Announcer: PBS Hawaiʻi Classics is sponsored by the Olson Trust.

Narrator: A choir class at Brigham Young University is a living example of creative cooperation in the service of song.

Visiting performers from the Cook Islands give Spectrum Hawaiʻi a glimpse of their cultural role in education and ritual.

But first, a look at the soldier musician, as played by the renowned Fleet Marine for Pacific Band.

(marching band playing) Lt.

Col.

E.R.

Stepien: Music is an important stimulus to esprit de corps to morale, particularly in combat, and and that's the the primary mission of this band.

And sometimes I think that's forgotten when one hears a a field music unit.

All all that that seems to that conjure up is music.

These Marines out there that you've seen are Marines first, riflemen.

Their basic mission is to to fight.

They're graduates of recruit training, and then they go to field music school where they perfect their skills as musicians.

And in general, the primary mission of any field music unit is to provide music for military ceremonies.

And then of course we have a very important segment of the next of that mission is the community relations aspect, as well as military personnel procurement recruiting, and we take that responsibility very.

It's a very important responsibility, particularly when it comes to community relations.

The military commands are a part of any community where it is located.

We take the responsibility of of being good neighbors very seriously, and in essence, the band is our hand, as an extension of the military into the community for goodwill, for understanding, and for us to contribute to the to community well-being.

(jazz band playing) Capt.

Melvin M. Tillar: We’re required by headquarters Marine Corps, to maintain a concert band, a marching band, a combo, and a dance band.

So, we perform in all of these different idioms, and while we're performing throughout a week or a month or so, we perform country and western rock, jazz, marches, Bach, Beethoven, Glenn Miller, Count Basie- you name it, we play it.

No matter what they do to me, they can’t take away my dignity.

We have people who who go all over the country looking for qualified musicians.

Now we want people who are good musicians, who are talented musicians, and also people who show the ability to become good Marines.

They must be disciplined.

They must have good moral standards and good character.

They have to be able to go through the kind of rigors that we have to go through as Marines, and they have to have the desire to be Marines-not just a musician, not just to sit down and play, but to wear the uniform and to become United States Marines.

(jazz band playing) (singing) Think about it.

There must be a higher love down in the heart or hidden in the stars above.

Without it life is wasted time.

Look inside your heart, I’ll look inside mine.

Kenneth Peavie: Coming into the Marine Corps music program gives you a chance to develop any talents that you have.

I had a little bit of singing ability when I came into Marine Corps, and when upon arriving at Paris Island, I was given the opportunity, encouraged to sing and to dance and do a lot of other things.

And that really gave me a lot of self-confidence in myself and getting up in front of people and entertaining.

Compared to the outside musician, you get a lot more things to do here because you require to do field music, which is marching, retirements, and parades.

You also have a show band, which we do singing and dancing and skits, and a concert band, which we play all the classicals.

And it really develops a person's versatility, and it's a lot of fun.

You can grow.

(singing) Higher love.

Bring me a higher love.

Whoa, whoa.

Bring me.

Bring me a higher love.

Bring me a higher love.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Bring me.

Bring me a higher love.

High, high, higher love.

Bring me a higher love.

Whoa, whoa.

Bring me.

Bring me a higher love.

I could rise above.

Bring me a higher love.

Lt.

Col.

E.R.

Stepien: The band being riflemen first need to and are required to, on a yearly basis, to undergo certain retraining qualification in order to maintain their proficiency in their infantry skills.

They’re required to go to the rifle range every year, as all Marines are required to do.

And the results of the rifle range this year are indicative of how important and how much importance we put on our infantry skills.

Every one of those Marines out there qualified with that rifle.

90-percent of them expert.

That's not easy to do, and they did it, which shows you that their, they have their focus also correct in that they are infantry.

They have a military mission, but they also have that military music mission, which they perform, I think, incredibly well.

(jazz band playing) Phillip D. Covington: One thing that’s really unique about our musicians is we have the only MOS in the Marine Corps where you have to be qualified before you come in.

I myself I give a lot of those auditions now.

Out of about every 100 that we audition, we take about two, maybe three.

That's about how many that qualify.

Your best high school musicians have a slight chance of making it into our field.

The biggest thing that stops most of them is that they’re sight reading.

