Music was always a way for journalist Indira Stewart to straddle her Pasifika and Pākehā worlds, but more than that it's just a powerful source of joy.
In one of my earliest memories, I’m sitting bare-foot on the dusty hardwood floor at our church hall – New Lynn Tongan Methodist church. I’m five years old, pausing to catch a breath after a game of tiggy with other church kids.
The sound of majestic singing is bouncing off the walls inside the red-brick hall. It’s the weekly church choir practise. My dad is standing at the front waving both hands around wildly, his face full of passion. He’ is the choir conductor.
Stacked on a chair next to him is a thick folder of song sheets – all written in the Tongan music notation. Curious, I grab a sheet and Dad motions for me to sit next to the aunties in the front row.
It’s my first time in the Soprano section.
My tiny 5-year-old body tucked in between the rich vibrato and busy chatter. Boisterous harmonies and carefully whispered gossip. Laughter and reverb. I love all the sounds of a church choir practise.
It makes me happy. It makes my heart full.
Later at home, I sing the soprano melody back to Dad – belting out the notes, in the Tongan music notation - To-hi-va-tu, tu-o-ni-ni-o-fa-tu. It’s a notation similar to the Western solfège method – what most will recognise as the do-re-mi scale. My Dad laughs at the memory of us kids walking around the house singing his choir songs in the Tongan notation, having learned them off by heart because we had no choice but to attend every rehearsal.
My whole life has felt like a choir rehearsal.
For Pacific Islanders, singing is weaved into so much of daily life. You go to church, you sing. You go to a family meeting, you sing. You go to a wedding, you sing. You go to fai kava (kava drinking session), you sing.
Even when there’s disharmony in the village, Pacific Islanders will still erupt in harmony at one tiny prompt of a song –- as if there were never any drama.
There were many Māori and Pacific kids at the schools we attended. School life was enriched with kapa haka and Pacific cultural groups. We learned waiata and pese’s like Tama Samoa. We learned poi, tī tī tōrea and sang and danced with colourful plastic seis in our hair, fluorescent lei’s draped around our necks and lipstick on our cheeks.
It was loud. It was joyful. It was my happy place.
Music taught me to straddle two worlds
We were pushed to mingle with other cultures when my dad enrolled myself and my older sister into music lessons, learning the piano accordion and the flute. My sister and I played the piano accordion competitively for years. If it sounds random, it was. We were among just a handful of Māori and Pacific kids in the New Zealand Accordion Association in the ’90s. We went on to win titles in our age categories in both New Zealand and Australia.
Tongan sisters and champion piano-accordionists feature in Tagata Pasifika episode, 2000 (Source: 1News)
But it could feel like a lonely place for a brown kid. I loved the music we learned but I sometimes felt embarrassed to be Pasifika in that world. The other girls had straight hair, tied up in ponytails or sometimes cut short. Our long dark hair was always braided and we were never allowed to cut it – a young girl's hair is sacred in Tongan culture, my mother said. We thought our parents spoke good English until we noticed other adults in that world would look confused and ask them to repeat things they’d said.
Mum and Dad worked hard but they couldn’t always afford the music lessons or competition fees so sometimes we busked outside Kmart in Henderson to help pay for them. Our differences seemed obvious to everyone.
The music opened my mind and was wonderful, but it always felt foreign. During the week I practised Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor by Bach. In the weekends we went to church and sang Tongan hymns. Sometimes we played as instrumentalists for our Tongan Women’s Methodist choir on Dominion Rd in Auckland’s central Balmoral suburb.
Playing for that choir was like playing before 70 of your aunties. At every rehearsal they would pat us on the shoulder, slop kisses on our cheeks and cheer us on. We sat in front of the sopranos. I was in awe of the fast shrill of their vibrato. It gave me chills and I would often go home and imitate them.
It made me happy.
Just one of those songs
I was 12 years old when I first heard the Fijian song Isa Lei. It filled every space of my parents’ home, in a rich chorus of grief, sorrow and love. My grandfather Etika, on my mother’s Fijian side, had died and our family gathered every night that week to pray and sing.
