Drumming, Drumming Everywhere...

In the Cook Islands, drumming plays a big role in society. Today's blog will discuss this using a variety of readily available videos on YouTube.  From a young age children learn how to drum. The video below is of Mark Short, a lawyer and well known Cook Islands drumming teacher showcasing the prowess of his own kids on the drums. Impressive, aren't they?

By the time they get to high school they're smoking good. Here's a group of Araura College students jamming.

 Inter-school and inter-island cultural entertainment competition is fierce and drumming always plays an integral role. Here's Aitutaki's winning drum dance at the Akirata Ou Festival 2014 which was held in West Auckland.

The Taakoka dance group is one of the oldest professional Cook Islands dance groups. Here's a Youtube video of their 'Kia Orana' performance at the Pacific Showcase on the Auckland Waterfront.

Drum Master Jacob Samson's Drums of the Pacific are the drummers for the New Zealand Warriors rugby league team. The boys are showing some of the rugby league guys how to drum, below.

Here is is an older video of Drum Master John Kiria's Anuanua Performing Arts Troupe in 2010.

In Aitutaki drumming features prominently in two key social events. The koni raoni and the oro toroka. The koni raoni literally means "dance around".


Each year two villages are chosen to do the koni raoni; one village does it on the day after Christmas and the other, on Boxing Day.  This is the viillage of Ureia doing the Christmas 2015 Koni Raoni. That is some seriously vibrant drumming.

In future blogs I will be conducting video interviews of our drum masters Ota Tuaeu, Jacob Samson, John Kiria and Jon Jonassen (when he arrives in early March). I will also write about the cultural (before sunrise) blessing ceremony conducted for the drum-making tools and materials.