Moyle - The Banning of Samoa's Repatriated Mau Songs - 2019 PDF

The Banning of Samoa’s Repatriated Mau Songs

Richard Moyle
The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation
Edited by Frank Gunderson, Robert C. Lancefield, and Bret Woods
Print Publication Date: Oct 2019 Subject: Music, Ethnomusicology

Online Publication Date: Jun 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190659806.013.28
Abstract and Keywords
The Samoan Mau nationalistic movement of the 1920s, which led eventually to Indepen
dence in 1962, was characterized by group songs many of which were fervent in their
support for traditional leadership and scathing in their condemnation of the then New
Zealand administration. In the year 2000 copies of Mau songs recorded some fifty years
earlier were among musical items repatriated to Samoa to public acclaim and national ra
dio playback, but within a few weeks they were banned from further broadcast. The ban
acknowledged singing as a socially powerful tool for local politics, since the broadcasts
transformed songs as cultural artifacts to singing as social assertion, returning into the
public arena a range of political views that many Samoans had preferred to keep private.
Keywords: Samoa, Mau, repatriation, broadcast, politics, nationalism
THIS chapter focuses on a series of songs recorded in former Western Samoa (now
Samoa) and is somewhat unusual in that the recordings ceased to exist in their initial for
mat more than fifty years ago. However, just as live performances of the songs are known
to have roused high emotions during the nationalistic activities of the 1920s and 1930s,
for which these songs were composed, so too the radio broadcast of digital copies three
Samoan generations later generated a set of rapid and intense responses from listeners.
Repatriation of the copies initially paved the way for those responses.
The recordings, all 78 rpm discs, carried the New Zealand Broadcasting Service (NZBS)
label, indicating that the pressings occurred during the organization’s sixteen-year exis
tence from 1936 to 1962 (Peterson 2001, 23), and the 78 rpm format suggests an earlier
time within that period. From the beginning of World War I until (Western) Samoa’s inde
pendence in 1962, the country was administered by New Zealand under a League of Na
tions mandate, and it is reasonable to assume that the original recordings were made pri
marily for use in Samoa itself, although their intended purpose and the occasion, location,
and date are unknown. The NZBS became the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation in
1962 and Radio New Zealand in 1995. No broadcasting occurred in Western Samoa be
tween 1933 and 1946 (although it is of course possible that the recordings of the material
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discussed here occurred during that period). The Radio New Zealand Sound Archive has
neither copies nor even documentation of the existence of the recordings, and no other
copies of the discs are known to exist. In 1966, while in Samoa undertaking more than
two years of research on traditional music, I requested dubs from these discs, then still in
use for broadcasting.1
Over the next thirty-five years, the dubs were kept in the Archive of Maori and Pacific
Music at the University of Auckland. They were also included on an LP of traditional
Samoan songs (Moyle 1989) and on a CD devoted to Mau songs (Archive of Maori and Pa
cific Music 2004). In 2000, the dubs were also included in a large quantity of audio
(p. 492) material repatriated to Radio 2AP, but within a few weeks were banned from air
ing by the minister of broadcasting. To understand the intensity of feeling aroused by the
postrepatriation broadcasts of songs created and performed more than sixty-five years
earlier, as well as the subsequent ban, it is necessary to examine two topics, the first of
which is the cultural potential of Samoan singing.2
Samoan Songs as Political Artifacts

The act of singing in Samoa was formerly, among other things, a means of opening a di
rect line of communication with the supernatural world, particularly with those spirits
thought to be causing a sickness (Moyle 1988, 72–74) and thereby effecting a cure. But
on a more general level, singing was, and is, widely acknowledged as a superior form of
verbal utterance: culturally superior in that, unlike other formal forms of utterance, a
song performance may not be interrupted, and aesthetically superior in that the per
formed lyrics have the inherent capacity to generate and sustain a range of emotions, in
cluding joy and sorrow, self-pride and humility, courage and anger. One measure of the
social significance of any event is the creation of a new song for a single performance at
that event but, in part through the widely used structural elements of assonant rhyme
and strophes and in part through the skillful blend of the linguistically familiar and the
unexpected, some lyrics live on long after the event for which they were originally creat
ed.
Songs voicing criticism are of two kinds: spontaneous and planned. Most villages have in
living memory encountered a socially competitive situation in which one group sought to
assert its superiority at the expense of another, in many cases composing a spontaneous
responsorial couplet whose first line was sung by a leader and the second by an ad hoc
group, for example:
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Nu‘u lāiti e You puny villages—
Nu‘u laiti fa‘afiatele You puny villages, you speak provocatively
‘Ae ‘ā maua sasa mai But when I catch you,

