#fagogo

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A gifted story-teller, Jody Jackson-Becerra weaves her magic using Fagogo, a traditional Pacific Island technique of story-telling. With much laughter and immagination, Jody demonstrates how you can connect with; and teach valuable life lessons to children in a format that promotes true human interaction. Jody left her large family and Samoan island life to pursue her dreams in education attaining a Masters in Management Studies (Management and Sustainability). As a community engagement manager at the Auckland University of Technology, Jody  believes that education is key to empowering communities; and by engaging and motivating children through storytelling, each child has the opportunity to tell their story, however crazy it might be!

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It’s when things like this exist that you know you are ble-ee-ee-ee-essed.

Thou Shalt Not Talk Smack

The moral of this story is made clear upfront. This story resonates so well with Samoans even beyond South Auckland because the voices of Lei and Madonna in this show are relatable personas for many Samoans in Aotearoa: the gossiping busy-body Lei who works so hard and complains even harder, who has an opinion on everyone though she chimes in on autopilot at all the right moments in church (present in body, even if not in spirit) --

“You’re usually the one reading people’s clothes instead of the pages in your bible, aye?”

-- and Madonna, who greets Lei with a casual allusion to her past-time for stirring drama and talking smack in the South. In contrast to Lei, Madonna embodies a well-intended friend who is still running on island time no matter how many apologies she makes (late is late), and is too kind to be anything but a concerned bystander in the slow-motion disaster of Lei’s self-incrimination.

These two are a significant departure from the kinder (distilled, less nuanced) figures of Fonuea and Sina (all the Sinas, every other woman in traditional fagogo was named Sina). Lei works hard for the church, and her comments clarify the struggle is not selfless, but neither is her desire for a simple thanks unreasonable.

Lei and Madonna aren’t role models, but they’re neither a one-dimensional cautionary tale: they are modern people blending both, whose voices we enjoy in detail with ego, humility and fallibility; who are no longer kept in check by explicit intervention of spiritual forces, but the lightest backhand of shame in Samoan social pressure and custom.

In contemporary Aotearoa, removed from our native fanua, the connection to the breadth of Samoa's spiritual existence is explicitly preached through the faife’au (church minister) who is more of a trophy and a teleprompter rather than a force for change or reflection in their congregation.

The use of popular hip-hop is laid down hard on top of the soft pipe organ whenever one of the Housewives starts to show the grit of her character. Our contemporary Polynesians have taken their musical cues of strength, swag and challenge from our African American role models across the ocean, suggesting our Polynesian contemporary sound isn’t pervasive enough in the popular consciousness to strike the same chord. 

The statement is subtle, but clear: if these womens’ strength be God-given, it may not be God-driven. The church is less of a place of worship and more of a battlefield for social standing, a contemporary village waterhole for people to catch-up rather than be spiritually fed. By the end of the episode, the organ has been muscled out by hip-hop. In just a few words, the Faletua shows her mettle as both a woman of God by association, and earth by backing track.

Interesting implications for the vā tapuia and vā fealoa’i....

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‘Know your roots’ takes a funky fresh twist on a classic legend to bring you a different way of telling Pacific stories.

This legend is about how cannibalism ended in the islands of Samoa. Long ago when King Malietoa ruled the Islands of Samoa, families had to sacrifice their loved ones for the King’s feast. But one warrior took a stand against the king and stood up for his people.

Eating people is... bad

A nice general principle we could extend to all problematic behaviours or protocols: if you can’t imagine asking the most precious people in your life to submit to it, just don’t do it.

This is a completely different take on how animation is employed to tell a fagogo. Self-aware, straddling the fourth wall to engage the audience in a conversant reflection on themselves, it specifically calls out the group who respond to self-identification with or knowledge of fellow Samoans who are potentially overweight (”We know we Islanders love our food, I mean look at you. Yes, look at you!”) or physically discipline their children. The narrator invites the audience to then look from themselves over the wall and understand events of the fagogo in oversimplified terms (”cannibalism was the thing at the time -- like planking -- you had to be cool to do it”; a practice of power dynamics separating the titled from the low or less-connected), with familiar animation styles, graphical icons and contemporary pop culture lingo for Aotearoa (”nek minnit”).

