A Spectacle of Historical Persistences
A REVIEW: BUTAKOCI (STOLEN) — A Musical Theatre Production on Human Trafficking in Fiji — THE LONG READ
DISCLOSURE OF INTEREST STATETEMENT: This is an Independent Review. I am not associated with any organisation, institution, company, artists or employees directly associated with the production. There is also no financial gain. This Review is not a Commissioned piece of writing.
“To be an artist is to believe in life.” — Henry Moore
Butakoci (Stolen) is the most recent instalment in a sporadic but growing series of art productions on social causes in Fiji. It is a deeply moving study of historical persistences related to human trafficking in Fiji — an artistic study that could mark the beginning of a cultural upending necessary for national healing and transformation. For a nation that prides itself on its commitment to the pulpit and megadecibel-speakers-aided public calls for sulphur and miracles, addressing the national scourge of gender+ violence and human trafficking is the needed miracle, and Butakoci, the production, offers a way.
Curated and produced by iconic Fijian singer-composer, Talei Draunibaka, and boasting an impressive ensemble of local artists, Butakoci has surges of brilliance. Among other things worth celebrating, it marks the arrival of Draunibaka as a formidable force in performance curation and production; and arguably unparalleled in lighting design.
Clocking under 45 minutes, Butakoci is artistically intelligent. Draunibaka’s curatorial knife plunges through 150 years of Fiji history to extract rich ores in Indian Indenture and Melanesian Blackbirder histories. Given the assignment to draw attention to human trafficking in Fiji; which is pervasive to the point of being entrenched and normalised, yet little-acknowledged and dismally under-reported, Draunibaka employs the technique of using vignettes as a collage to propel the national awareness campaign. Even with the prefacing cushion of a trigger warning compassionately presented by host Michelle Tevita-Singh, the performance is flecked with moments that derail the hardiest viewers. It is a bitter serving of Fiji history and a wake-up call for action by government and people.
Lean on time and muscled with the weight of history of Indian Indenture and blackbirded Melanesian slave labour vignettes, it is a punch to the gut that leaves the unprepared stunned. Its third vignette, a contemporary indigenous Fijian iTaukei story, offers a skeletal frame to string a latticework of micro-stories or depictions of human trafficking across time.
The performance runs on non-linear storytelling through a weaving of flashbacks supported by comprehensive narrations and voice-overs. While the lengthy narrations would be distracting in other performances, in this context, it is necessary for Fiji viewers who need the complex background knowledge of history to fully appreciate the theatrical production — a necessity given this is a cause-related artistic endeavour, linked to human trafficking with the goal of inspiring action in communities. Had it not been for this clearly stated goal, the longer narrations would have been distracting as they lean on the side of ‘telling’ instead of ‘showing’.
Butakoci features performance blocks comprising Indian Indenture (from British-colonised India to Fiji, 1879–1916; globally 1838–1916); blackbirded Pacific Islanders (from an unnamed Melanesian archipelago, 1860s-1911); and the contemporary iTaukei (indigenous Fijian, current-day). Draunibaka curated and produced the vignettes with Oceania Dance Theatre, Shobna Chanel Dance Group, and Mata Dance Fiji.
Indian Indentured Labour as Human Trafficking — The British Legacy in Fiji
The Indian Indenture story traces a young Makhani (Patricia Niumataiwalu), a young Indian woman abducted at a railway station, sold to labour recruiters, ending up in a sugarcane plantation in Fiji. The sequence is performed by the Shobna Chanel Dance Group. It is to the group’s founder and choreographer Shobna Chanel’s credit that the group’s signature classical kathak and modern fusion is stylistically muted to generic hints of motherland India in order to spotlight character and story. A necessity given the tight challenge of condensing 145 years of Indian indenture history in Fiji into a performance sketch of 12 minutes.
This is critical to Draunibaka’s curatorial emphasis in the performance introduction and in subsequent media interviews that Butakoci’s goal is to elicit emotion. Chanel’s choreographic approach captures the dark human trafficking elements of Indian Indenture histories. The sliding scenes from a railway station in India to a sugar plantation in Fiji draw us into the terror of abduction and its aftermath.