ni. you’ll be thrashed till you tingle.
[X] e, sola ‘i lalō Oh, [X]—flee back down
Tefe pea ‘o le Mālō Let the Administration circumcise itself.
[X] valevalea [X] village—is really stupid
Fana le pe‘a, lē lavea They shoot at a flying fox—but fail to injure

it
Fu‘e le umu, ‘ele‘elea. They uncover an earth-oven—but get all

dirty.
Tepa ‘iā [X] ‘ua mū Gaze on [X] village: it’s burning
Mū pea ia— Let it burn—
‘O se nu‘u e That village of impotent boasters.

fa‘atalatū.
The second kind of song voicing criticism represents the collective voice of a large
(p. 493)
social unit, typically a village, and is the subject of group discussion, composition, and re
hearsal before performance at a predetermined occasion. By convention, the language of
the lyrics is restrained and dignified, and the overall structure may parallel that of a spo
ken speech (Tu‘i 1987). It is to this kind of song that the old recordings discussed here
belong.3
A further contextualizing topic is the historical and cultural significance of the song lyrics
under discussion, which relate to the nationalistic movement of the 1920s and 1930s
known as the Mau.
Songs of the Mau

Field’s study of the Mau (1984, 1991) confirms the use of singing to rally support, create
and sustain a sense of group identity, and ridicule the opposition. The following are typi
cal:
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[the Administrator] Richardson reported that a group of Mau from Savai‘i had
marched through Apia streets singing what he called “defiant and obscene songs.”
He said he had identified the responsible chiefs and had ordered them to appear
before the Fono a Faipule [Government Council] to explain themselves. As they
had refused he would arrest them on breach of the peace charges. But, said
Richardson, he would need six extra police from New Zealand.
(Field 1984, 110)
Shortly after the attempted arrest of [Paramount Chief] Tupua Tamasese, some
300 Mau supporters from Palauli, Savai‘i, arrived in Apia singing anti-Government
songs and making threatening speeches.
(Field 1984, 122)
Led by [several Mau leaders], they had marched into town, some carrying knives
and clubs, chanting:
Samoa! Samoa! The military police are coming,

The military police are coming to have a war with us.
We are frightened, we are frightened, O Samoa! O Samoa!
(Field 1984, 123)
July 24, 1936. At a mass rally in support of the return of the deported Mau leader
O. F. Nelson, “songs against New Zealand were sung and large banners depicting
the shooting of Tupua Tamasese were displayed.” (p. 494)
Acting-Administrator Turnbull added, somewhat disingenuously, perhaps to cover the dig

nity of his own position, “It must be said, however, that these songs were sung in very
good spirit and must not be taken literally at word value” (Field 1984, 214).4 For their
part, the hastily recruited New Zealanders making up the Samoan Military Police did not
help matters, and they responded in kind on at least one occasion:
Samoa Military Police recruited in New Zealand, . . . on one occasion were heard
“singing insulting songs in Samoan.”
(Field 1984, 125)
In his contribution to Remembering the Mau, the historian Barry Rigby noted (Anony
mous 1997, 99):
Tamasese earned instant and enduring martyrdom. Whereas NZ erects grey stone
monuments for its fallen heroes, Samoans remember Tamasese in the words of a
well-known song which, in English, goes:
The machine gun goes rat-tat-tat

