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Burn it Up


We end our season of travels in Oceania and the Pacific Islands with Papuan musician O-Shen. This video of our favorite O-Shen song, “Burn It Up,” doesn’t take us anywhere, but the lyrics do inspire travel all over the Pacific.  O-Shen’s unique road to international reggae stardom — get it? Say it: o-shen — began in Papua New Guinea where his American missionary parents raised him until he was fifteen. When they returned to Spokane, Washington, O-Shen (born Jason Hershey) had a difficult time fitting in and eventually ended up getting into trouble. (A little burglary, a few years in prison.) After his release O-Shen returned to Papua New Guinea and from there relocated to Hawaii where his PNG-based roots reggae has not only become increasingly popular but also more confidently multilingual–his catalog includes songs in Yabim, Rigo, Nakanai, Kiwai and Niugini pidgin.

What an honor to have you join me over these last few months to sing and learn along about Oceani and the Pacific. Rock on!

Ana Latu, We Love You


“Ana Latu” is a love song from Tonga, an island nation in Polynesia. The song is a lament, telling the tale of the final night we are able to spend with our beloved Ana. We cherish those last moments, and, whether Ana is departing for a trip abroad or whether she has left this world forever, we know we’ll miss her.

Bye Bye Oceania

All Around This World--Oceania and the Pacific Islands

Bravo – we made it! Over the last three months in our online class for kids we’ve traveled together thousands of imaginary miles, navigating endless (imaginary) Pacific seas in an imaginary, musical, dugout canoe. On our voyage we sang some of the world’s most harmonious songs, drummed the planet’s most stirring rhythms and experienced struggle and unending hope. We began in Australia, at the very start of the world, by following our Songline on a life-changing walk. In Papua New Guinea we battled with songs, in Fiji we sat as we danced, in New Caledonia we hopped while shuffling straw. In Guam we ate an orderly feast, in Kiribati we climbed trees for coconuts, in Tahiti we danced with booming hips. In the Cook Islands we sang in a seven part choir, in Hawaii we ate all sorts of poi and New Zealand we became so very strong. This season we celebrated life, the bluest of blue waters and the bluest of blue skies.

Let’s take one more week to bounce around Oceania and the Pacific Islands, making beautiful music together.

More than Just the Stars


How the heck did they do it? How did Polynesian navigators, over the course of thousands of years, find their way from one little sand speck of land to another in the vastly vast vastness of 25 million square miles of ocean? This is before Google Maps, remember — even, if you can believe this, before MapQuest. How in the world did Pacific sailors set sail from one sliver of land in their log canoes and actually, on purpose, find their way to another? This video gives us a few hints.

Te Korero Maori


In the Pacific Islands, dancing is an expression of such joy. As we learn about cultures in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia in our classes this season we may not quite learn how to dance like these performers in this video from the the Te Korero Maori Pacific Islands dance group, but we’ll happily exhaust ourselves trying.

Strung Out in the Pacific


As we travel musically through Oceania and the Pacific Islands this season we’re going to find a supreme amount of pleasure in Pacific string bands. Pacific string bands, like as this one in this video, from Vanuatu, are groups of several performers playing guitar/ukelele/mandolin and singing in sweet multi-part harmony. The stringed instruments may be relatively recent additions to the Pacific musical array — within the last couple centuries for sure — the harmonies seem so much a part of the islands’ nature, as if they rise from the ocean itself.

Our first Sing Sing


This season in our online classes we’re going to celebrate so many cultures of Pacific Islands — singing, dancing and enjoying holidays that we meet in our classrooms. Fortunately for us, people across the Pacific revel in their rich multiculturalism too. Here, from the Solomon Islands, is an example of a light-hearted performance at a “Sing Sing,” a Pacific cultural celebration that inspires dancers to put their best feet forward as they compete with ensembles from other villages or islands. We will experience more Sing Sings as we sing forth around the region.

This Season We will Dance


Oh, we’re doing to dance this season as we travel through Oceania and the Pacific Islands. Pacific dance ensembles, like the one in this video from the French Polynesian Marquesas Islands, can be riveting. We will hop like Huli Wigmen in PNG, pilou pilou with swishing straw in New Caledonia, tahiri tamau (boom boom!) in Tahiti . . . .

Powerful Percussion from the Pacific

In Oceania and the Pacific Islands percussion is a confident and cacophonous way to communicate. Drummers “speak” with rhythm, piecing together beats into patterns analogous to sentences, arranging those into longer pieces that form the background rhythms for dancers who further the storytelling with narrative motion. Polynesian drum ensembles, such as those from Tahiti (like this one) and the Cook Islands (like this one) are composed of multiple drums of different sizes and pitches, all of which are made from materials found nearby. A drumming group from the Cook Islands–a set of islands that originated much of the drumming from the region will often feature instruments such as the sharply pitched to’ere pronounced “to-eddie,” which is a narrow cylindrical drum made from a hollowed-out log and hit with a wood stick (see the “to’ere” in action) and the more resonant pahu which drummers hit with padded sticks.

Embarking on a Pacific Journey

All Around This World--Oceania and the Pacific Islands

Introducing Oceania and the Pacific Islands! Today in All Around This World’s online classes for kids we begin an adventure that will take us to one of the most naturally beautiful, geographically fantastical and musically exuberant regions of the world. Oceania and the Pacific Islands are a vast and – until the very recent advent of air travel – practically impenetrable array of thousands of islands that rise above the now-rising waters of the Pacific Ocean. The 300,000 square miles of land are strewn across millions of square miles of ocean. Water defines the life in all but the largest of the area’s land masses; the incredible distances between earthen peaks are as much a character in the region’s story as the histories and complex cultural customs of the peoples themselves.

For the next three months we will be traveling clockwise, more or less, around the region. We’ll start in Australia whose two-headed tale of ancient Aboriginal and comparably recent British population continues to unfold. There we’ll join Aboriginal youth on a metaphorical coming-of-age Walkabout. In Papua New Guinea we’ll compete as Huli Wigmen in a Sing-Sing, in Fiji we’ll use our hands to dance a story about the sea. In New Caledonia we’ll meet French colonizers and Kanak life-cycle celebrations and in Kiribati we’ll wake up before dawn to climb a coconut tree. In Guam we appreciate the saints with a feast, in Tahiti we shake our hips to a frenetic beat, and in the Cook Islands we sing harmony with a dozen disparate voices. In Hawaii we strike a chord for equality by eating pretend poi, and we end in New Zealand with a terrifying, and cathartic, dance. Over the course of the season we’ll learn two dozen songs that will introduce us to the rhythms of the deep wood drums that resonate beyond the boundaries of the shore and to melodies that rise from volcanic peaks to the endless sky.