The routine that may remain etched in viewer memory is Makhani’s repeated dream of her distraught mother searching for her back in India. Makhani has disappeared. Her mother’s call filters through ocean and time as a call for the more than 1.6 million Indians who were shipped out of India to colonial outposts across continents from 1838 to 1916; a mere five years after the abolition of slavery in 1833. This was the new form of slavery to provide labour for the British Empire.
Makhani awakens from fitful sleep to the reality of desolation in a remote Fiji plantation — as for most Indians of indenture, it is probably her children and grandchildren who will sever umbilical ties with the motherland, but they will assume losses of a different kind, including, generational unbelonging and belonging.
In costume design, the black shifts with overlays hinting at the Greek peplos and chiton; and at Roman togas, morph into Indian langha (lengha) and blouses. With the odhni (veils), these visually draw Niumataiwalu’s Makhani into the shifting smoky black, blue, and deep-straw tinted atmosphere to accentuate the dread, isolation, and terror of sale, fraud, transportation to a foreign land, and hard labour in Fiji’s sugar fields. This costuming decision presents visual rewards impacting viewer emotions as attention is drawn to the faces of performers, particularly Makhani’s.
Even make-up is stripped to focus on deep eyelining work to accentuate eyes to underscore heightened facial emotions. There is nothing pretty in abduction. There is nothing beautiful in sexual violence. There is nothing elegant in coercion. Chanel’s attention to make-up and costume give us the grit of indenture — a true ode to the Jahaji Bhais and Jahaji Bahens — the men and women who often forged thicker-than-blood relationships on ships. Those whose feet left the docks of Calcutta (Kolkata) and Madras (Chennai) and other ports in India to cross the Kala Pani.
This sequence is made powerful by the lyrics and composition of the song, ‘Mera Sooraj Kahaan Kho Gaya’ (trans. ‘Where Has [My] The Sun Gone’). According to the Butakoci playbill, this is written by Draunibaka and Viveka Nand with vocals led by Dr. Baralika and Shennan Sidal (the latter is absent from the Playbill). For those who understand Hindustani, the song can speak and fill the hollows of the unspeakable in our collective history as Girmitya descendants in Fiji. Its English translation is in the Butakoci playbill.
Chanel’s thoughtful inclusion of the Indian sooph (soop) or dala, the winnowing basket of woven stripped bamboo or reed skin, gives authenticity to this sequence. It also lends it a sentimental edge as the soop was a feature of most Indo-Fijian homes and farms over the last 145 years. It is still used in some rural and remote farming communities where thinning agricultural collectives of Indo-Fijians reside. In the performance, a related visual frame of abandoned soops as the women abandon grain winnowing (for nightly dinner preparation, or going to, and returning from the fields) is a powerful metaphor for women’s vulnerability and their excruciating burden of physical work.
There is a marked absence of Indian indentured men in this sequence but given the production’s approach to focus on eliciting emotion to creating conversation on Human Trafficking, the obvious choice is to centre the experience of Indian women in indenture, to focus on the gender aspect of indenture. Butakoci lends a delicate hand-brush to the excavating of Indian women’s histories which reside in the deeper sediments of the overall ‘archaeological’ site of indenture. It emerges as a 12-minute sequence that performatively describes women in indenture in Fiji. This has not not been captured in the genre of musical theatre previously — thus lending it added significance.
Chanel and Draunibaka’s collaboration moves several rungs upward through inclusion of scenes in India. The railway tracks, the train station, and the resting train in the backdrop become a metaphor for the brute presence and force of the British Empire. The cold iron and steel are cold glints in the eye of an Empire spreading its paths and vehicles of relentless savagery upon thieved landscapes. It is a beast, its lacerating reach, extensive. Even its down-soft cache of benevolence rests upon bloodied talons. Against this backdrop, Makhani’s disoriented calls for her sister are the weakening sounds of downed prey.
There is powerful use of lighting in the production, evidence of Draunibaka’s appreciation for its often unharnessed potential, and more importantly, of her openness to risk-taking. There is minimal use of ‘daylight’ in this sequence. With routines drenched in night, or in the crepuscular light of twilight and predawn; some with the wide-stretched canvas of open sky and silent stars, Draunibaka’s lighting direction presents portraits of humans in nature, of women and nature, and of women in the fist of the British Empire.