The chief stopped and said
Page 4 of 14

please keep the peace

look up to the sky [or God] for solutions
allow Britain [New Zealand] to do as she wants.
Oh Governor [Prime Minister], you have denied
that you did not know of the
machine gun, but . . . [we know]
that you are responsible for pulling the trigger.
By contrast, the songs I had obtained in the 1960s were of a different kind: long (up to
twelve verses) and including the chiefly titles of Mau participants, as well as mythological
expressions and biblical references. In short, such songs were the functional equivalent of
oratory, which is a prominent element of Samoan chiefly culture. Three examples follow:5
(p. 495)
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‘Ua pāpā fana o le Mālō ma The Government and the Administra

le Kōvana tor kept firing their guns.
‘Ua fola i le ala sui o nofoa Representatives of settlements were

ga spread out on the road;
‘O le toto ‘ua masa‘a, Blood was spilt, and Tamasese stood

Tamasese ‘ua alaga up.
E leai se peau e laga ‘ae There was even not a wave breaking,
te‘i ‘ua fana but suddenly he was shot;
‘Ua masoe i le ala le alofi o He was wounded on the road at the

‘Ā‘ana. gathering at ‘Ā‘ana.
Se’i faitau maia pe fia o le Do count for me how many of the

Kōmiti ‘ua aulia [Mau]
‘O le sauaga na fai i Apia Committee were present
‘O suafa ia ‘ua tusia After the barbarism perpetuated in

Apia:
‘Ua sau fo’i ma manuao Their names have indeed been record
ed.
‘Ua se‘ia vao a le Mau ‘o le Warships came, and

pule fa‘a-vaegā’au The Mau’s forests were uprooted dur
ing the martial law.
E to‘alua ‘ua ta fana o le And two of the Mau were shot.

Mau.
Tālofa i le tagi mai ala Alas for the weeping on the road:
‘Ua malepe le fale o le agā The very heart of the matter has been
ga wrecked
‘O le Kōvana fo’i ‘ua na Even the Administrator was firing—

fanafana
Pei lā ‘o se Mau fo’i ‘ua As if a member of the Mau could have

agasala. been at fault. . . .
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‘Ailoga ‘ā taumate Niu Sila New Zealand, doubtless you don’t re
lou māsiasi alize your shame
Nusipepa ‘o lo‘o ‘ua alu ‘ua Newspaper accounts are going out,
so‘o le lalolagi encircling the globe, so
‘A ‘o fea lau āmio tonu ma Where now is your justice and your
lou sasagi? pride?
Tālofa ‘e te lē mamate. What a pity you didn’t all die.
It should be noted that explicit attacks are not the only form of effective poetics: praise of
a leader also constitutes implicit criticism of the leader’s political opponents.
Enduring interest in the Mau was not confined to Samoa itself but spread to New
Zealand, as the numbers of Samoans emigrating there rose and non-Samoan authors and
scholars kept such matters of recent history in the public arena. In 1979, Philip J. Parr
privately published an analysis of the Mau titled The Murder of Tamasese, which had the
stated aim, “Fifty years later, let the truth be known!” (Parr 1979, 3). Between 1989 and
1995, the journalist Michael Field and a military historian within the Department of Inter
nal Affairs, Ian McGibbon, exchanged several vituperative letters in Wellington newspa
pers on issues of responsibility and culpability for the series of events in Samoa culminat
ing in 1929 with the shooting by New Zealand forces of the paramount chief Tupua
Tamasese Lealofi III.6
In 1994, Victoria University of Wellington’s Samoan Studies section held an event at

which Field and McGibbon presented in person their contrasting views.7 In 1991–1992,
an oral history–gathering project titled E le galo le Mau (“Remembering the Mau”)8 was
undertaken among sixteen New Zealand–resident Samoans who witnessed the events of
the Mau, and a few academics (including this author).9 Transcripts of interviews with
Mau observers (published in Anonymous 1997) indicate that a few songs continued to be
widely known, sung live (e.g., 117, 133–134, 147, 151–152, 163), and played on the radio
(p. 496) (121), and that they continued to be known until the end of the twentieth century.
The transcripts also confirm two situations that were to directly affect the repatriation.
Samoa itself was not totally united in its opposition to New Zealand administration; indi
vidual families, villages, and even whole districts were known to oppose the Mau and its
intentions.
Recorded Songs of the Mau

