Fiji Band Coming For Festival

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31628, 14 March 1968, Page 14

Fiji Band Coming For Festival

The band of the Fiji Military Forces will participate in a floodlight tattoo at English Park from March 27-29, as part of the Pan Pacific Arts Festival.

The band has been attending a military tattoo in Auckland. The festival committee had hoped that the full-scale military tattoo arranged by the Armed Services for Auckland would also be performed in Christchurch, but the cost of bringing the heavy equipment

and large numbers of people ipade this impossible. It is hoped that at the next festival in Christchurch a full military tattoo can be arranged by the Armed Services.

The floodlight tattoo will be built around the Fijian Band which will appear three times in the programme. It will appear as a marching band, as Fijian warriors performing war dances, and as an Army Band performing the 300-year-old ceremony of Beating the Retreat. It will be supported by the Band of the New Zealand Army playing Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” and the Christchurch Garrison Band playing “Evening Hymn” and the “Last Post.” There will also be massed pipe bands of more than 100 players, drum majorettes, a marching team, and some of the South Island’s leading axemen. Permission was given by the Commander of the Fiji Military Forces for the band to extend to Christchurch its New Zealand visit. The band’s reputation is worldwide, and since the 1965 Christchurch festival it has toured England, Scotland and Australia.