One sees in the plantation backdrops (projected images), man’s destruction of the wilderness in Fiji, the ‘taming’ of the land, the orderliness of swathes of sugarcane, the upturned soil, sizeable glimpses of the sprawling monochromatic green of cane — pointing to the clinical ‘orderliness’ of the British Empire — rendered in the serif type fonts of early printing presses in London and in the administrative capitals scattered in the Empire, and in the elegant, bewitching, cursive handwriting in ledgers and journals. Makhani’s life in the plantation is representative of the larger indentured labour project.
Abuse is an offence, but in all its colonial manifestations, is neatly recorded and presented in heavy documentation: on clean white pages which yellow with time; with stamps of imperial approval; then bound and shipped to foreign archives and libraries during, and at ‘return’ of power; often one, or several centuries later. This clinical orderliness is today duplicated in the digital world where nuances and contexts of the human condition critical to understanding root cause and their transfer to meaningful solutions-design, are reduced, sanitised and presented as data, and their visualisation that deliver predominantly one-size-fits-all answers ignore or conceal the facts of irrelevancy and failure that occur in significantly many projects in the development industry.
This is critical to appreciating Draunibaka’s light direction and choice of plantation sequence photographs which create the backdrops in this phase.
Draunibaka’s use of light and projected photography as zooming tools to reduce humans into insignificant motes on stage is stunning.
It places the individual, the one human being, in this case, Makhani; and by proxy, the viewer; under the tremendous orb of history, which is simultaneously freedom and annihilation— a metaphor for the indentured labourer, the slave, the commoner, the woman, the indigenous, the girl, the aged, the infirm, the refugee, the poor, the unremarkable, the ordinary — that single statistical entry entered into official records as the datum, 1, which increases or decreases a sum total on the fact of birth or death. Even when named, they remain a nameless 1. The dispensable 1.
Us.
Chanel’s choreography places Makhani and her troupe under Draunibaka’s tremendous sky underscoring their powerlessness, their restlessness, their agonising vigilance in the rolling of days and nights. The emotions wrought from this routine almost make the emotions of human trafficking tangible. In the live performance, one is drawn upon a visual current to connect with the women as the darkening sky looms, now as if an ocean, with the women on a sea-floor.
They move in unison. They move in a single wave. They move in the manner of resting, suspended, slow-moving sardine shoals in deep ocean, alert to the slightest trigger of a predator. They move this way for the same reasons — for safety, for protection of their most vulnerable, for rotational positioning at the centre and edges to permit rest. For the allaying of harm and possible death — our primeval instinct for flight — our petition, when in darkness, to make it to first light.
Chanel demonstrates the creative dexterity that has made her Fiji’s leading exponent of kathak and fusion, a recognition leading to her dance group being an art product generously utilised by the Fijian Government in cultural diplomacy globally.
The fact that British colonial policy on Indian Indentured Labour favoured higher numbers of men to maximise physical labour requirements led to limited women. This led to jealousies, violence, and attendant social problems — one aspect of plantation violence. It also led to women being susceptible to physical and sexual violence. Of the high percentage of women who faced vulnerabilities on the long sea voyages and on plantations, very few rose to challenge their condition; and those who did, often received harsh penalties, some paying the ultimate price with their lives.
Indo-Fijian oral histories register cases of polyandry during and after indenture as those who chose to remain in Fiji took up CSR leases or moved to lease native lands. It is also worth noting that Indians at the close of the 19th century and early 20th century paid higher lease rates than Europeans although sugar was recognised as the mainstay of the colonial Fijian economy. While polyandry may be frowned upon, and possibly denied in formal spaces, there were two forms: women simultaneously having a string of de facto relationships in loops; or the dictionary polyandry — one woman with several husbands in one setting. Polygamy was also common. Such cases may be shocking to the current generation, just as would, the practice of post-indenture altering of names in order to elevate oneself or one’s family to a higher caste. These are survival mechanisms, a means to transform oneself through new identities — pursuits to improve one’s socio-cultural standing, particularly in a time of flux.
British colonial policies directly impacted the physical and mental health of Indian indentured labourers and their immediate descendants as they navigated challenges relating to caste, food and space taboos, religious practices, sex, marriage, pregnancy, birthing, nutrition, health, economic security, livelihood, the formation of family, and continuing bloodlines and legacies in a new land.
