Brassed off: Samoan band mark century since end of German rule – in Sydney

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/16/brassed-off-samoan-police-band-bring-germany-to-sydney

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Monday to Friday without fail, at 8.45am, the Royal Samoa Police Band march from the station to Government House in the capital Apia to raise the country’s flag. Sporting spotless white tropical uniforms, they play their own version of Viennese brass band music – a leftover tradition from colonial rule when the Germans governed Samoa from 1900 to 1914. But this week Apia will have no brass band. No Viennese songs. No daily march. And, to boot, half of its traffic police will be missing.

Apia’s loss is Sydney’s gain. The band is in Australia to play outside the Pacific Islands for the first time with special permission from the Samoan prime minister. Thankfully for the capital’s roads, new police recruits have been trained to take over traffic duties at home. Several of the 17 band members have never left Samoa before.

“It’s a bit challenging – it’s new,” says band director, Superintendent Alesana Laki. “It’s very funny, they talk about being back on the island when you wake up in the morning and see the sun and heat all day long. Here they talk about how cold it is.”

On the day before the launch of the performance, entitled Siamani Samoa, the band huddle in a vast icy wing of Carriageworks gallery. Some are wearing brand new fleece-lined jackets, gifts for the journey and identical to those used on the sideline by the Samoa rugby league world cup team. Not all, though.

The men performing in the ‘Ava ceremony – a ritual to mark noteworthy occasions – have stripped down to just their bright blue lava-lava skirts. Their chest and feet are bare, showing off the bold symmetrical stripes and patterns of their pe’a tattoos that stretch from the waist to the knees.

A condensed version of the ‘Ava (which can take hours) will kick off Siamani Samoa before the band starts playing. Behind them, old, grainy black-and-white photographs (many showing lost landscapes) from the German era will be projected alongside the video artwork of New Zealand-born Michel Tuffery.

The half-Samoan artist wanted to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of German colonial rule with the performance. He remembers being baffled when visiting Apia: “I heard this brass band going past and I did a double take. That’s actually German music,” he says over coffee, shaking his head in wonder.

In 1998 Tuffery discovered a drawer of selu pau (wooden Samoan combs) in the Canterbury museum in Christchurch. Carved exquisitely, they were marked with “Deutsche” and were reminiscent of the fretwork of German-era buildings in Apia. “I used that as a metaphor for combing through history,” says Tuffery.

German rule over the western Samoan islands was largely seen as progressive and enlightened in comparison to the darker New Zealand colonisation that followed (Samoa gained independence in 1962). The Germans notably set up new industries, including rubber and cocoa bean, bolstering the economy. Like Tuffery’s family, many Samoans can count some trace of German blood in their heritage.

“When you fly into Samoa the first thing you notice are these perfectly straight coconut plantations – you don’t have to look too hard where the Germans have been,” he observes, adding, “We’re still eating the past.” A German bun filled with shredded coconut has become a national delicacy.

Siamani Samoa aims to transport audiences to Samoa. The stage is swathed in the colourful siapo or tapa mats made by the local Samoan community in Sydney. Decorated with fluorescent pink and red feathers and sourced from bark-fibre from the paper mulberry tree, in times gone by these siapo were considered a valuable currency.

Traditionally babies were swathed in them – so that the blood from their delivery seeped into the siapo – and in death that same person was buried in their birth mat. “It’s a woven history, a gospel,” says Tuffery, who recently buried his Samoan mother in a siapo. “They keep the big tapa like a diary. It’s a beautiful ritual that disappeared for quite a long time but now it’s come back.”

Sydney has the fastest-growing population of Samoans outside of Samoa and thousands have been invited to watch the performance for free. “When you’re sitting in the audience it’s like sharing this big giant seven-dimensional photo album – you’re going to taste it, feel it, smell it,” he insists. “It’s like putting an old record on.”

Art for Tuffery (who once made a five-metre high kangaroo sculpture from burnt-out cars in the Airds Woolwash reserve, in which he installed a working community barbecue) is “not just pretty pictures on a wall – it’s got to have a function”.

In this case, he wants the piece to be “a vehicle to get everyone to talk to each other”. Superintendent Laki agrees: “Many stories [from the German era] were never revealed. But when this fine gentleman Tuffery came and worked with the police band, things have started to become very clear that we didn’t know before.”

For his part, Tuffery is “sick and tired of the tourist thing”, like the traditional dances often wheeled out for visitors in Samoa – “it does my head in”. He wants to show Australians a different, more complex side of the island nation using “universal instruments that speak to everyone. We share a history. And we share the same music.”

Back in freezing Carriageworks the brass band are chatting with their counterparts in the New South Wales police band over a lunch of homemade coconut, banana and chicken curry. Laki is delighted to exchange expertise. “I think,” he says grinning, “this is a very golden opportunity.”