The song I selected is entitled Na Tagi na Rarawa or Your Tears of Sorrow, which is a Fijian worship song that comes from the album Fiji: Songs of Love and Homeland: String Band Music and is performed by the little-known Fijian cover band, the Vatulawa Trio. When listening to the song, which in Fiji is referred to as a seri nu cumu, one can notice the different utilization of musical instruments throughout the piece, which are identified as two acoustic guitars and a single ukulele that accompany the harmonized voices of the three Fijian performers. The song has a reasonably upbeat tempo that, when combined with the sounds of the singing and instruments, produces a consistently lighthearted and island-like feeling unfitting to the piece’s name. Although the exact time of origin for the song is unknown, it  is performed in the native Fijian language that, when translated, paints an image of Christian worship and rituals that can be attributed, like the non-native chordophones and harmonized melodies used in the performance, to the Western colonization and Christian missions that took place in the region centuries ago.

One of the reasons that I chose this piece is that the music feels very familiar to me. When I was a child, my mother would frequently visit the islands of Fiji to perform fieldwork to complete her master’s program. While on those trips, she took many photos and videos of the culture she witnessed on the islands, including musical performances such as Na Tagi na Rarawa. After experiencing so much nostalgia for the piece I selected, I felt a desire to finally dive deeper into the origins and meanings of the music I had grown up hearing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19iQn4HMR-c