Its recognition as human trafficking gives Indian Indentured Labour and its legacies a new lens. Hopefully, this leads to new possibilities for research; a reframing under the framework of global human trafficking; and potentially, fresh ways of interrogating the costs; and meaningful ways for the descendants of indentured labourers to define and contextualise intergenerational trauma. The greater gift is the possibility of identifying new pathways to healing and growth, including in diaspora communities.
Butakoci offers a slight adjustment to the imbalance in understanding ethnic differences in Fiji. It performs and enacts the fact that even when Indians left India for the British colonial outposts in South Africa, British Guiana, Trinidad, Fiji and other destinations, there was a stark difference between the realities and promises narrated by the British and what indentured labourers found upon arrival.
Even though many came freely, they did so under false, limited, or inaccurate information, or a combination of these. Under this scenario, the definitions of force, fraud, trickery, and coercion are realised. This revises the narrative to offer a broader, genuine, and more layered understanding that can alter the national conversation in Fiji. The ways in which information is created, used, distributed and manipulated have not altered.
Of special interest should be how post-indenture Indians and Fijians suffered similar issues, yet remained vigorously separated through policies that limited any integration, let alone social interaction. Of equal, if not more urgent interest, ought to be the forms and degrees of human trafficking prevalent in Indo-Fijian communities in Fiji and in the diaspora in current times.
Draunibaka and Chanel’s synergy in this sequence deserves applause. As does Niumataiwalu’s performance, and Phil Dakei’s sound design which will be covered further on.
Human Trafficking in the Indigenous iTaukei Fijian Setting — Our Suppressed Histories
The iTaukei Fijian thread is set in a current-day flat in an urban centre, presumably the capital, Suva. Milly (Ciara Lee) is a maritime student living with an uncle who appears single and upwardly mobile. Facing sexual abuse by him, this takes on a darker tone when he becomes her procurer, soliciting clients and facilitating sex trafficking, a situation Milly faces alone. This performance sequence is led by the Oceania Dance Theatre based at the Oceania Centre at the University of the South Pacific.
This is the first appearance of the legacy of visionary anthropologist, scholar, and writer, Professor Epeli Hau’ofa whose seminal essay ‘Our Sea of Islands’ and vision for an Oceania-specific artistic ‘voice’ and philosophy led to the establishment of the Oceania Centre at USP. Choreographer, Glenville Christopher Lord studied and danced under the late Seiuli Tuilagi Allan Alo, the Centre’s founding Director of Dance and Choreographer who worked and mentored a new generation of dancers under Hau’ofa’s eye. The second appearance of the Hau’ofa legacy is through Founding Director and Choreographer of MATA Dance Fiji, Tevita Tobeyaweni. He studied and worked under Sachiko Soro, (Director of VOU) who was mentored by the late Seiuli Tuilagi Allan Alo and Professor Hau’ofa. These are evidence of Hau’ofa’s enduring legacy in Oceania. To witness this extend to Eugene Dakunivosa, Ciara Lee, and other young artists who have been mentored by Sachiko Soro, Glenville Christopher Lord, and Tevita Tobeyaweni is heartwarming. The legacy grows.
Performing Glenville Lord’s choreography, Lee’s emotive routines; the hectoring group sequence of ‘bullies’ depicting and carrying negative societal perspectives, and the solo moments underscoring the isolation of suffering are noteworthy for how she connects with the audience. The hectoring sequence is powerful as the negative energy of the circling group accentuate Milly’s (Lee’s) vulnerability, something audiences will connect to either as victims, enablers, or even, as direct bullies.
This bridge is maintained in the national television screening of Butakoci now accessible via YouTube. Had there been more cameras and one positioned overhead to capture an aerial perspective, this sequence would have been akin to vultures or jackals circling an injured or maimed prey, a powerful element for the national screening and for posterity. The same viewpoint is similar to a gathering storm or cyclone as a clockwise rotating circle of winds spin tighter, lowering air pressure systems to brew the cyclones Fiji periodically encounters. And as in all cyclones, destruction ensues. There is however, one component sequence more powerful than this.
