Tikopia Songs: Poetic and Musical Art of a Polynesian People of the Solomon Islands

Sir Raymond Firth is the most distinguished living British anthropologist, and one internationally acclaimed. His latest work forms part of one of the fullest and most professional ethnographic accounts by any anthropologist of a non-industrial people, an account which extends over many years. This book is about the songs of a Western Pacific people, the Tikopia, who until recently lived entirely on a small remote island of the Solomons. Their songs vary from lively dance chants to mournful funeral laments. All are novel to western ears. The book provides about 100 examples, in text and translation. It also discusses the relation of the songs to the social life of the people, and it includes an analysis of the structure of their music, by Mervyn McLean, a noted musicologist. A cassette published at the same time reproduces about 30 of the songs which appear in the book.