After this followed conjuring tricks of a wonderful, though sanguinary description, “and then the infernal gammelong began again.” Then came excellent fireworks. “At last the gammelong ceased its stunning noise.”
During Captain Cook’s voyage round the world, Banks and Solander, two of his best associates witnessed (A. D. 1769) a pantomime in one of the Society islands. It was of a comic nature, and contained music and dancing. The subject was the adventures of a thief, including his capture.[205] In Cook’s second voyage, Forster observed a comic opera in the Society islands, which appear closely allied to the above. Actors and actresses appeared in this play, the first act of which concluded with a burlesque beating of three of the participants. The commencement of the second act was announced by the musicians beating their drums.[206]
In the Tonga islands, the actors of these musical dramas recite sentences which are answered by a chorus of singers. There is a great variety in their movements and groupings. Occasionally they sing slowly, and afterwards quickly for about a quarter of an hour. Sometimes they form a semi-circle, assume a bending position, and sing in a subdued tone of voice, a soft air, which is soon followed again by a loud and vehement declamation.
It is a singular fact that some of the races most addicted to cannibalism are also much addicted to music. We have seen this already in the case of the New Zealanders; it will be fully as apparent with the most cannibalistic race of the globe,—the Fiji Islanders. With them, music teaching is a remunerative art, and any one who has composed a new song or dance, can earn a large quantity of goods by teaching it. Their musical instruments are poor and few; they consist of pipes, flutes, drums, and trumpets. The trumpets are merely conch shells, blown through an aperture in the side.
The flutes are nose-flutes, played by putting the aperture under one nostril, closing the other with the thumb of the left hand, and blowing. The pipes are a species of pandean pipes made of bamboo.
The dances are very carefully got up, and more resemble military movements than dances, the similitude being increased by the martial array of the dancers, who are all dressed as if for war, their faces painted with scarlet, their bodies powdered black, and their best clubs or spears in their hands. They execute intricate manœuvres, marching in various figures, wheeling, halting, and stamping their feet in exact time to the rhythm of the song, and the beat of the drum.
Sometimes several hundred men are engaged in the dance, while the musicians are twenty or thirty in number. The scene at one of these dances is very picturesque, but it wants the furious energy, which gives such fiery animation to the war-dance of the New Zealanders; the movements, though correct in point of time, being comparatively dull and heavy. In order to enliven it a little more, a professional buffoon is usually introduced upon the scene, who performs sundry grotesque movements, and is usually applauded for his exertions. Music and dancing are always used at the celebration of a marriage.[207] Mr. Seeman in a recent work[208] says of the entertainment called Kalau Rere, that, “with its high poles, streamers, evergreens, [these cannibals are very tasty in their personal adornments, wreaths of flowers, evergreens, etc., being much used], masquerading, trumpet shells, chants, and other wild music, is the nearest approach to dramatic representation, the Fijians seem to have made, and it is with them, what private theatricals are with us. Court fools, in many instances hunchbacks, are attached to the chief’s establishment.”
The music of the remaining races of Oceanica, does not differ very materially from the above-described forms. Many of the instruments found in use among the Malays, have had their origin in China and India,[209] and therefore the description of them has not been made so minute as that of the instruments of those countries. Summed up briefly, we find that the taste for rhythm is every where prevalent; for instruments of percussion, almost so, (the New Zealanders forming a notable exception here), and that the prevailing impulse of these races, on hearing rhythmic music, is to dance.
We now proceed to the examination of the music of another large division of the human race.