While living in Samoa in the 1960s, I used to hear on the radio some—perhaps all—of the
songs I had dubbed; most had no pre- or back-announcement and were played close to
the station’s close-down time on a Sunday night as part of the regular broadcast then of
older recordings by secular choirs. Although it may have been a function of the Samoan
Page 7 of 14

circles in which I moved, I did not hear any adverse comments about the propriety of ei
ther the songs themselves or the broadcast of them. During those fieldwork years I also
encountered many Samoans who remembered the Mau songs, to the point where the
identity and significance of proper names in the lyrics were explained to me and, through
constant replay of the dubs, I was eventually able to sing along with middle-aged folk in
several villages in the privacy of their homes. I also recorded a few male groups singing
Mau songs that were apparently unknown beyond their own village environs and were
not among those held at 2AP. In later years, recordings of Mau songs reemerged on at
least two occasions in New Zealand. In 1995, John Kneubuhl’s play Think of a Garden
premiered in Auckland. Kneubuhl, a child in Samoa when Tamasese was shot, based his
play on the events leading up to the shooting, from the perspective of a family living in
American Samoa. I was asked by the play’s producer to provide copies of the old record
ings to add a sense of realism to some of the staged actions, and for several months
thereafter I received a stream of requests from local Samoans for further copies for their
own use.
Again in Auckland in 2004, a one-day symposium on the Mau was organized by the Uni
versity of Auckland’s Centre for Pacific Studies. To a packed venue, several speakers—
Samoans, historians (including the Department of Internal Affairs historian), authors (in
cluding Michael Field), and a former Samoan prime minister (Tupua Tamasese Tuiatua
Tupuola Efi)—referred in their presentations to the existence of contemporary songs and
their effectiveness in rallying supporters and humiliating opponents of the movement.
The archive had issued a CD of all known Mau songs to coincide with the symposium, and
these sold well (Archive of Maori and Pacific Music, 2004), and indeed continue to do so.
On both occasions, Samoans’ principal reaction to hearing the songs was the expressed
desire to have a personal copy and listen to them again. Of course, the point has to be
made that such people appeared to come from families and villages that had supported
the Mau, although it was known that other families and even entire villages had been op
posed. However, at none of the events outlined above were anti-Mau (p. 497) sentiments
expressed or explained, and the overall impression was that the distances of time and
place sufficed for at least New Zealand–resident Samoans to view the Mau in general and
its songs in particular as historic artifacts of ethnic self-identity and nationalistic pride
rather than as proclamations of ongoing political passion.
Within Samoa itself, I had on several occasions offered my own recordings, including Mau
songs, to 2AP for consideration for broadcast, and from time to time thereafter heard
them played. Beyond the choirs’ own villages, however, little interest was apparent
among my host families.
Before the repatriation, then, there had been more than a decade of interest within New
Zealand in the events, personalities, and songs associated with the Mau and presented in
publications, dramatic performances, symposia, and at least one undergraduate course.
Within Samoa, none of these phenomena occurred, which might have led an outside ob
Page 8 of 14

