French Polynesia - Music

Music

French Polynesia came to the forefront of the world music scene in 1992, with the release of The Tahitian Choir's recordings of unaccompanied vocal Christian music called himene tārava, recorded by French musicologist Pascal Nabet-Meyer. This form of singing is common in French Polynesia and the Cook Islands, and is distinguished by a unique drop in pitch at the end of the phrases, which is a characteristic formed by several different voices; it is also accompanied by steady grunting of staccato, nonsensical syllables.

Read more about this topic:  French Polynesia

Famous quotes containing the word music:

    “We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often more than that in the presence of music without music.”
    —Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    “Poetry
    Exceeding music must take the place
    Of empty heaven and its hymns....”
    —Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
    There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
    There is society where none intrudes
    By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
    I love not man the less, but nature more,”
    —George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)