Thomas Powell and Dr. Jeremy Grimshaw, School of Music

The Samoan Islands are home to a rich and fascinating history and culture which is slowly disappearing as other world influences continue to have an impact on them. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, it is our responsibility to seek to preserve our heritage, both for our own enlightenment and for the benefit of future generations. Having served my mission in Samoa I have been able to experience firsthand the wonder and beauty of their culture and also to see the many changes it is undergoing. As an effort to help the Samoans in fulfilling this duty, a fellow returned missionary and I began working to create this project. The hope of this project was to compile and produce a collection of recorded oral histories and music of members of the LDS church in Samoa and assemble these materials into a set of DVD’s which could be presented as a gift to the church in Samoa. Copies of all these materials would also be stored in the archives of the Church in Salt Lake as well as in the Special Collections Library at BYU so that they may be more easily accessible. It is hoped that this material will only be the beginning of a continually growing collection and will be a source of inspiration both to the Samoan people and any who are interested in their culture and history.

The grand scope of this project began to take shape early in 2008 as we were working on another project with some students in the BYU Animation department. We were fascinated with the old folklore and legends of Samoa and had been working on creating a short animated film of one of their legends. While brainstorming on what we could do with this to be of most benefit to Samoa we realized the great potential in exploring the modern day “living legends,” or stories and culture of those currently living in Samoa. As recently returned missionaries we were able to communicate with members of the Church whom we had served among, and were able to organize a trip to Samoa to begin our journey. For four weeks we travelled around several villages of particular historical significance on the two main Islands of Samoa, and visited with many families and individuals. We collected recordings of oral histories, music, and art mostly focusing on (but not limited to) members of the LDS church. It would be impossible in that short amount of time to capture everything Samoa has to offer, but we were able to record a great deal of fascinating material.

Upon returning from our expedition we had collected over 40 hours of raw recorded audio files and video tapes and many hundreds of photographs, (see examples at end). To assemble this material into a presentable quality requires many hours of work mixing, organizing and editing. As a Media Music major I have taken classes in sound composition and editing and I am familiar with the software and equipment necessary to carry out this work. I am currently employed as an audio editing assistant in the music and dance library, and with the assistance of some fellow student-employees who work on video editing in the A/V room with me, we have been working together to complete this portion of the project. David Day, head of music special collections, has given us permission to use the libraries editing equipment and software for this purpose. We have been able to capture all of the tapes into a digital format and have finished editing several of them but as of now there are still many more hours of work to do on this portion of the project.

Most of the interviews were performed in the native Samoan language, and so an important step in the production of this material will be to transcribe and translate all of the interviews and songs into English. This will also be necessary in order to preserve a written copy of all the materials along with the recorded audio and video files to be stored in the archives. Upon completion of the preliminary editing process we will be able to accomplish this quickly with the assistance of many other returned missionaries from the Samoan Mission.

Throughout the production of this material I have been working closely with Jeremy Grimshaw, professor of ethnomusicology, as my mentor to receive guidance and further insight from his extensive experience in ethnomusicology field research and publications. Dr. Grimshaw will oversee final production of the DVD’s to ensure the highest quality of presentation is put together. Along with helping to put together a presentation, he has also assisted me in studying and analyzing the collected materials to gain insights into the changes and development of the Samoan culture throughout time and how elements of their culture are affected and assimilated into a newer Samoan culture through major influences such as religion and the increasing presence of western lifestyle. Since music is the main focus of my studies here at BYU I am greatly interested in all of the musical performance we were able to record. As we continue to make progress in editing all of the video and getting translations made we will be able to analyze everything more in depth and hope to be able to publish the results of our findings in a major journal or other periodical in the ethnomusicology field. It is my hope that this will open the doors for further opportunities to return to Samoa and expand upon the research we have collected thus far.

Although it is not possible to attach audio and video examples to this paper, I would like to share a few brief explanations of some of the interesting musical performances we were able to record. While visiting with the Temple president and his wife, both native Samoans, we discovered they were both musically gifted and they shared with us several old songs which are very common among the Saints in Samoa. One was a song about Joseph Smith and the restoration, and another was a song that was written in honor of a missionary from America who died while serving in Samoa in the 50’s. Many others also shared with us songs written by and/or about members of the church and events in this history of the church in Samoa such as the first branch established in certain villages and the hardships and persecution of the first missionaries in the Islands.

Besides this great historical material, we were also able to record a great deal of present day musical culture. One of my favorite people to work with on this was named Uili. He has a small home studio where he produces CD’s of his own music and music of some of his friends who are all talented songwriters and performers in the Samoan reggae-rap-hip hop styles which are very popular in the Islands today. Uili gave us a small tour of his studio and showed us a lot of the songs he had been working on that time. This was very interesting to me because it was so similar to a lot of the things I have been studying in my Media Music classes at BYU.

Below is a picture of a street band performing downtown by the marketplace, and a child playing on the speakers while her dad sets up his DJ system in the background. These are just a few examples of the great musical talent in Samoa and the importance of music in their culture and also the changes it is undergoing in the present day. I hope to be able to continue to gather more of this incredible culture and history in order to preserve it and share it with all.