server to believe that there existed little to trouble the waters of local politics. However,
those still waters belonged to a river continuing to run deep and about to rise.
The Repatriation
On the retirement in 1993 of the founding director of the Archive of Maori and Pacific
Music, Mervyn McLean, I took his position as an adjunct to my existing ethnomusicology
teaching within the Department of Anthropology. In addition to maintaining correspon
dence on a personal level with individual Samoans, I also continued to retain more formal
links, including as coteacher of a two-week choral conducting course in 1996, and as
chief judge in the choir section of the Teuila national performing arts competition in
1997.
A significant part of my own recordings from the 1960s consisted of fables containing
short songs. Wearing my archive director’s hat, in 2000 I personally repatriated to Samoa
many fables and songs from my own collection, as well as the NZBS recordings, having
ascertained through correspondence that the materials were of historical significance
and would be welcomed back. The handover to the director of Station 2AP was reported
in the local newspaper, and covered live on local radio and television. Broadcasts of the
materials followed almost immediately. The range of listener responses could not have
been wider. Although hardly any of the fable narrators were still alive thirty-five years af
ter they were recorded, their names and storytelling reputations had endured, and de
scendants rang in to the station to request copies and repeat playings. But the NZBS
recordings were quite another matter, because several songs originated from the Mau. As
noted earlier, the Mau movement divided Samoa into supporting and opposing forces
whose views prompted mass protests, civil disobedience, and violence, culminating in the
allegedly accidental shooting by New Zealand soldiers of Tamasese. The high value
Samoan culture places on precedent, competitive prestige, and local pride means that all
history, regardless of its age, remains alive. Radio 2AP’s phones were (p. 498) flooded,
some callers demanding that the song broadcasts should be stopped, others that they be
repeated. Threats were made against the station manager and the station premises.
Eventually, the minister of broadcasting intervened and formally banned all further air
ings. By late 2002, the recordings had been removed from the station archives and, al
though rumors abounded, their whereabouts remained, and remain, unknown.
Precisely because the songs composed and sung in the 1920s and 1930s became popular
as political artifacts of the Mau and thus highlighted political differences within Samoa,
they were banned seventy years later even though those persons advocating continuation
or discontinuation of the broadcasts had not personally experienced the Mau itself. Cul
tural distance may well explain the differing reactions to repatriation of the songs in the
homeland and within Samoa’s largest expatriate community, in Auckland; but in both lo
cations the primary response was to their lyrical, rather than their musical, content. They
were composed not to foreground any musical distinction but to express through poetry
and promulgate through musical performance a set of essentially political views of their
Page 9 of 14

times and which, despite the passing of more than half a century and thirty-eight years of
national independence, encapsulated those views with an enduring potency sufficient to
reignite, among the descendants of those from both sides caught up in the Mau, emotion
al responses similar to those originally generated by their live performances. Although
the act of repatriation itself may have been innocuous, public broadcast was evidently
not, forcing back into the public arena the political views, both supportive and opposing,
that more than two generations of Samoans had preferred to hold private. The subse
quent clash of values required an immediate remedy, which was the removal of the cause.
Was the repatriation exercise worthwhile with respect to the Mau songs? I mused over
this matter for more than a decade, privately seeking the views of colleagues and
Samoans in both Samoa and New Zealand. On one level, it makes sense that the record
ings as historical artifacts had every right to reside in the country where they were creat
ed; but on another level, public views about these recordings had hardened over three
generations of Mau-affected men and women. The public welcomes afforded the repatri
ated items as a whole had been preceded by formal correspondence with Radio 2AP, and
there was nothing to suggest that the gesture would not be appreciated. Moreover, the
subsequent decision to broadcast the Mau songs lay with station staff, who presumably
followed any existing programming protocol in doing so. A Samoan government-orga
nized display of historical photographs relating to the Mau, held coincidently at around
the time of the repatriation, attracted local interest but did not stimulate any passionate
displays of pro- or contra-Mau loyalties. Similarly, Mau song lyrics, long accessible on the
Internet, had not roused any large-scale demonstrations of past loyalties. However, it was
not the songs themselves that generated intense feelings during the period of Mau activi
ties, nor was it those same songs that caused problems in 2000. In the first instance, the
reason was the performances of the songs, and in the second it was the broadcast of
recorded performances, confirming my earlier point graphically that the act of singing
represents a superior form of verbal utterance. Whereas I repatriated the artifacts, the
radio station through the act of broadcasting transformed those passive artifacts into cul
turally active (p. 499) communication tools of the most powerful form known to Samoans.
As such, and because the broadcasts were heard throughout the country, the sentiments
expressed in the lyrics could not be ignored.
The postrepatriation events also raise issues about the inherent value of audio archives
and their contents. Preservation techniques may ensure the integrity of each item as an
audible artifact and allow generations of descendants of the original singers, as well as
others, to experience the What? Who? When? and How? of the performance. But the arti
fact is more than a human creation and of itself cannot illustrate the Why? Why did the
lyrics use such themes and forms of language? Why was the performance by a choir, and
why that particular choir? Why were such songs so emotionally powerful and politically
influential? Why was the reaction to their public broadcast so extreme? Enduring fidelity
of acoustic reproduction may be an archival imperative, but clearly it was not a priority
for Samoan listeners in 2000. As with any emotive situation, there are nuances and com
plexities here beyond easy explanation or investigation, especially by a non-Samoan, and
there are enduring unknowns. What, for example, changed between the 1960s, when ra
Page 10 of 14

