Married by a Song; An Adventure to the highlands of Viti Levu, Fiji

“Just as Jesus is the head of the church, the man is the head of the household,” the Fijian minister thundered over our heads as we stood on the alter of the white washed church.  Dressed in traditional Fijian wedding cloth made from the bark of a mulberry tree, Dave and I stood side by side, sweating.    I squeezed his hand with just the right amount of tension to convey an alarmed, “what!?”  His face betrayed nothing, but I felt a double squeeze back letting me know he was right there with me.  

We had met with the minister the day before, to discuss the ceremony.  Dave asked in the most careful way if there could be little or no mention of Jesus during our vows.  But standing there under the storm of those words, I realized his request may have fallen on unsympathetic ears.    The language and cultural dissonance were obvious, but we thought we had an understanding.   It didn’t cross my mind to ask that he not declare I live a life of servitude to my husband.  Standing two feet away from him on the alter my head rang with the clashing of discordant beliefs.  He annunciated his words about men being the head of the household with such vehemence, I began to wonder if he had a bone to pick with all the western women who had trapsed through his village with their modern ways. 

The harsh slashes from the minister’s words combined with the rough fabric of the tapa pulled tightly across my chest, made it hard to breathe.  I considered walking out.  This wasn’t just a cultural experience where I had to be polite among different norms and values, this was my wedding.  But my feet felt cemented to the floor.  The situation was complicated.  I cared deeply for the people in this church, their culture, and the life changing significance of my wedding.  And the church was overflowing with people, blocking the doorway and every open window.   In the front pews sat the thirty American high school students and the owner and staff of the international community service company we were working for.  The owner had paid for the wedding and was doubling the experience for the students to experience a fun cultural event.  As I looked to the side door wondering if I should make a dramatic exit from my own wedding, the choir resumed singing.  The harmonic beauty of their voices immediately brought me to the present moment with my hand in that of my best friend, my love, my soon to be husband.  I took a deep breath and relaxed.  The singing in the village is how I arrived on this alter.  The love and positivity of the Fijian music filled every day of our summer and ultimately created the sacred space for a life changing decision.  

The year was 1999.  Dave and I were working in the village of Nasivikoso, a small farming village situated in the highlands of Viti Levu, the largest island of Fiji.  We were guiding American high school students on a homestay and community service project.  Our main task was to facilitate a cultural immersion experience for the kids.  In doing so, we became immersed ourselves.   The people of Nasivikoso were more than hospitable.  They invited us into their homes and took us in as their adopted children for the summer.  They taught us their customs, including how to farm, cook and hunt.  For me, the most impactful aspect they shared, was the music.  The songs were a constant presence throughout the summer.  The harmonies rang like fog horns calling me back to a deep, internal sense of home. 

On the islands of Fiji, people sing a song for every occasion.  They sing a welcome song to invite people into their village and a good-bye song to wish them well as they leave.  The welcome song is as joyful and exuberant as the good-bye song is heartfelt and heavy.   With sadness mixed with blessings for a safe journey, the song Isa Isa makes any guest or wish they weren’t leaving at all.    After 25 years I can still mumble my way through this farewell song in Fijian.  I can still picture a group of villagers swaying gently together around one person in the middle with the guitar as they sang. 

Isa isa vulagi lasa dinaNomu lako au na rarawa kinaCava beka ko a mai cakava,Nomu lako au na sega ni lasa.

In addition to the ritualistic songs, we were bathed in the sonic beauty of the church choir every Sunday. Dressed in pristine white robes, the choir was a mix of women and men of all ages.  Their harmonies were gorgeous and bold.   I was carried away on the moment of each note, with only goose bumps bringing me back to my body on those hard wooden pews.  I have never been religious but sitting in that church I started contemplating how it was possible for such beauty to exist within the human voice.  Their voices were stacked upon each other’s like a chord with perfect intonation, sounding more like an organ than an individual voice. The dynamic boom of their singing was ground shaking like a harmonic force washing every listener in their wave of sound.   I was awe struck.

