preview

Polynean Music Research Paper

Decent Essays

Ryan Moore
August 20, 2015
Music Appreciation 200
Professor Gant

Polynesian Music Throughout the world music serves as more than just a form of entertainment across cultures. Music is a way for cultures to express themselves, express their feelings and tell stories and tales of times past and futures to come. Music is used at times of celebration and times of grief and despair. Though across the world we all speak different languages and cannot always verbally communicate with one another, the language of music speaks to everyone on every level. It is music that allows us to gather and enjoy each-others company and it is music that brings stranger together and makes them friends. Polynesian music is a great example of what it means for …show more content…

Certain beliefs involved sacred rituals that had people worshipping many different gods and considering certain places such as a volcano for example, to be ‘sacred’ and participating in rituals of the drinking of certain things called ‘Kava’ a special beverage prepared from a root from a tropical pepper. The beliefs and traditions of the Polynesian culture relied heavily on the social structure that provided a base for everything that entailed the island life, the belief that some family members and persons were derived from the gods was another belief in the culture. ”The underlying set of principles through which Polynesians interpreted their world and organized their social lives included the concepts of Mana and Tapu, intertwined with ideas of rank based on descent from gods” (Kaeppler). When the Westernization of Polynesian began, this brought many things that the culture and people had not yet seen nor experienced. The Europeans brought trade and with trade that brought metals that were never before seen or used on the islands of Polynesia. “Previous to European trade, the use of metal was virtually unknown, and tools were pre-eminently cutting, incising, and filing elements of stone, bone, shell, obsidian, shark teeth, and fish skin mounted on wooden handles” (Kaeppler). These types of changed in the production of music and art can without a doubt create somewhat …show more content…

Fueled by the musical chants, singing along with the beating of drums islanders would subject themselves to painful process of the traditional Polynesian tattoo and tattoo process. A large part of the Polynesian culture is body art, it is used to suggest many different things that have occurred in a persons life, it also indicates things like social statuses and where people derived from. “Traditional Polynesian tattooing is mainly geometric and denotes rank and political status but more recently has been used to define ethnic identity within Pacific island societies.”

Get Access