dio broadcasts of Mau songs continued regularly and apparently without large-scale
protest, and 2000, when more highly charged responses occurred immediately and even
tually succeeded in effecting change? Why did the passage of time since the 1960s hard
en attitudes toward the Mau rather than blurring memories a further two generations
more distant?
Some answers suggest themselves. Repatriation was made to a Samoan society in many
ways different from that of the era of the songs’ original performances and different also
from that of the 1960s. The social differences were more of extent rather than kind and
considered as improvements (e.g., communications, health, education) and included also
elements of cultural protocols and procedures (e.g., kava ceremonies, awarding of chiefly
titles, transference of property). But although Samoans then and now readily confirm
such changes, and hold varying views on their desirability insofar as they affect them
selves, my experience is that they tend to agree that core Samoan social values remained
largely unchanged, as summed up in the recently popular phrase teu le vā (“preserving
the relationship”). Occasions of cultural or social significance call for forms of verbal ex
pression that praise and thereby legitimize relationships (e.g., those of family, village,
government), and nowhere more visibly than in group song.
Samoan group songs are created to meet social requirements and expectations relating to
specific occasions, usually at the village level, where they are considered as intangible
corporate evidence of the genuineness of opinions expressed in the lyrics. As such, they
exceed in prestige the other visible form of public verbal expression, oratory, as summed
up in the expression E seua le lāuga ‘ae lē seua le pese (“A speech may [legitimately] be
interrupted, but not a song”). Then and now, by far the greatest number of group songs
broadcast on Samoa’s several radio stations relating to current events receive a single
airing either on or soon after the performance date. Songs composed for specific histori
cal events tend to be archived but rarely, if ever, rebroadcast at a later date. In that light,
it appears that broadcast of the Mau songs constituted part of the momentum of a novel
event rather than reflecting normal radio station practice.10 Moreover, the (p. 500)
strength of attachment of bespoke song lyrics to an event is such that they cannot be
reused for any other event and in most cases are discarded and eventually forgotten. It
might be argued that, by allowing preservation of the sonic content, the advent of audio
(and later video) recordings intruded on this process of natural attrition, opening the way
for songs intended to celebrate events from the past to exert new forms of influence on
the present. Such recordings eliminated the original and intrinsic performance relevance
of time and place and personnel by allowing for unlimited replay opportunities anytime,
anywhere, and for anyone—and nowhere more so than via radio broadcast. On the face of
it, public broadcast was the catalyst for an identity change in the Mau songs, from private
to public, and this fueled an emotional response in some listeners. However, perfor
mances of such songs during the period of the nationalist movement itself were public (al
though selectively so, since they presumably were attended only by supporters). Broad
cast, by contrast, was heard indiscriminately, removing the distinction between support
ers and nonsupporters, and bypassing differentiated time, place, and occasion. One might
further argue that, because the song lyrics focused on essentially divisive issues of the
Page 11 of 14