A pas de deux (duet) performed by Lee and an unnamed female dancer (absent in the playbill) is the highlight of this phase. Under a single spotlight, Lee’s sleeveless flowing red dress and the accompanying female dancer’s flowing black long-sleeved dress costumes are presented dually as opposites and unified as one in a single figure. The flows and turns blend into an undulating rope of separates and equals — visually depicting Milly’s (Lee’s) psychological unravelling rendering her in two, reminiscent of victims of abuse separating, splitting, or detaching from themselves as a survival or coping mechanism. Then, in turn, returning to flow alongside and lend support in a back-and-forth movement evocative of the chain of highs and lows, or episodes, suffered by victims of abuse in forms such as depression and other psychological disorders. (Unfortunately, this cannot be fully experienced in the photograph series and in the video).
This piece visually heightens Milly’s tragedy. It is mesmerising and powerful because of the unobtrusive support powerfully embodied by the unnamed female dancer clad in black. This is Glenville Lord’s apex moment in Butakoci.
The routine is a fitting prelude to the exhilarating conclusion which features a strong Milly who overcomes victimhood by leading a call to action against human trafficking in Fiji.
Lee’s Milly is representative of the thousands of girls and boys originally from Fiji’s outer and remote islands and highland regions of the mainland Viti Levu, who over decades, annually move to relatives in Fiji’s urban centres for education or work opportunities. A significant number of girls and young women face physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. This often transitions into sex trafficking; for food, money, other material items such as clothes, shoes, and perfumes; with current trends including drugs ranging from marijuana to methamphetamine, alcohol and cigarettes, to phone credit and internet data transfers.
The sequence, bridged with the conclusion, features a strong soundtrack featuring original songs composed and sung by Talei Draunibaka. These include ‘My Story Untold’ and the headline song ‘I Am Free’ which hit Fijian radio waves on 30 July 2024, on World Day Against Trafficking In Persons. Draunibaka’s voice acquires fresh power when projecting her own lyrics, extracted from the depth of her spaces of inspiration, fueled by the shock and pain of her research into human trafficking in Fiji. It also features another original song penned and composed by Draunibaka with vocals by Fijian popular artist, Savuto Vakadewavosa, ‘Money Is All I Need’, against which the hectoring of Lee is rendered.
These songs, if given sufficient and strategic air time targeting maximum audiences, and complemented by regular briefs on their backstories by DJs, can rise to popularity rapidly, and maintain leading positions for some time. They can assume deeper meaning in the population and keep the social messaging of human trafficking alive in communities. The choice of Communications Fiji Limited as radio partner is appropriate given its young audience, but air time and targeted storytelling and messaging going beyond a global observance will be critical to absorption and action. While there are other digital platforms for sharing music, it is more effective when shared by radio stations and hosts identified and followed by key audience segments.
Glenville Lord’s choreography and Ciara Lee’s performance against Draunibaka and Vakadewavosa’s vocals are outstanding. Coupled with Draunibaka’s overall curation and direction, Lord and Lee’s talents merge to deliver the overall call to action at the heart of Butakoci. The final sequence featuring Makhani (Niumataiwalu) and Apolonia (Dakunivosa) with Milly (Lee) connect the past to the present and underscore the human trafficking messages relevant to Fijian audiences. Any Fijian with little to no knowledge about human trafficking in Fiji, has received a context-specific ‘SparkNotes’ summary; and a compact and rapid immersion on the subject. In this regard, the iTaukei sequence is a success, albeit resting on the power of the last phase.
There is a note in the margin for this sequence. The choice to situate the iTaukei performance sequence in the contemporary era may have been to avoid replicating the historical content of the Indo-Fijian and Melanesian sequences. It may have been to anchor the production in the current day to make visible the message that human trafficking is both a historical and contemporary phenomenon. It is a reasonable approach.
However, it inadvertently led to the bypassing of the repertoire of suppressed and ‘forgotten’ histories available in the iTaukei world. These include the sale, exile, and/or dispossession, of the peoples of Lovoni, Magodro, Suva, Ba, Macuata; the imprisonment and public execution of iTaukei men who opposed the British Empire; and others whom history has suppressed through acts of omission and erasure in national memory-making. These acts of omission and erasure may in some cases, not be through deliberate, overt means; but by means of administrative and scholarly production of privileged histories. These accounts carry heavy elements of abuse and human trafficking that drop their roots through time to reach the present day.
