“Te Kuki Airani Nui Maruarua” is a piece recorded by singers from the Cook Islands National Arts Theater. This piece is a Polynesian homogeneous choral song or chant from the Cook Islands, in the joyous old style called ute. This piece has many different voices singing the essential melody line and also both male and female singers with varying ranges creating harmonies. “Te Kuki Airani Nui Maruarua” has a melody line that is fairly simple to follow along.
The melody of this piece is sung by many voices in different ranges. The melody line moves in a fairly closed step-wise motion. The range of the actual melody line is fairly narrow. However, some parts of the harmony makes “Te Kuki Airani Nui Maruarua” have a very wide range in the melody. The melody shows a lot of conjunct motion. If audiences have some background in musical phrasing, they will be able to see that every two measures, the singers make the phrases. This can be identified and found out by tapping out the down beat of this piece, and then counting to see how many measures the singers sing for.
The piece has a call and response form of singing style. There is a small group or the song leaders that start to sing and then the ensemble sings back to the lead singers. This pattern is kept throughout the piece and it gives audiences a change to hear the melody line repeated many times and, in turn, help them recognize the melody line and follow along. The level of the melody line is easy for this reason.
There are about three to four different instruments that are used: male voices, female voices, and clapping or stomping. The voices of both females and males are obviously divided in many different layers depending on their ranges. Individual voices do not overpower the group unless they are adding a different technique for the purpose of decorating the piece. Throughout the piece, audiences can hear a female voice that is heard through the group, but she still does not overpower the group. She actually balances out “Te Kuki Airani Nui Maruarua” and is essentially just adding a flavor to the piece. The singers clap and stomp throughout the piece. The bodies of the singers become the instrument part for this piece which is called corpophones. The use of corpophones allows singers to fill the song and keep its tempo.
This piece is played in the duple meter system with no changes. “Te Kuki Airani Nui Maruarua” is performed in a 4/4 meter which means for each measure a quarter note will get a beat. Audiences will realize that they sing the same melody over and over again and that the rhythmic pattern does not change during the performance. The tempo of “Te Kuki Airani Nui Maruarua” is about 122 per-beat which is a fairly fast tempo. The majority of the voice parts sing on the down beat, but if audiences carefully listen to the piece, they will hear a small group of singers sing in syncopated rhythm which creates a richer and more colorful piece.
The primary harmony used in “Te Kuki Airani Nui Maruarua” is called homophony which means that singers sing a melody in unison. However, audiences will notice that there is more than one harmony. Though the singers are just singing one melody, there are groups singing different parts in this piece. There is a female group or solo singer who adds the ornaments during this piece (0:11 and 0:16). “Te Kuki Airani Nui Maruarua” almost sounds like an imitative polyphony piece because of the repetition of the basic melody and the rhythmic patterns.
The dynamic of “Te Kuki Airani Nui Maruarua”is fairly constant throughout the piece. The volume is almost fortissimo from the beginning. The dynamic gets louder and is especially loud when all of the parts are in and also when the a female solo or group enters. When the singers start to clap and stomp, the dynamic of this piece gets much louder and towards the ending they slowly fade away.
Charlie's World Music Pedagogy 