PRIMITIVE MAN IN POLYNESIA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1745, 16 August 1905, Page 10

PRIMITIVE MAN IN POLYNESIA.

(BY PROFESSOR J. MACMTLLAN BROWN.)

POLYNESIAN ART—DANCE, MUSIC. NO. XVII.

[AiJi Rights Resebved.] DANGB AiNT>;' MUSIC ARB SIAMESE! TWENSiESTv EARLY TIMES: In static art, the art of carving and design,. we. found a marvellous development in the south, and especially in JNew Zealand, due probably to the crossing of numerous cultures in that- ultima thule of the Southern Pacific, to the wider area and to the luxuriance of the tim-ber-supplying forests. The same deep contrast between the Polynesians and the Maoris is not to bo found in their dynamic or mobile art, least of all , in the moist elementary, the art of dancing and that of music. For here small advances made by the crossing of races do not accumulate so easily; they cannot be retained so well in material form, tor excellence in these arts-is more individual: And yet dancing and music are amongst primitive people far less individual, tar more a. matter of mass combination, than in civilisation. For rhythm is their essence and binds them close together like body and soul. Music is rarely divorced from dancing in the early stages of culture, and seldom: advances, beyond mere rhythm into and harmony. To a modern European ear it sounds, not much more than rhythmic noise, a mere markings of time for concerted.movements of the limbs, monotonous and _ unattractive, if heard, without its origin and inspiration, the dance.

POLYNESIAN DANCING SHOWS SIGNS OF ITS RELIGIOUS ORIGIN.

And the dance, is in its origin, pantomimic. It is- meant in all its earlier stages to imitate the action in which success is desired, and has a religious atmosphere and guidance. Lancing m modern Europe has been divorced from religion,. and, having long -lost its picturesque or imitative purpose, has passed into the conventional stage, in which a new movexnent or step has no aim except variety and perhaps grace.

Polynesian dancing, had advanced far on the road to conventionalism. It had shed, much of its pantomimic purpose, and its religious, meaning, and in this it reveals the collision of two or more cultures. In a region marked by so much that is so highly primitive, nothing but the clash of different religious systems could explain its divorce from rites and ceremonies and its appearance as an almost purely secular art, intended to amuse and,delight an assembly of spectators. Had it not been secularised, the women could not have taken part in it amongst' a people-who looted on all religion as- an affair of men, and that it waa- once wholly religious is shown by its character. It is not like European dancing, a harmony of “twinkling feet." It is wholly-occupied in posturing, waving the arms and bending the body,as if before a shrine. It is the upperpart of the body that is chiefly engaged. Where the feet come in, it is only to effect the occasional advances or retreats, as if 'to and from the altar, or in the resounding thud'-of the war-dance. The Polynesian dance- is oftenest stationary.

The old religious significance -was still retained in the- funeral dance of the Maoris, and perhaps in their triumphal dance and their war-dance, and here and there through out the island.it appears, as in Nukuhiva of the Marquesas group, during the religious festivals held to celebrate the maturity of the breadfruit; the men alone-take part in the dancing, and dance naked. In short; whatever dances were monopolised "by the men we may be sure still kept something of the old religious atmosphere about: them. "War amongst the Maoris was the most saqred- of all employments; the fighting men were; tapu. .and could not cook food or carry cooked food, and the war-party had to be consecrated and deconsecrated by the priest, with most elaborate rites; The war-dance, often, indulged in just "before: battle- in order to rouse daring to frenzy and to shake the hearts of the enemy, had something religions-about it, and was confined to the men. It was a New Zealand development, and with its wild goblinesque movements, of _ body, limbs* and ! facial features, and its terrific energy and music, formed a piquant Contrast to the soft, posturing, licentious dances that prevailed all through Polynesia. One has to go to Melanesia and Papuaeia for analogies; and these are not to he compared, in spite of their hideous masks. The Maoris turned their faces into close imitations of their de.inonlike carved images. But the thrust-out tongue the wild'rolling eyes standing out-of the ' head, the fierce grimaces, and the qtiivering hands and-fingers, with the accompaniment of the deep-drawn cries and: the stamp of the feet, had all the advantages of living movement to add to the terrifying effect. It. is difficult to efface the deep impression that its massive energy and furious, almost epileptic, passion makes on the mind, when produced by- hundreds. It surpassed in fury any thing th at- kava or any other drug or fermented liquor could have given to the harmonious movements of a mass of warriors. And in the olden days it had the grimmest of religious purposes. Now it has degenerated into an exhibition and a spectacle. But it shows better than, any others the pantomimic origin of all dance. Every act, every movement, every grimace was intended to give a realistic picture of the battle the warriors were about, to enter, as well as to stir to overw-helm-ing frenzy their religious zeal. And most of the other dances in which men