1920s and 1930s—to support or to oppose the principles and practices of the Mau move
ment—they retained the potential to do so again when broadcast more than seventy years
later. In sum, although the songs themselves remained unchanged, they were the prod
ucts of a society which itself had sufficiently changed by the time of repatriation as to
generate a strong reaction to the juxtaposition of what were considered mismatched rela
tionships. How many individuals voiced their objection to the broadcasts, and who those
people were, is not recorded; all that can be said with certainty is that the objections
were of sufficient number and strength as to persuade the minister to act in the way he
did.
A possible ethical dimension to the repatriation resides in the decision to transfer the
recordings from a university repository in Auckland to a government facility in Samoa. As
noted earlier, however, the decision constituted a formal repetition of the more informal
provision of copies on request by individual Samoans over several decades. For its part, it
seems unlikely that the station would have agreed to receive the material, and organize
radio, television, and newspaper coverage of the event, knowing that adverse circum
stances would result. As noted, reception in New Zealand was very different: the 1991–
1992 national data-collecting project, the 1994 debate in Wellington, and the 2004 sym
posium in Auckland were all Samoan-led exercises intended to better inform fellow
Samoans about one segment of their own history, and as educational initiatives, they were
evidently well received. By contrast, no comparable initiatives were conducted in Samoa
itself. The inherent values of an intangible cultural artifact capable of objective examina
tion and rational discussion outside the country did not survive transplantation to Samoa
itself, where culture is experienced in different subjective ways. Geographical distance
enabled a degree of social distance, but the corollary also held true. The repatriated
songs constituted items taken from their archival time capsule and reintroduced to a
Samoan society similar enough for listeners to recognize and understand the lyrics and to
appreciate the ongoing social power of those lyrics, but a society also different enough to
be unable to accommodate that power within the prevailing (p. 501) milieu. Public expo
sure was met by a public response, the unplanned outcome of a planned initiative.
References
Anonymous. 1847. O viiga e faalelei a‘i atu i le atua moni: Na fatuina e le Samoa. London:
Religious Tract Society.
Anonymous. 1997. O le toe fa‘amanatuina o le Mau [:] Remembering the Mau. Part 2. The
Work-Book of Samoan Studies Students at Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington,
New Zealand.
Archive of Maori and Pacific Music. 2004. Songs of the Mau. CD. Auckland: Archive of
Maori and Pacific Music, University of Auckland.
Brown, George. 1910. Melanesians and Polynesians: Their Life Histories De
(p. 502)
scribed and Compared. London: Macmillan.
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Field, Michael J. 1984. Mau: Samoa’s Struggle against New Zealand Oppression. Welling
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Field, Michael J. 1991. Mau: Samoa’s Struggle for Freedom. Auckland: Polynesian Press.
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Moyle, Richard M. 1995. “Songs of the Mau.” In New Guinea Ethnomusicology Confer
ence Proceedings, edited by Robert Reigle, 183–197. Occasional Papers in Pacific Ethno
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of Maori and Pacific Music.
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Peterson, Adrian. 2001. “Radio in Samoa.” Radio Heritage Foundation. http://

www.radioheritage.net/Story7.asp.
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Notes:
(1.) My journal at that time notes that, except for the announcer’s booth, Samoa’s 2AP ra
dio station premises were not air conditioned, and these discs were stacked on top of a
filing cabinet in the station’s open-plan main room. Predictably, in the tropical conditions,
they had already warped and to keep the needle in the grooves as the disc revolved, it
was necessary to weight the stylus head with a coin secured by chewing gum.
(2.) Coincidently, there is a precedent for the banning of Samoan musical—or, rather,
sung—material. The second publication in the Samoan language, a collection of lyrics of
sixteen locally composed songs that combined indigenous and Christian philosophies
(Anonymous 1847), was later withdrawn from sale and destroyed by its London Mission
ary Society publisher, a few copies fortunately surviving.
(3.) Elsewhere (Moyle 1995, 187–193) I have analyzed the lyrics of one such song.
(4.) Turnbull’s view contrasts with two nineteenth-century authors, both long-term resi
dents in Samoa: “Heavy fines cannot keep the poetic fire from indulging in cutting sarcas
tic songs, and in war time these are more stinging than gunshot wounds” (Pratt 1890,
Page 13 of 14