When we sight read music, it's just they we put a piece of music in front of you, and we need it played well quickly.

A lot of high school kids don't focus on that area.

They that's where mostly they're lacking.

Once they pass an audition with us before they come into Marine Corps, we give them a basic contract to they’re eligible to go to the School of Music.

That that way they are a they are qualified just for that, just for the School of Music.

Now we will not call them a Marine musician until they're able to pass that.

Until once they pass that six-month course at the School of Music.

Then we will bring them to a field band, and we'll take care of them.

Then they function as a marine musician.

(jazz band playing) James A.J.

Wallace: A lot of people in the services have the attitude that the Marine Band, all they do is we play all day.

And they don't consider all of the logistics that go into how we get to do this job, how we get from point A to point B. What is involved in getting all the equipment there, and all this this sort of thing.

They don't they don't understand it.

They don't understand the training aspect, the fact that we do training just as they do.

They don't understand that when combat comes, when the balloon goes up, and the general says, I want my band in the combat area, we go.

(instrumental music) (rapping) She starts swinging With the boys in tune And her feet just fly up in the air Singing, hey diddle, diddle with a kitty in the middle And they swinging like it just don’t care So I took a big chance At the high school dance With a lady who was ready to play It wasn't me she was fooling ‘Cause she knew what was she was doing When she told me how to walk this way She told me to Teresa L. OʻDonnell: I enlisted rather young, and so far, it has been a very good base for any future I have.

The discipline, the the bearing that I now have, the ability to perform has increased.

The flexibility, the everything.

There's been times when it get it gets so stressful, so a lot of hard work, but it always comes out good in the in the long run.

Work always pays off.

Long rehearsals.

There's always a good performance at the end of long rehearsals.

It's a good thing to look forward to.

(band playing) Harry J.Evans: My name is Sergeant Harry Evans.

Prior to coming in the Marine Corps, I was playing trumpet out out in the civilian world.

I I wanted I wanted to be part of something that was whose standards were high and something that was considered elite.

And I'd had some family in Marine Corps, and I knew their standards were high, so I decided, you know, I go ahead and give it a shot, see how it works, and done a lot of traveling since I've been here.

I’ve been in three Marine bands, Okinawa and San Diego, and here, and I've liked it.

That's why I’ve stuck around.

I'm planning on staying in.

I have some goals that I've set for myself.

I would like to become a band officer.

Capt.

Melvin M. Tillar: We we have an attitude.

Yes.

Quite quite frankly, we want to be the best at whatever we do.

Okay.

This organization takes a takes a takes a great deal of talent to be to be a part of.

And we don't want to be, we don't want to be second best.

We don't want to be third best.

When we play, when we play a song, we want people who listen to us play.

We want them to know that they are hearing that song played as well as it can be possible possibly played by anyone.

When we're out here on the rifle range, and when we’re shooting, we want to be as good as anybody can be.

We don't want people to say, Oh, well, there's a bandsman, so he doesn't have to shoot quite as well as as an infantryman.

(marching band playing) Every time we do something, whatever we're doing, we want to do it as well as we can possibly do it, and then tomorrow we want to do it better.

That's the attitude.

Narrator: When I hear music, I fear no danger.

I am invulnerable.

I see no foe.

I am related to the earliest times and to the latest.

Thus wrote Henry David Thoreau in his journal.

(choir singing) Music might give us a smooth harmonic lift when our spirits have fallen into a deep plunge of melancholy.

(choir singing) Music might apply an old language to a new form.

(singing in Hawaiian) Or give a pleasing arrangement.

To an old standard.

(singing) Noticing the days hurrying by When you’re in love, my how they fly Blue days, all of them gone Nothing but blue skies from now on.

The opportunities abound.

Our musical heritage is rich.

One might even say too rich.

To whom do we entrust it?

Who will keep it safely and pass it on with skill?

It was once said, “All that stands between us and darkness is a thin line of teachers.” (natural sound) Dr.

James Smith is a teacher at Brigham Young University.

There, he coordinates choral and vocal music.

He’s also the director of choirs.

James Smith: Choral singing to me is a it's a wonderful social activity.

It's it's it’s something that gives kids a chance to work together, and the there's a very emotional quality to it because there are words involved, and the the body is involved.