As part of our cultural studies, we learned the Meke, a traditional story telling musical performance.   The purpose of the Meke is to celebrate the rich Fijian history and pass it on to the next generation.  The dances told the stories of harvest times, wars, hunting and love.   The men and women had separate dances, embodying their different roles.  I spent hours learning these dances with the women of the village.   There were also two men, Mosesi and Aroni, who were very feminine in their demeanor who spent their time leading the singing and dancing lessons with us.  They could easily teach both the female and male roles in the songs, as they seemed to have blurred boundaries between their own gender roles in the community.  They were incredibly kind and patient with us but most of all they always had us howling with laughter as we learned.  It was masterful how they made us feel completely free and at ease to try on these unfamiliar songs and dances as though they were our own.   Their voices were both bold and never wavered despite all the jumps and turns choreographed in the war and farming songs.  The dances were big and theatrical and invited participation through clapping and singing.  It was the best entertainment in the village.  In between our lessons, Mosesi and Aroni would sit with us, telling stories that would fill our circle with laughter as they passed oranges the kids brought us from the surrounding trees.  By the end of the afternoons, we would all be clapping, swaying, laughing and smiling.  It was a performance, a history lesson and community building in one song.  The afternoons spent singing with Mosesi and Aroni easily bridged any cultural gap that separated us. 

The music found its way into most of our nights.  We spent many of these evenings hanging with the family who had taken us in for the summer around a fire and a kava bowl.  Kava, a root grown, dried and pounded into a powder in the village, made everyone relaxed and happy.  The men played guitars and ukuleles and sang late into the night.  They graciously included Dave and I into their circle.  Their songs were in Fijian and everyone in the room, except for us, knew the words and sang them earnestly, and all together.  Sitting on the floor, cross-legged for hours, they sang harmonies like trained professionals, never a note out of tune.  It was obvious they had been singing the same parts to the same songs their whole lives.  Harmonies were not added as something extra but more as an integral part of the song.  These macho guys who worked tirelessly during their days farming and hunting spent their evenings singing beautifully together, supporting each other vocally like brothers. 

I loved being there around the fire, mostly as a listener.  Sometimes with some encouragement from Dave, I sang and played guitar too.   I sang the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin and The Indigo Girls.  They had never heard any of these songs, as they didn’t have radios or any western music in the village.    I was a little shy about singing on my own, my voice sounding so solitary compared to their multi-harmony songs.   I felt like it was a small offering I could give in appreciation of all the songs they had shared with me.  It was a little window for them to see what singing sounded like around our campfires at home.   And it was a small but significant way for them to know me.  I struggled to find my place in these situations.   

As guests to the village, we were hosted by the men around these kava circles.  The women were on the periphery, literally behind us.  It was traditional for women to be physically below the men so they would crawl across the floor to serve food and drinks as we all were already sitting on the floor, quite low to the ground.  I was concerned for the women who had to serve in this way but always found them to be having fun in their own circles, singing, talking and laughing all night.  It was hard for me to figure who to interact with.  When I tried to be with the women, they would bring me back to the honored guest spots next to Dave.  The men in turn gave Dave all their attention.  Singing and playing guitar gave me a familiar place from which to connect.  I was used to playing music around a fire.  It was what I did for fun at home too.  I have always been able to rely on that truism that music is universal and once again it found a way to bridge a tricky gap that words could not.    The songs I sang created a small connection that I was grateful for. 

We found ourselves on the alter because of one particular night playing music around the fire.  Our Fijian family asked why we weren’t married.  They couldn’t believe we were a couple, at 23 years old, and not married yet.  In their eyes we were wasting time.  We should be starting a family.  They insisted we get married in the village right away.  After sleeping on it, we excitedly accepted their offer.   Why not get married?  We loved each other, we felt so connected to the village, the people, and the Fijian culture.   We felt whole heartedly that it was a unique experience that would never come again.    