alone engaged were more or less realistic imitations of this war-pantomime. Even in the island the dances of men reveal shadowy reminiscences, of war. It is to this is doubtless due the predominance of the upper part of the body, and especially of the arms and hands, in their dances. If these had originated in hunting or nomadismi or even agriculture, we should have had more use of the legs in them. But there is one curious use of the legs in dancing that i® not easily explained without some knowledge of the animals used in agriculture. It is the backward kick that forms the piece de resistance in the amusements of the two farthest separated branches of the Polynesian race, the Malagasies and the Easter Islanders; otherwise they merely posture and use their arms; but the men in dancing have grown most expert in imitating. the savage kick of the four-footed animal. THE APPEARANCE OF WOMEN IN THE DANCE MARES THE DECAY OF ITS RELIGIOUS 6ELGNI- " FIANCE. But as a rule iu all these islands the women mingle with the men in the dance or have monopolised it. The religious element has, therefore, completely disappeared. And a lascivious pantomime has taken the place of the bellicose gestures. The same degeneration had begun in New Zealand before the arrival of Europeans; but it had not gone far. The energy that the cross-breeding with the vigorous aboriginals and fighting with them too imparted, along with the keener- and more bracing climate, checked the tendency to demoralisation, that the Polynesians doubtless brought with them from the island. It is the presence, of the pakeha, with his luxuries aud muskets, and the removal of the invigoration of war that have let the lascivious dances overshadow the wardances. The women have more and more part in them; and dancing has- become a spectacular amusement rather than an exhibition of religious and warlike fervour. Some of the women's dances and gestures must go far back. The power of moving up stud down tlio wnol© fro nr of the body.' from bosom to waist, like tbe twinkling quiver of the hands and fingers, was not acquired in a few generations.

THE DANCE; EVOLVED ORATORY IN NEW ZEALAND , AND THE HISTRIONIC ART IN POLYNESIA.

It 1 was doubtless the religious atmosphere in the worship of Tu that kept the Maori war-dance so free from innovation till recent times; it was m the hands of men, and their influence extends to other dances, even the lascivious and obscene, preventing them, from degenerating into mere spectacular posturing or women. Hence it was that the dance helped to evolve oratory, a purely masculine art in. all but the most advanced civilisations. The fugleman in thehakas must be -an orator, if he is not a poet; for he has to invent rhythmic speeches ot a highly figurative style to interval the choruses. All the imaginative power of the chiefs and priests in New Zealand developed in this direction, and speeches became as essential to every meeting of Maoris as they are to every type of assembly in England. The tohungas and chiefs grew adepts in moulding and rousing the feelings of th-eir audiences. And, though they revelled in figures of speech till the oriental arabesque overlaid the original aim and meaning, as important an essential of the orator was the dramatic gesture and action. He paced hither and thither, at first with slow dignity; but, when he had roused himself and his hearer© to the requisite pitch, he postured, and grimaced, and acted as wildly as he would in a wardance. But the art ever remained an extemporaneous one; its products were for the occasion, and not meant to be handed down by tradition, like the songs and incantations. Thus it was not a branch of literature, but retained the traces of its • origin in the dance. It was. mimetic and masculine, and. hence to some extent religious.

The literary side of dancing took quite a different course in Polynesia, and especially in eastern Polynesia, S'amoa and Tonga, though they admitted women to the exercise of the art, and developed the lascivious side of it more than New Zealand did, show their greater affinity to the latter in keeping it simpler and more extemporaneous. In the- East of the island region it was the dramatic element of the dance that was developed. But it was only in. the Hervey Group and the Tahitian that it was developed into a histrionic art. Cook saw again and again the performances of the Areois, those aristocratic actors of Tahiti, who sailed from island to island, and entertained the people with their dramatic dances, whilst themselves indulging in the most licentious excesses. He once saw sixty canoes setting out full of these histrionic celibates about to make a tour of the islands. One play he saw represented a successful robbery, another an accouchement, a third the habits and acte of himself and his countrymen. We hear of their libertinism and policy of infanticide from all early visitors. Such a singular and deliberate degeneracy was doubtless due to the havoc that the luxurious idleness of; these Eastern Polynesians and the enervating climate worked upon their moral fibre. It- would have been well-nigh impossible in the hard-won subsistence and the bracing air of New Zealand. The strenuous character of the Maori dances, as of the Maori life, obstructed _the evolution of the drama, histrionic thetigh the Maoris were in this art and its off-spring oratory.

