Surviving Traditional Music
Traditional music is preserved (though how faithfully we can only guess) in the set pieces performed at royal and noble weddings and funerals, and in the song sung during the traditional ceremony of apology, the lou-ifi.
Radio Tonga begins each day's broadcast with a recording from Veʻehala, a nobleman and celebrated virtuoso of the nose flute. The nose flute is otherwise rarely heard. Contemporary youth prefers the guitar.
Some ancient dances are still performed, such as ula, ʻotuhaka and meʻetuʻupaki.
The lali or slit-gong, is still in use—as a substitute for a church bell by congregations that cannot afford a bell.
Read more about this topic: Music Of Tonga
Famous quotes containing the words surviving, traditional and/or music:
“For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their affairs indifferent.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What Mrs. Thatcher did for women was to demonstrate that if a woman had enough desire she could do what she wanted, do anything a man could do.... Mrs. Thatcher did not have one traditional feminine cell in her body.”
—Julie Burchill (b. 1960)
“Have you ever been up in your plane at night, alone, somewhere, 20,000 feet above the ocean?... Did you ever hear music up there?... It’s the music a man’s spirit sings to his heart, when the earth’s far away and there isn’t any more fear. It’s the high, fine, beautiful sound of an earth-bound creature who grew wings and flew up high and looked straight into the face of the future. And caught, just for an instant, the unbelievable vision of a free man in a free world.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)