The songs from the church choir and many of the villagers wove in and out of our wedding day for over 12 hours, making up for the few minutes of heavy religious and patriarchal admonishments during the service.   The preparations started early in the morning.  I was walking across the village green as I heard “Buna, Lmai.”  People crisscrossed from all angles around me like central station as they headed to various places in the village.  “Buna, Buna!  Lmai!”  I heard again, realizing someone was calling the name given to me when they gave up on pronouncing Brooke.  Four women were quickly upon me, taking my hands in theirs as they pulled me into their current of motion, speaking excitedly all at once in Fijian.  Mila, my bridesmaid put her arm around my waist as we walked.  We didn’t speak the same language, but we had connected.  She was quiet, yet confident and I related to that.  I didn’t know where we were going but after a summer in the village, I had learned to trust my hosts and to be malleable to their demands.  We were soon at the river.  They untied my sulu, pulled off my shirt and guided me into the water, splashing and dipping me until I was mostly submerged.  I surmised it was a pre-wedding bath.  There was no one there to interpret, I just followed along.  Next, we entered a house where the room was full of men talking loudly in what seemed like a hundred conversations at once.  They all sat on the floor cross legged, as was the custom.  The chaos of the situation was overwhelming.  I had a sulu wrapped around me like a towel.  My bra and underwear were still wet from the river.  They tried to take the sulu from me in front of all the men but I refused, clutching the sulu.  The women acquiesced and brought me to a back room curtained off from the men.  I was dressed in the traditional wedding tapa cloth which was tightly knotted behind me.  Back in front of the room full of men, my hair was taken down from the bun it had been in all summer.  They oiled my hair and my skin and doused me in baby powder.  Then we waited.  No one spoke English in the room.  This was not the family I had been with all summer.  This new family clan had adopted me for the day so Dave could leave from a different family home to come ask for me to join him, as is traditionally done.  Standing before the rowdy group, I felt like I was on display, with no one to talk to in my own language.  I felt like a captured animal.  Then I heard the angelic voices of the choir in the distance, and I softened a bit into the moment. 

I found out later that Dave had been getting prepared for the wedding in the house we had been staying in on the other side of the village.  The same house we had been drinking Kava and singing songs in at night.  The small house with corrugated tin walls, a thatched roof and earthen floors was modest but full of warmth and love from the extended inter-generational family that lived there.  Dave was dressed, oiled and powdered like me but instead of being the only foreigner in the room who spoke English, Dave was with his brother Josh, who worked for the same travel company.  The house was filled with the entire church choir, who sang the same harmonically beautiful songs from church.  Dave said it was a magical experience. 

As the wedding procession followed Dave, who walked across the village to pick me up, the music spread out like a rising sun turning everything it reached to a golden hue.  By the time we reached the church the entire village was there with us.  Two men stood before the church hitting a hollowed-out log known as a lali, calling everyone to the ceremony.  The singing intensified in volume as we crowded into the small church.  When the minister came out and stood before us, the singing abruptly stopped and the silence was stunning with all of the harmonies still ringing ethereally around us.  I felt blessed by this pregnant silence.  The hours of chaotic preparations and singing that led to that full moment of silence was like a collective breath, offering us the blessing of life brought forth on the reverberating notes of so many beautiful voices.  I believe this silence, filled with so much sonic energy, bound us together in marriage.  I decided to let the words from the minister roll off my back, seeing him as well intentioned but not my spiritual guide in life.  When the singing started in time for us to walk out of the church, I squeezed Dave’s hand again.  Looking into his eyes, I knew we shared the same moment of awe from the blessings of the choir and that sacred moment of silence.  We walked out in unison to the music surrounding us.  After the wedding meal there was more dancing and singing that lasted into the early hours of the next morning.    The music made me feel held by this gracious, hospitable and loving community that I had become a part of over the summer.  It was an honor for Dave and I to be wrapped in the beauty of all of those voices as we began the journey of our own songs, yet to be sung.    

Twenty years later, Dave and I came back to Nasivikoso with our kids Maya and Samuel, ages 13 and 11.  They were able to participate in the same Meke dances we experienced during our stay.  Samuel looked so small with a spear in his hand next to the chiseled young Fijian men.  The Fijians laughed as their instructions for Samuel to use his fierce might to kill his enemy fell on inexperienced ears.  Samuel had never been tasked with artfully waging war and on top of that he had a very gentle soul.  As an adolescent boy just starting to feel awkward in his pending manhood, he was mortified to be laughed at.  We tried to explain that the Fijians are always laughing in the most loving way, laughing with him not at him.  Maya had an easier time, as she was used to dance classes at home.  She danced alongside the young women who gracefully told a story about harvesting cassava, the root which most meals were made from.    As I watched my kids dance alongside the Fijians in these traditional dances, I was so grateful for the same love that had inspired us to get married to be shared with our next generation, the product of this love and our most beautiful songs.