend more time doing what they love in the here and now. Working part time and reducing consumption (and associated bills), for example. Heretou had told me he was going fishing the next day. When I asked him how it was, he said he didn't go, because he had food left over from the night before. Go figure.
So anyway, the day before yesterday I got picked up from the dock by a couple of friendly but not chatty guys, as well as heretou, and we drove a little into the hills, stopping at an abandoned building with a river running next to it where everyone got out their pipes and smoked, as apparently the wife of our host didn't like it around the place. Then we drove up the side of the valley, )at times the gradient was so steep it would have been barely possible to walk up) listening to upbeat reggae, and finally arrived at this house that was rehearsal studio downstairs, living space upstairs, and 3600 degree incredible views. Some of the musicians – around 6 in all – were from the band takanini, probably the most famous band in the whole of French Polynesia in the last few years, and I recognised some of them from music videos and a documentary about the band that I had watched before coming. This, and the size of the bass amps, pointed to some Serious Music Making.
But I made a mistake. With such little language in common, the small amount of communication we do have becomes more important. I had a choice to either play it cool in the way I observe african musicians I have played with in the past, where it is implicit that everyone knows everythign is awesome so doesn't have to say it, or be overenthusastic and english and overblab, which could be endearing or could be annoying. I went for the former, but I think a bit too much. I should have said 'wow, this is an incredible space. It must have been so hard to build such a beautiful, well equipped studio on this tiny, inaccessible island. And I acknowedge that you are all very well respected, rather famous musicians, and it is an honour to play with you' etc. Instead, we arrived, and I petted the dog, which everyone thought was a completely mad thing to do (I assume because they all have fleas. Everyone else kicked them away), and then just sort of pottered around waiting for the music to start. There was an issue with some missing cables and either this, or my rudeness, or something else, made for a really weird atmosphere for the first sort of 20 minutes. We would start to play and it would sound good and then suddenly everyone would just stop playing, and chat in Marquesan with nobody really acknowledging my presence. Then a couple more musicians arrived, with a bass and a big korg synth, and the groove was put on the top of a nail and nailed into the sonic vista, and we played. And we played. And suddenly everything was ok. Reggae, funk, dub, originals and occasionally covers, everyone able to play all the instruments with finesse, the guys swapping around mid song if they had an idea they wanted to try out on a different instrument. A male and female vocalist. A loop pedal used by a left-handed guitar player who played a right handed guitar upside down. Pre-rehearsed arrangements that included sudden breaks and harmonic diversions that kept me on my toes but also allowed me to show my adaptability and willingness to follow the music. Slowly the band leader, whose house it was, actually started acknowledging my existence, and by the end of the 5 hour session he was giving me melodies to play, and initiatin g some pretty sexy synth/clarinet call and response.
There are, of course, lots of issues around loss of traditional culture and also cultural imperialism and the behemoth of western capitalist culture that they must have been exposed to through the music industry, and it felt like there was definitely a waryness of me that I hadn't experienced in the Marquesas until I came to this town. And I could of handled the situation with more composure. But as the music pitched and rolled around me in that studio on the side of the hill, and there was eye contact and smiles and the groove was so deep my body could not help but move, and the clarinet sounded sweet and on point, I realised that this is what I love doing more than anything else in the world (almost), and this is what I had intended to do in London, but (with the exception of Colin Samurai rehearsals where this happened all the time) got sidetracked by a million other related-but-not-quite-the-same things.
So I was happy, and then came back to the dock to find a big pot luck going on (fruit salad with a coconut and white chocolate sauce) and a jam, and (as has happened at least once before, always with negative outcomes), I tried to enter this jam at the same place I had ended the last one, which was inappropriate, and I got annoyed with myself for playing the right notes at the wrong time with the wrong intention.
And now the days are spent in preparation for the Big Sail to Kiribati. Tom wants the boat in perfect working order, so we have been attaching things to other things (wind veins to masts), taking things (rust and barnacles) off other things, restringing djembes, eating brie. I spent a lot of today sowing thick thread around the ends of ropes to stop them fraying. Now I will head to the internet to send this off and then jump in the (alarmingly warm) sea.
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