Relatives overflowed from our living room, into the hallway and even the kitchen. Crying, wailing, singing.
I didn’t understand the lyrics of Isa Lei back then but I knew that song made me feel a sense of longing and deep sorrow. At the same time, I was in awe watching my family sing so powerfully together.
I think songs can carry a spirit with them. Isa Lei is one of those songs.
Twenty-five years later, I found myself sitting at the back of the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington, listening to tenor soloist John Meli rehearse Isa Lei with the Signature Choir, accompanied by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
Tears started streaming down my face, the music taking me back to my parents’ living room and the chorus of my grieving relatives.
I sat silently throughout the rehearsal as the choir continued through their set list of songs. I was that five-year-old girl again, inviting herself to sit with the choir.
It felt so familiar. It made me happy.
I was there to film a story but after interviewing the choir directors, I cheekily told them that if they ever came to Auckland I would love to join their choir. I’m not even sure I meant what I said, but I knew it had been years since I’d felt that feeling and I deeply missed it.
Fast forward to last Friday night and I’m on stage, singing soprano in an 80-piece choir, in front of nearly 7000 people at Spark Arena. It was the Mana Moana concert – a combined choir of Wellington and Auckland singers accompanied by the grandiose New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
For 80 minutes we performed 13 love songs from across the Pacific region. We sang in the languages of our islands back home. Niue, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Tokelau, Cook Islands.
It felt like heaven and home.
From the very first song, thousands in the audience erupted. In most orchestral performances I’ve witnessed, the audience respectfully holds their applause until the end. But this was a beautiful cultural exchange between our Pasifika choir, the audience and the members of the NZ Symphony Orchestra. And Pasifika people just can’t help themselves.
They’re not there to watch, they’re there to be a part of it. And they are a generous, hearty audience. From young to old, hundreds were up dancing and cheering. During our rendition of the late Queen Salote’s song Nepituno, the entire arena was lit up by cell phone torch lights with thousands cheering as we sang them through the climax of the song.
From the first line of our finale, Tama Samoa, our elderly danced their way to the front, overcome with joy. While I was up on stage with the choir, my six-year-old was out of her chair and on the floor dancing with everyone else.
We were all in our happy place.
There's no English word for this
Tongans have a word "māfana" that I don’t think any word in the English language captures. When someone feels māfana they have outbursts of passionate emotion and are overwhelmed with joy. When your heart is māfana you might express it through tears, dancing, screaming or excessive generosity.
When I looked into the audience, all I could see and feel was māfana.
At the end of the concert, someone in the audience prompted Ua Fa’afetai – a commonly known Samoan song, often sung as a tribute to say thank you. The audience became the choir as thousands sang their tribute of thanks back to us.
My heart has been full ever since.
Everyone in our choir has stories similar to mine. We all grew up around choirs and Pasifika singing throughout our lives. Many of our members are experienced instrumentalists too.
At times I still feel like I’m straddling two worlds but I’m older now, and I know who I am.
A lot of that I owe to the singing. Our Pasifika songs pass down our languages and stories, teaching us about who we are. For many in the Signature choir, the songs we sing today are the ones we grew up hearing our grandparents sing.
The songs are a constant reminder of where we come from.
In these last few months of rehearsals I’ve often thought about my dad standing at the front of the red-brick church hall waving his hands around wildly. It shocks me to think he couldn’t have been older than thirty.
I’m in my late thirties now. I live a few minutes’ drive away from where that church hall used to be. It was demolished years ago. Now, it's just bare land surrounded by terraced housing.
When I drive past I can still hear that rich vibrato and busy chatter. The boisterous harmonies I would sit in between, the whispers of Tongan ladies gossiping, their laughter and the glorious reverb.
I love all the sounds of a church choir practise.
It makes me māfana.
It makes me happy.
This makes me happy is a series about the things in life that bring us joy.
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