The vital breath, the life, the heartbeat, everything is is involved in creating something together.

Narrator: With all of those elements involved, it's obvious that a choir class is no ordinary schoolroom session.

(choir singing) James Smith: They also feel that that they're a family.

They like each other.

They like to be together.

In this class, we have students from Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Philippines, Japan, China, New Zealand, the mainland, Hawaiʻi, and they have a wonderful time.

They get to know each other, and it's a very cultural, enriching opportunity for them.

(choir singing) Narrator: The choir teacher hands to his students the keys to the kingdom of music.

James Smith: Other countries do not have this type of experience in their schools.

Sometimes they might get it in church.

Unfortunately, Hawaiʻi is is struggling with the choral tradition in the public schools.

Public schools now there are not many who have choirs as a class.

The private schools do.

Narrator: The marching band now seems to enjoy the prominence once known to choirs.

James Smith: And athletics and bands go together better than choirs and football teams.

Narrator: Semester has just begun for this choir class.

By its end, they will have possessed a portion of a very long tradition, one which can be sung for the rest of their lives.

James Smith: The marching bands, many kids put away the horn, never play again.

Narrator: Dr.

Smith, as president of the American Choral Directors Association in Hawaiʻi, publishes a newsletter to help others learn that there is still a wealth of choral music in this state at every level.

There are choirs singing their songs somewhere, and it has been observed that, in an artistic sense, song is truer than mere speech.

(natural sound at zoo) Narrator: In the Cook Islands paradise finds expression both in the South Sea beauty of the land and in the small-town intimacy of its people.

Located roughly 3,000 miles south of Hawaiʻi and nestled between Tahiti and Samoa, the main island of Rarotonga is the capital of the 15-island group discovered by Captain Cook in 1773.

As in many parts of the Pacific, the performing arts play a significant role in the lives of Cook Islanders in ritual, in education, in society, and in leisure.

Recently, a 40-membered group from the village of Tupapa Maraerenga on Rarotonga visited Hawaiʻi as guests of the East-West Center of the University of Hawaiʻi and Kumu Hula Frank Kawai Hewett.

Frank Hewett: This troop here is a Tupapa Maraerenga culture group, and they come from the village of Tupapa Maraerenga in the Cook Islands, Rarotonga.

And we are hosting them here in Hawaiʻi at this time.

In a sense, we are returning something that they did for us two years ago.

We went to the Cook Islands, and this is the people that took care of us in the Cook Islands.

They fed us and they housed us and they transported us to all the performances that we had to go to, so we're very fortunate to have known these people here, and the group's leader is Tere Rima, a very fine, cordial, and loving person.

Tere Rima: We are people that still restore our heritage of even our culture in our country.

And by doing this, so it's something that we transist this into a formality of performing arts, such as dancing, chants, action song, traditional hymn, which most of our people using this type of entertainment, not only for entertainment, but using in the church as a whole.

(singing) Most of my people comes from one island.

So far, it's about 24 from the main island Rarotonga and others born on outside of the tara like Mauke, Atiu, Aitutaki, and all these islands.

But when they come to Raro, they join the club as a culture group performing arts and this is how we get to remember it.

(drumming) Frank Hewett: It's one thing to go down to a Waikīkī show, and see people dancing and try to, in a sense, not really imitate, but in a sense imitate other cultures.

But here, you have the actual people from the Cook Islands coming here and doing what they do naturally, and not something that they need to rehearse for.

Dancing is a part of their everyday life, and the drumming and the music.

You have to realize that in Hawaiʻi we have all these modern things here.

And if we didn’t, what would we be doing?

Well, I guess we'd be doing the same thing as the Cook Islanders: is writing songs and singing and dancing all day.

That's their enjoyment, their pastime to me.

Tere Rima: The Cook Islands is different from the Tahitian, but I never have to say that Tahitian is the right one.

But because Tahitian and Samoan are the same race as Polynesian, but the way of presentation of the arts is different from each of the islands.

Tahiti, Cook Islands, and Samoa.

The way the presentation is different, but the way the Cook Island with their own presentation is different from the Tahitian.

But mind you, there are we are still one friend as for our mission.

(drumming) (Cook Islands song)