655). “The Samoans are very sensitive indeed to ridicule, especially in songs, and the
composer of a song needs to be careful not to offend them in this respect” (Brown 1910,
423).
(5.) Translations appear in Anonymous (1997, 169); Moyle (1995, 174–177).
(6.) Several of these letters are reproduced in Anonymous (1997).
(7.) The public announcement of the event exhorted readers, “Be there to learn and share
your history, if you are Samoan, or to find out what NZ’s role was in the South Pacific in
the early days of contact if you are not Samoan” (Anonymous 1997, 73, emphasis in origi
nal).
(8.) A closer translation is “the Mau will not be forgotten.”
(9.) The project “was funded by an Australian Sesquicentennial Gift Trust Award in Oral
History, administered by Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs” (Anonymous
1997, 193), and awarded to the Samoan History Association Committee. The collected
transcripts and translations, together with newspaper articles and other relevant publica
tions (including Moyle 1995), were compiled into a workbook for use in Samoan studies
teaching at Victoria University of Wellington (Anonymous 1997).
(10.) And there is irony in that at least one of the early Mau songs was recorded by the
NZBS in 2AP’s own studio.
Richard Moyle
Maori and Pacific Studies, The University of Auckland
Page 14 of 14

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The Banning of Samoa’s Repatriated Mau Songs

The Banning of Samoa’s Repatriated Mau Songs

Print Publication Date: Oct 2019 Subject: Music, Ethnomusicology

Abstract and Keywords

Keywords: Samoa, Mau, repatriation, broadcast, politics, nationalism

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

Samoan Songs as Political Artifacts

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

Nu‘u lāiti e You puny villages—

Nu‘u laiti fa‘afiatele You puny villages, you speak provocatively

‘Ae ‘ā maua sasa mai­ But when I catch you,

[X] e, sola ‘i lalō Oh, [X]—flee back down

Tefe pea ‘o le Mālō Let the Administration circumcise itself.

[X] valevalea [X] village—is really stupid

Fana le pe‘a, lē lavea They shoot at a flying fox—but fail to injure

Fu‘e le umu, ‘ele‘elea. They uncover an earth-oven—but get all

Tepa ‘iā [X] ‘ua mū Gaze on [X] village: it’s burning

Mū pea ia— Let it burn—

‘O se nu‘u e That village of impotent boasters.

Songs of the Mau

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

(Field 1984, 110)

(Field 1984, 122)

Samoa! Samoa! The military police are coming,

(Field 1984, 123)

Acting-Administrator Turnbull added, somewhat disingenuously, perhaps to cover the dig­

(Field 1984, 125)

The machine gun goes rat-tat-tat

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

please keep the peace

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

‘Ua pāpā fana o le Mālō ma The Government and the Administra­

‘Ua fola i le ala sui o nofoa­ Representatives of settlements were

‘O le toto ‘ua masa‘a, Blood was spilt, and Tamasese stood

‘Ua masoe i le ala le alofi o He was wounded on the road at the

Se’i faitau maia pe fia o le Do count for me how many of the

‘O le sauaga na fai i Apia Committee were present

‘O suafa ia ‘ua tusia After the barbarism perpetuated in

‘Ua se‘ia vao a le Mau ‘o le Warships came, and

E to‘alua ‘ua ta fana o le And two of the Mau were shot.

‘O le Kōvana fo’i ‘ua na Even the Administrator was firing—

Pei lā ‘o se Mau fo’i ‘ua As if a member of the Mau could have

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

Tālofa ‘e te lē mamate. What a pity you didn’t all die.

In 1994, Victoria University of Wellington’s Samoan Studies section held an event at

Recorded Songs of the Mau

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

scribed and Compared. London: Macmillan.

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

Peterson, Adrian. 2001. “Radio in Samoa.” Radio Heritage Foundation. http://

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

(5.) Translations appear in Anonymous (1997, 169); Moyle (1995, 174–177).

(6.) Several of these letters are reproduced in Anonymous (1997).

(8.) A closer translation is “the Mau will not be forgotten.”

Maori and Pacific Studies, The University of Auckland

Subscriber: Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP); date: 30 May 2020

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‘Ae ‘ā maua sasa mai But when I catch you,

Acting-Administrator Turnbull added, somewhat disingenuously, perhaps to cover the dig

‘Ua pāpā fana o le Mālō ma The Government and the Administra

‘Ua fola i le ala sui o nofoa Representatives of settlements were