THE ELEMEiNTAUY CHARACTER OF THE MUSIC HAMPERED THE DEIVELOPMENT OF THE DANCING ART 1 .

But what barred the way of development of this art and those that sprang from it was the elementary character of their music. There was not only no harmony and no possibility of melody, in spite of early travellers speaking occasionally of their singing in parts, but the range of notes was limited to the

pentatonic, like that of the Chinese and all barbaric or half-developed civilisations. In an appendix to Grey* s ‘‘Polynesian Mythology" a London musician, a Mr James Davies, puts some of the music he heard from a Maori into notation that reveal© its inherent monotony. Only here and there is there any departure from the customary range of two or three notes, and then only in a descent at the close. It is true he shows that there are half aud quarter notes increasing the variety within- the monotonous range, but he confesses that he might be wrong; tbe differences seemed too subtle for the Efuropean ear. Cook found the Tahitians rejected the harmonies of his instrumentalists, whilst delighted with the bagpipes and the drum; the simple notes and short range of these instruments were most like their own music.

THE DRUM AND PERCUSSIVE INSTRUMENTS WERE THEIR FAVOURITE AIDS TO SINGING, AND AGAIN REVEAL THE PRIMITIVE CHARACTER OF THEIR CULTURE!. The Polynesians were in fact limited by their highly primitive musical instruments, which probably only imitated the music they heard in Nature. The first natural sound to attract the human ear was doubtless thunder and similar loud and abrupt repercussions. Hence the most widely-spread and earliest of all instruments is the drum or gong.. In this the Maoris have retained the most elementary form, that of a suspended wooden slab, and it takes a very subordinate place in their culture compared with its: place in the islands. There it rises into great importance, not only in the music and the dance, but in. religious ceremony; it becomes a highly ceremonial instrument, like a chief’s axe or baton. In New Zealand it was used only in war and siege. The sentry kept thumping it during the night to show that he was on the watch. . The simplicity both of its structure and of its use, and its absence from religious ceremonies, seem to ©how that it was aboriginal. That it originated partly in manitime pursuits is apparent in the canoe shape often given to it.

Another percussive instrument was the pakuru, as elementary in its construction and in the music it produced as the gong. It consisted of an inch thick ©tick held by the teeth and the left hand, and a striker held in the right. The variation in the notes arose from the movements of the lips. It was evidently meant, like the guitar, for serenades and other amatory music. The idea of a musical instrument of percussive element© was far more elaborated in the islands. The ihara of Tahiti was much like those of all the rest; it is described by Ellis a© a single joint of a large bamboo with a long slit in it laid on the ground and' beaten with sticks; its sounds were harsh and discordant, and it was never used in worship, but only for amusement, whilst the pahu or drum© were used in the temples as well as in war and in dancing ana dramatic performances. The Tongana and Samoans elaborated the idea. The latter arranged bamboo© like a panpipe in a mat bag and beat upon them; they also struck bamboos closed at, one end, and of different length©, at intervals on the ground in order to produce a gradation of. notes. The Tongans developed this method still more, a© described by Cook in the-account of hi© third voyage. But the Maoris preferred as the accompaniment of their great dance© the primeval means of percussion supplied by their own bodies. Their favourite© were striking the bosom with one hand, whilst the other was made to twinkle and quiver aloft, and to bring the bale sole down with thunderous effect on the ground.. The islanders had theirs, too. In the East they struck the bent left arm with the right hand; in Samoa they clapped their hands; and in Tonga the women snapped or cracked their fingers like castanets. But the limit «of notes in all this, percussive music was primeval in it© narrowness, in New Zealand most primeval of all.

THEIR FLUTES 1 WEIRE EXTREMELY PRIMITIVE, AND THEi NOSE FLUTE WAS EXCEPTIONAL AND OBSTRUCTED MUSICAL DEVEi LOPMENT.

It Is the same when we turn to the only other type of musical instrument that Polynesia had, the wind or blowing instrument. There is the extreme of simplicity and lack of variety of effect; and New Zealand., has it in its greatest bareness. There are the fife, the flageolet or flute, and the trumpet "of various kinds. Of thesei the flute was the instrument most capable of development in the range of. notes. But here a unique custom barred the 'way. It was played, not with the mouth, but with one of the nostrils, the left in Tahiti, the right in New Zealand. Now in order to give range both hand© were needed as stops for the holes. But the need of one hand to stop one of the nostrils precluded this. The result was that the largest number of hole© in a Polynesian flute was five, and as a rule one of these was below for the thumb. How could the scale be other than, pentatonic at its utmost range, where the chief musical instrument was confined to five holes or notes ? And in New Zealand there was more often than not only one hole in the. centre, and the variety of note wa© obtained by the greater or less extent of this that was covered.

