SOUNDTRACK: MAHANI TEAVE-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #228 (June 24, 2021).
Who knew there was a thriving musical scene on Easter Island? But what I found more interesting in this Tiny Desk (Home) Concert was the ecological work that was done there. When Teave gives a tour of the building, it is inspired–such great use of six years of recycled resources wit ha technique called “Earthship Biotecture”
Tiny Desk (home) concerts have visited many faraway places – from Lang Lang in China to Mdou Moctar in Niger – but none as far-flung as Easter Island. The 63-square-mile isle, called Rapa Nui by its residents, is located some 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile.
And yes, classical music thrives there – thanks largely to Mahani Teave, the pianist who offers this engaging performance from the music school she co-founded. As a child, Teave saw the first piano brought to the island in 1992 and dreamed of becoming a world-class concert pianist. It was a dream she fulfilled, but just as she was poised to launch her international career, an even stronger dream tugged at her heart.
In 2014, she broke ground on the Toki School of Music, aiming to teach traditional and classical music to Easter Island’s children. Constructed from over 2,500 used tires and 60,000 cans and bottles, the building, with its cisterns and solar power, is a testament to Teave’s vision for sustainability.
Teave plays three pieces.
She begins with a sparkling Allemande by Handel,
George Frideric Handel: “Suite No. 5 in E, II. Allemande” is a beautiful piece that really shows off her musical chops.
followed by a beguiling performance of a Chopin Nocturne.
This sounds lovely and serene. It’s amazing to watch her long fingers play these keys so elegantly. This song is much longer than the first piece and goes through several modes of intensity.
Teave closes with an ancestral song, featuring sisters Eva and Tama Tucki Dreyer. The story follows Rapa Nui’s first king, whose reign coincided with a natural disaster. It’s a metaphor, Teave says, for our planet, to “leave this place a little bit better than how we found it.” With her fine playing and her music school, Teave has done exactly that.
The girls sing the oprning of “I hē a Hotumatu’a e hura nei” while Teave plays. After a verse, they move off camera and Teave plays a lengthy instrumental that begins mildly but really shows off some impressive fingerwork by the end. The girls come back in to end the song.
[READ: July 10, 2021] “Featherweight”
This was the first story I’ve read by HolyWhiteMountain. I really enjoyed the intimate look at Native families. And HolyWhiteMountain’s writing style was really engaging. But eventually, the story got bogged down in reveling in sex and it got a little boring.
He says that he had been off the res for about a year when he first met his love. They were both going to school at U. Clarkson and he felt that he had already been acculturated. He was happy with this acculturation because he wanted to know what the rest of America was all about. He lists all of the white women he dated including Barbara who called him her “favorite Indian toy.” He called her Barbie, they had “two- or three- or four-times-in-a-night nights” But they broke up when she said “I always wanted to be Native American.”
But it was tough dating Native American girls because his Granma and aunts always said she could be so-and-so’s daughter. But they also didn’t want any half-breed babies.
A lot of indians belong to the Church of Latter-Day Eugenicists… Brown-skin supremacists. That’s just how they are.
Then he found a woman–Allie–from a “tribe his tribe used to kill,” so it was okay to get her number. Allie was a pretty interesting character. She was smart and academic–writing papers about racism in America and giving presentations about her work.
Her roommate was a French exchange student who no doubt resented them–They were like savages. I really enjoyed the parts about the roommate and how he observed her alien ways.
But Allie liked her privacy. She liked to get high by herself. Since she was always working, she hung out with other men and he grew jealous when they were apart.
I grew a little tired of the story when it got to
I lived for her cunt. I was always saying I wanted to come in her and she was always telling me no.
She didn’t want to get knocked up. She was a scholarly woman and a hard worker.
Then after winter break she was different. She was indifferent. She cared less about her work–she felt like “just another white man’s dog.” She also cared less about what they did in bed. At first he was excited, then it got a little unsettling. As did the story.
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