Comedy and fun are the keys here in a vibrant, vivid palette of fast-paced colour where the tale is explained as one might explain it to a Samoan youth with no previous awareness of their cultural heritage. It uses the visual and spoken language of contemporary urban Aotearoa; like a primer to break the ice as an introduction to more serious texts as the alternative artefacts shown in this context review.

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Sina and "her" Tuna

Amazing how every time you do another google search, something new turns up.

Behaving foremost as a learning resource again, what I love about this artefact is that the Victoria University has provided stock footage of the places and environment spoken of in the fagogo, from the village distract of Safune to the infamous pool where Sina and the Eel swam together, “Mata o le Alelo” (Eyes of the... this is a swear word and nobody can give me a straight answer lol). Anecdotal testimonies say women are not allowed to swim in this pool, lest they go insane (or some other terrible thing happens to them).

But the other thing I like about this resource is how it provides english translations per term on mouse-over. An issue arises when a word has multiple translations dependent on context, and it may be unclear which one is applicable in this instance. But then, as a learning resource, identification of the correct one may be the point.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb-tVzHiqtA)

Aesthetically, this animated rendition of the famous fagogo is a beautiful blend of digital animated techniques overlaid with traditional textures of siapo material (a cloth made from the bark of the mulberry tree). Without having a background in traditional art and/or design, I’m cautious to comment on any of the animation styles or choice of monotone colour palette, but strong contrasts of the inky black with the mulberry bark, especially the sharp, patterned shadows of the rocks and mountains will resonate with anyone familiar with the traditional Samoan tatau (tattoos).

Audibly, the backing musical score that first greets the audience employs flute instruments more popularly associated with South East Asia. If this choice was made with consideration for popular consciousness and culture (rather than, say, an attempt to bring awareness to the Polynesian nose flute), the conch would have been a better choice. This approach, paired with the soundtrack of waves, and the later rise of the traditional choral sound resonates with Alama’s style of radio play (Rays of Sound project) to transpose the audience to the islands. Narrated by an elderly man, it upholds the common traditional practice of matua (elders) being the ones to share such knowledge, though it is not a woman.

Unlike other tellings of the story, Sina does not raise the eel (thereby bypassing any Oedipal undercurrents of affection). While befriending him, the eel insists that he is of royal blood, a Prince, but he does not tell her where from. This is the first act distancing this version from its geographical roots with loss of the tie to other island nations and historical recognition of movement between Samoa and Fiji. The “Eel Prince” never gets the opportunity to tell Sina he is the future king of Fiji.

By stripping the story of its geographical landmarks beyond “the island of Savai’i”, it removes this legend even further from reality and degrees of believability.

Sina’s village of origin is not mentioned, nor is it mentioned that she crosses large bodies of water in a small va’a (boat), fleeing to another island entirely (from Savai’i to Upolu) to escape the eel when he grows “larger and more demanding of Sina’s love”.

In this version, she seeks assistance from her cousin and uncle, rather than interrupting the village council of Moata’a while they’re in the middle of their fono (meeting). There is a degree of urgency and peril lost in this version by shrinking the scope of her escape, through the sanitisation of details recounting the eel slithering at pace to stalk Sina on land or water.

This rendition suggests an attempt to distil the essence of the fagogo to transcend location, local custom and social organisation (recruitment of the aumaga to protect Sina). But in doing so, it loses crucial elements that demonstrate its role as an artefact of Samoan history. The pool where Sina and the Eel swam together is a real place. A chant does rise, muted, under the narrator’s story when the first fruit of the coconut is received; a muted throwback to the traditional practice of the chant featuring at the forefront to draw attention to the fagogo’s purpose; the origin of the coconut.

By contemporary, NZ European frameworks, this fagogo may read like a cautionary tale of “Sina and the stalker friend who couldn’t take no for an answer”. In such a reading, it actually ends favourably for restoring the va fealoa’i, with the lesson that if you eel men do not respect when a woman says no, thine fellow men will destroy you on her behalf, and she will claim your head. The fruit borne by your remains will sustain her and her family in a sort of never-ending penance in recognition of the wrongdoing (a reminder of his love).