Interestingly, the Butakoci playbill refers to conversation with a Lovoni community in Suva. Hopefully, the Lovoni, and other accounts can be given artistic attention in future. The 1871 leasing (‘sale’) of the Lovoni priest and two warriors to the American P.T. Barnum Circus as objects of curiosity, and never returning (the priest tragically dying in a circus tent), is a haunting case study of pre-colonial iTaukei history. While the Lovoni were sold as slaves for European plantation labour to raise money for the establishment of Cakobau’s first government, the priest and two warriors were leased (rented) out to the P.T. Barnum Circus for three years. It remains ironic, of course, that British colonists released the Lovoni tribes scattered across Fiji in European plantations beginning 1875 (after Cession in 1874). The Lovoni did not receive most of their confiscated lands until the 1990s but as in every case of historical dispossession, that which is stolen can never be returned whole.
While the exploration of these histories may be culturally challenging, their artistic treatment can lead to new avenues of compassion and healing. This is urgently needed for the strengthening of iTaukei communities that need to tap into deep psychological reservoirs necessary to confront human trafficking and other prevailing social ills. In this regard, the overall artistic choice of an iTaukei case study situated in the contemporary era missed the opportunity to excavate and bring attention to any one of the key historical abuses from iTaukei history — many of which continue to have visible manifestations today. These meet the contemporaneity requirement, and the definition of human trafficking, just as British-Empire-led indentured labour and European-and-Australian-led blackbirding do.
This would have been a powerful educational tool for all ethnic groups in Fiji, especially non-iTaukei who are unaware of the sufferings of iTaukei, both before and after Cession; and particularly, at the time they were brought into Fiji. It would also have been a powerful tool to connect all races in Fiji — because knowledge of shared abuse and shared trauma forges powerful bonds between people and communities. It also allows for joint healing which can have a profound impact on social and economic growth — much as economists may raise a brow.
Returning to the Oceania Dance Theatre, it would have been interesting to see Glenville Lord, Ciara Lee, and the Oceania Dance Theatre take on the challenge of a stronger storyline; which may be possible in future. It is an exciting prospect because there is every indication that they will light up the stage on stars with an even brighter luminescence.
At this juncture, it is worth remembering that while Fiji’s performance artists deliver a massive load of work for corporate events, private engagements, and tourism-related activities which are an important source of financial sustainability, these do not necessarily feed the creative or artistic freedom spirit. Their real calling, the work they are born to do, that which keeps their soul hungry year upon year, is the possibility of conceptual work, even if they are not conscious of it. These are only to be found in projects that demand scales of artistic thought, research, working with communities, experts from other non-artistic fields, and teams from other arts genres.
These are projects that challenge what performance artists do with their music, voice, costuming, sound and light design, and ultimately, what an actor or dancer does with their body. Such opportunities are rare in Fiji. From an arts perspective, this is why Butakoci is a gift for those involved, and for audiences in Fiji.
This is explored further in the analysis of Draunibaka’s approach and treatment of the Melanesian Blackbirding sequence in Butakoci.
Blackbirding, ‘Billy’, and the frame of ‘Polynesian’ — the Human Trafficking Story in Melanesia
The jewel in the crown in Butakoci (Stolen) is its Melanesian Blackbirding sequence. Draunibaka’s treatment of the case study is surprisingly tender. While her curatorial hand is evident in all vignettes, there is a discernible elevation in this sequence.
The tenderness is palpable even through its high-energy phases. It takes consummate skill and artistic depth to achieve this. But perhaps, skill is not the right word. Since intuition is key to gaining artistic depth, and intuition cannot be taught; only imbibed under a lifelong apprenticeship with life; and through constant, hard confronting of oneself, perhaps intuition is a better word. This exploration is necessary to understanding the merits of the Melanesian Blackbirding sequence.
ON BLACKBIRDING
Blackbirding was practiced by Australians and by Europeans (in Fiji). It involved the use of force (kidnapping or abduction) and trickery (fraud) to lure Pacific Islanders to work in sugarcane plantations in Queensland (Australia) and in Fiji.
