Tau'ili'ili Alpha Maiava I was born into two school of thoughts on Sāmoa. One is called Sa'ili Mālo. In Sāmoa Saili Mālo [is] made up of two words: sa'ili means in search or in pursuit, and mālo, if you say it, mālo it means either the kingdom or something, or a winning that you are in pursuit of. But when you put it together, you are someone in pursuit of something, a greatness, whatever that looks like for somebody. I also grew up in a concept of life of Sāmoa called Tōfā Mamao. Tōfā Mamao, two words. Tōfā means your authority and your wisdom. Mamao means foresight. So that was the two concepts of life that raised me. And so everywhere in life I went I was already into a creative process because to be able to find your way to your winning, you have to be creative.
I was born in a village of Nofoali'i, and I was born into a house that was always Sa'ili Mālō. My father was Sāmoa's first full-blooded pilot, and when my father came back from New Zealand, Sāmoa wouldn't let him fly because he wasn't afakasi or palagi. So, my father went across to American Sāmoa and the palagi couple that used to own an airline called SPIA made my father the captain on day one because they didn't see his skin. It took a palagi to put my father – elevate him – but they saw his qualification. So, to this day, my father is 73, still flying, the longest serving pilot in the Pacific. But that was the house that raised me in the village where I was raised by people that had no ceilings. And if there were, they were meant to be kicked through the teeth.
I am currently contracted to SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music. SOUNZ was founded in 1991. It was basically to look after jazz and classical music of Aotearoa. About five years ago they expanded to cover Māori music. Two years ago they decided to expand to cover tagata moana music. You notice I don't use the word Pacific because then I'm giving power to Ferdinand Magellan, who in the 18th century passed by my ocean, who already had a name. So, I'm not a Pacific person. I'm a tagata moana. And we founded it, came together, got a whole bunch of creatives and musicians to tell SOUNZ how we want them to engage with our music. Every time two cultures come together you have to bear fruit: show me the evidence of you marrying each other. So, we decided to build a podcast called Sounds of the Moana, and we had to convince SOUNZ that we're not going to use any academic sources, that we're going to go back and bring up the things they took away from us. Narratives. Pen and paper became the world of the moana. This is how we stop believing the stories of our people. Unless it's written by Adrian Kepler, Richard Moyles or Augustin Kramer. Unbelievable. Why? They never wrote it in a book. And they stole the power of the moana.
We learnt how to read and write. We just didn't read feelings. We read the stars because we were only dedicated to things that had a purpose. And out of that, we engaged for knowledge holders from the Kingdom of Tonga, Viti, and also the Cook Islands and Sāmoa. We wanted to ask them the story, let's look at the sounds of our people when we left our Hawaikis; what was the sound they brought with them to Aotearoa? As well as what was the origin of music that came with them? And out of that, we ended up with Sounds of the Moana, and they enter it into the New York Festival Awards, which is considered the Oscars of podcasting. And we ended up beating BBC, CNN and Lord of the Rings, who had budgets of half a million when ours was $5000.
At the moment I'm currently working on a film. The podcast did so well that they gave us some money to turn everything into a film. I'm working on an eight-part series of tracing eight instruments right across the moana.
We didn't just have musical instruments, they had a purpose in our lives. The stamping tubes: we used it to fish for whales because the vibration under the boat is how they come. It was taken by Captain Cook in 1777. Two of them remain, one in Dublin, one over in the British Museum, cold and lonely and wanting to be used and played. So, if you are a part of a museum, you currently do not allow people to play things from the 1800s. What? You're doing it an injustice. Nose flutes were not created to be displayed. They were created to be played.
What are their stories? I'm not going to refer to a book because we already know. You want a book? Find it in a library or a museum. I want to give back to the people and how our stories were told. And even if they get it wrong, I don't care. It's from the mouths of our people, the thing they took away from us.
