What is it about?
This paper describes the rich anthropology of music and dance in the Pacific with a specific focus on the transmission of Taibobo songs and dances from the Rotumans to the Meriam-speaking people of Eastern Torres Strait.
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Why is it important?
Music and dance are an important part of culture and cultural identity. This article is unique because it highlights the cultural dynamics of music and dance across a wide area of the Pacific where the adoption of Taibobo songs and dances by Murray Islanders in Eastern Torres Strait illustrates the capacity for culture to change and preserve and the complexities between these two tendencies.
Perspectives
My own interest in doing this research began when the idea was first introduced by an uncle who, during his university days in Melbourne in the 1960's met a group of women from the Torres Strait who claimed to have Rotuman ancestry. My own family had been part of the early migration to the Torres Strait Islands. This sparked my interest to travel to the Torres Strait Islands to interview Part-Rotuman Torres Strait (PRTS) Islanders to find out if they have any sense of Rotuman identity and whether it shaped their lives in any way. This is when I discovered an enthralling aspect of culture which is the Taibobo chants and dances which derive from the early Rotuman migrants in the Torres Strait.
Makereta Mua
Fiji National University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Taibobo: Dancing over the Oceans, from Rotuma to Torres Strait and Back Again, Oceania, November 2014, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/ocea.5065.
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