The route of this inefficient device for bringing the breath to bear on a musictube was Java, Borneo, Celebes; for the nose-flute is found in all three islands. "Had this not pointed so definitely to South Asia as its source, one would have been inclined to assign the origin of the use of the nose-flute to some climate, like the Northern or iShb-Arctic, where the bitterness of winter compelled the habitual closing of the month. That is came into Polynesia with a very ancient migration from Indonesia we may be sure; for it did not find its way to Madagascar, although the peculiar stringed instrument© of Malaysia went thither. It was not used in religious but in amatory

music, throughout the islands, a sign, that it did not belong, to . the> last conquerors, but to the aboriginals; and, though in the island© bamboo was pre* ferred for it, in New Zealand, in tha absence of that universal provider- of Indonesia, bone, and especially the legbone of an enemy, was nsed for it in preference to wood or other material.

THE TRUMPET 33S CEREMONIAL. When we turn to the trumpet we are outside of common life, and within the precincts of worship. All through the islands it was nsed in the temples and by the prjiests, like the drums, though also a war instrument. In New Zealand, it was the instrument of the chief and the warrior; it wa© used to warn of an enemy’s approach, and to announce the visit of a chief. In the islands, the trumpet was generally d large murex shell, with a bamboo inserted near the apex. The Maori© also used the Triton ©hell, with a wooden mouthpiece, as a trumpet; hut they preferred the long wooden trumpet with a wide end to fit to the mouth; usually there wa© a reed or tonsil inside near this to vibrate; sometime© there was a hole in the middle to be covered or uncovered in order to vary the note. There was a bent trumpet used in the South Island, that has been compared to a trombone; and from Taranaki has come a calabashtrumpet with, two or three holes. The roria or Jew’s harp waa simply a slip of hark held between the lips and made to vibrate. The panpipe® reported once or: twice from New Zealand, and frequently from Tonga, was a rude affair in whiefcthe reeds, varying from five to twelve, were not. arranged to make a regular scale of notes.

THE ABSENCE OF STRINGED I IN. STRUMENTS IS: ACCOUNTED FOR BY THE ABSENCE OF THE BOW,

The only report of a stringed instrument is that by Featherman in hi© “Social History of the Races of Mankind" of a monochord, called utete, amongst the Nukahivas of Eastern Polynesia; it coneits of a bow strung Avitb catgut, and is played by holding one end. between the teeth and scraping the string with a small stick. But it is so unique that wo may say that there are practically, no stringed instruments in Polynesia. And this is the more striking that they exist all over Indonesia, and all the cultivated and most of the uncultivated races of Asia have thorn. The usual form in Malaysia is the same as the va-liha or Malagasy violin, made by raising the fibrous cords of the. outer cuticle of a piece of bamboo on small wooden bridges. Wherever the bow i© used there is the germ of the stringed instrument in its twanging. Yet throughout America, where the bow is universal, there are no stringed instruments reported except from ancient Mexico. The Mongoloids of Asia, who use the bow, prefer the music, of the strings. The absence of the bow> from Polynesia except as a ceremonial instrument or child’© toy sufficiently accounts for the limitation of the instrumental music to percussion and blowing. But. it is a singular thing that, though bamboo was introduced into it,, it did not adopt with it© immigrants from Indonesia the bamboo violin or guitar. Doubtless the rejection of the Indonesian bow accounts for the strange phenomenon.

Thus it is that the various arts interdevelop or interobstruct each other. War and religion have almost everything to do with the beginnings of both dancing and music, and the two in early times are closely allied. Later art secularises itself, and tries to fling off the bonds of war, and become the servant of everyday, life and everyday pleasure. Then women are admitted into the ranks of the performers in these mobile or dynamic arts. In New Zealand men kept stronger hold on them than in the islands, partly because of the intense development of war. And. yet they were more secularised than in the islands except for warlike purposes. This wa© doubtless due to the absorption of so many aboriginal tribes, who had music and dancing of their own, and yet had no karakia of! ©hare in the religion of the conquerors. Thus may we account for the primitiveness of both the arts in Polynesia, and their extreme primitiveness in New Zealand. The absence of the bow take© ns back to palaeolithic times; its absence limited music to the note© of the primitive drum and flute; and the unique phenomenon of a flute blown from one of the nostrils limits the notes to five. The picture is piquantly primeval, especially against the background of the great development of the histrionic art in the island© and of oratory in New Zealand.