The sea has no borders
The album Small Island Big Song, released in 2018, not only was nominated for Best Concept Album at the 2019 Independent Music Awards in the US, it also won the German Record Critics’ Award for Album of the Year, making it the only winner from Asia. They then undertook a tour of more than 50 shows in 16 countries, attracting live audiences totaling more than 170,000 people.
The song “Uyas Gerakun,” which served as the curtain-call grand finale, featured a traditional Truku mouth harp (rubug qawqaw) played by the Truku singer and hunter Pi Teyru Ukah for the main melody. In Sarawak and Papua New Guinea they have their own similar instruments, and these were layered onto Pi Teyru Ukah’s playing. Then the rhythms of the Maori Haka martial dance and of the chants of the Balinese Kecha dance were added, and all these musical elements were combined. Although the rubug qawqaw only has a thin sound, it added a distinctive feel to the surging wave of music, like a drop of water in the ocean.
The Small Island Big Song project not only links together Austronesian islands, it also bears witness to the fact that Austronesian peoples migrated to the Indian Ocean. For example, says BaoBao, there is a folk instrument in Madagascar known as the valiha—a tubular harp made of bamboo or wood—that all local people can play. Musician Sammy told her that when their ancestors first arrived on Madagascar, the valiha had split bamboo strings. Later, after bicycles were introduced to the island, people began using unwound brake cables to add metal strings instead. To everyone’s suprise, when the group visited Sarawak in Malaysia and musician Alena Murang took them to see a pagong that her grandmother used to play with a bamboo pick, they suddenly realized that the pagong was the original form of the valiha. There are also identical instruments in the Philippines and Indonesia. Historical records mention such an instrument in Taiwan too, but it no longer exists today.
To start their 2021–2022 world tour, Small Island Big Song gave a concert in Taiwan, headlined by Taiwanese indigenous singers Sauljaljui (right) and Putad (second right). (photo by Jimmy Lin)
Truku musician and hunter Pi Teyru Ukah went with Small Island Big Song to perform at the 2019 Colours of Ostrava music festival in the Czech Republic.
Paiwan singer Sauniaw Tjuveljevelj joined Small Island Big Song on a trip to Vanuatu, where she shared music played on the traditional nose flute.
A group photo with Small Island Big Song project planners BaoBao Chen and Tim Cole (front), and Malagasy musician Sammy Andriamalalaharijaona (second row, wearing straw hat).