At least, that’s what I’ll tell my kids if they ask what lesson is to be learned here.

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tran(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mygJdBVQxyI)

The song is from the fagogo of how Sina’s brothers left her to find her husband, Gogosiga, with the warning not to make a sound because someone could overhear and find her.

A giant does find Sina and takes her hostage in his home.

When her brothers return and find her in this situation, they’re upset they went to great efforts to find her husband, they left her the instruction not to make noise because something could trap her, and then it did. They blame Sina for her current predicament, but instead of saying it in such terms, they sing this song.

The brothers are too scared of the giant sleeping on her lap to risk entering the house.

Finally, only one of her brothers remains. Sina cries out to him, he responds with the chant, he is moved to help her and so they escape.

This is the root of the feagaiga in Samoan culture, the covenant and sacred understanding that it is the brother’s responsibility to uphold his sister’s wellbeing, to shield her from potential harm and hardship. It is the root of the proverb, “O le tuafafine o le i'oimata o le tuagane“; the sister is the pupil of the brother’s eye.

Samoans believe that sisters can curse the the brother, but not the other way around; the brother may have received a blessing for what he did for Sina.

"Both fagogo and the solo are designed to gently remind us not only of our core Samoan values and beliefs, but also of our village and/or family histories. They are meant to sufi le tuā'oi between ourselves and God, ourselves and others, ourselves and all other living things. The phrase "sufiga o finagalo" refers to engaging in a prayerful way of negotiating boundaries (sufiga) between the various thoughts or opinions (finagalo) of people. Implicit within this is the centrality of our belief in the spiritual world and the importance of this world to resolving disputes and/or maintaining the harmony" (Efi, 2016, p. 9).

Artefacts such as this, songs in isolation, function as contemporary bridges through the digital space back to the original fagogo and their core messages that transcend sovereign borders. The lyrics survive, striking at the heart of the proverb, allow such cultural values as the feagaiga to persist in contemporary times. Providing them in such a media format as this, shareable, with contemporary and familiar faces for youth to relate to, in a modern rendition that retains the core of the original melody with subtitles supplied, allows the fagogo to survive and be learned for a new generation. The one thing this lacks, in common with the other artefacts here, is the faifagogo or framework to place this in cultural context for those who encounter the song without knowledge of the fagogo enclosing it.

There is some analogy here to the meme culture of still images that mythologise concepts in the form of memes and sung artefacts such as this. This song signifies the feagaiga, but because it is not sung between a brother and a sister as in the traditional mode, it creates a distance between the performers and the subject they are singing about. They do not, in that moment, embody the roles of Sina and Tui (her brother), but stand outside it, performing as pointers to this history and its deeper message.

Action: reference Barthes in full analysis

References

Efi, T.T.T.T. (2016). Language, Vision and Divine Designation in our Faasamoa. Keynote Address, Epiphany Pacific Trust, 10 July 2016, Auckland, New Zealand.

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Ethnomusicology is able to look at how people perform their music and relate that to values in society, the way they organise in society, how they prioritise things over other things, how they express values towards each other towards the institutions that make up that society. And they can express those in performing, in the performing arts.

An Interview with Richard Moyle

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The Laughing Samoans take on “Jack and the Beanstalk”, then “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (Little People)”

Gets completely hijacked into a math lesson and a tug-of-war about which folk tale they’re trying to recount to their audience of boys and girls.

Both Tofiga and Eteuati adopt interesting personas while in narrator or presenter mode: smiling to excess, always positive, even while clueless about the topic at hand. On face value, this could be taken as a dig at non-Samoan presenters and teachers as strained and inauthentic, attempting to observe political correctness while a native Samoan might rather endeavour to keep things simple, even at the risk of offense (”little people” vs “dwarves”).

Although this can paint Samoans in an ignorant light, the Island Time skits highlight the greater ignorance of the non-Samoan presenters and caricatures’ in failing to appreciate the cultural misalignment when non-Samoan stories, principles or ideas are brought into the Samoan context and become absurd (”Heigh ho” / “Hi, ho”).