History
The original eke (or at least one version of it) comes from Futuna. It was composed by the Futunans as a kind of penitence for the murder of the Marist father Pierre Chanel in 1841. Or, more likely, a recast of an older, already existing, heathen version. With the introduction of Catholicism in Tonga, they brought the eke with them, first to Tafahi, then to Niuafoʻou. After the volcanic eruption of their island in 1946 the people of Niuafoʻou were resettled on ʻEua. From there the eke, by then named sōkē came to Tongatapu, to the Catholic diocese of Maʻufanga to be more exact, which brought it into Tonga's mainstream.
Read more about this topic: Soke (dance)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
—Henry Geldzahler (1935–1994)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)