In the latter case, they worked in cotton and coconut plantations, sugarcane plantations, and in road and railroad construction to pave the way for Indian indenture. 62,000 Islanders were taken to Australia. the numbers in Fiji are unclear. This Human Trafficking was practiced from 1863 to 1911. While there is a clear termination in 1911 and the earliest documented reference is in 1863, it is accepted its start was before 1863.
In official records, the word ‘Polynesia’ was used to categorise the slaves of Blackbirding. ‘Melanesia’ was not used. Neither were individual country or island names used. Collective categorisation under Polynesia, a sub-region failed to define nor encapsulate the identity of any single victim of Blackbirding slavery. The victims of Blackbirding were from the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu (New Hebrides), Gilbert Islands & Line Islands (now Kiribati), Tokelau, Loyalty Islands (part of New Caledonia), and Fiji (to Australia).
The current use of the sub-category Melanesia, and the act of descendants of Blackbirding slavery defining themselves by their specific island and country of origin is a significant act of reclaiming and correcting history.
Returning to the performance, the Melanesian Blackbirding experience is embodied by Apolonia (Eugene Dakunivosa) whose demise is encapsulated in the sequence. Beginning with railroad cutting in the middle of a sugarcane field, the sequence flips between the past and present, and terminates with the death of Apolonia as he drops onto the stage as lights fade out; and we presume, out of his life as his body hits the ground. The flashbacks present the abduction of Apolonia and others in an unspecified island and their backbreaking work in sugarcane railroad construction in Fiji.
The sequence is a masterpiece for several reasons. These include: music (and song); choreography; performance (Eugene Dakunivosa as Apolonia); sound design (and soundscape); and its triumph — lighting design.
The song ‘Lai Tei Dalo’ (Gone to Plant Taro) headlines the sequence and two lines are used as a refrain in sound design: ‘Votu mai, Votu mai, Votu mai na sitima ni meli — Sa qai voce mai na velovelo’ and ‘Biu tu mai na vanua — votu mai na manua.’ (Trans. in lyrics page below). The lines refer to the appearance or emergence of a blackbirding ship on the horizon, and to the dinghy rowed to shore — the fact of leaving one’s homeland & to the kidnapping of the lyricist (& by proxy, the singer & the viewer).
The sound design choice to embed the chorus (refrain) in music constructs an auditory frame which anchors the viewer within the moment of kidnapping and forceful removal/departure. It is an ingenious technical device that leads to the transfixing of the viewer. The root words for transfix are from Latin: ‘trans’ meaning ‘through’ or ‘across’ and ‘figere’ to fasten or impale, loosely translated to mean making someone ‘motionless’. The song play and its chorus and refrain keep the viewer transfixed at the story’s most emotive point. Even though the storyline moves back and forth and there is performance to advance the story, one’s subconscious is stuck or impaled in that one auditory moment of a ship’s emergence and the violent act of the kidnapping of a child. This auditory framing is exceptional because subconsciously, the viewer is put through two distinct experiences: living out Apolonia’s life in hard labour and demise; plus the looping of the moment of kidnapping and loss of home and family.
Similar to the nursery rhymes, folk songs, and fairytales for children in other continents, which carry morbid, distressful stories and histories; ‘Lai Tei Dalo’ is also dark and refers to the sinister practice of blackbirding. Similar to the trend of nursery rhymes, lullabies, and children’s folk songs (usually sung by adults also), ‘Lai Tei Dalo’ carries a dark tone as it is an account of a child who is kidnapped by blackbirders.
The lyricist (songwriter) speaks from the point of view of a child. With their father off to the taro garden and mother off fishing, the child ventures into a strange place and is abducted by blackbirders. There is an inventory of actions, symbols, and feelings related to kidnapping and transportation of a minor: vulnerability (temporary normal-day distancing from parents); external perpetrator entering a safe space of domesticity (blackbirders intrude upon safe spaces of local peoples & families); head covered by a [burlap] sack (hooding to disorient & to conceal pathways of possible escape and return); a large ship (material symbol of a more powerful entity); its dinghy rowed to shore (mirroring numerous forms of transport used then and now); and victim resignation to the fate of transportation to slavery in Fiji.
The last line: ‘My name really must be Billy’ speaks to the stripping of identity, the namelessness, associated with the blackbirder's and plantation-owners’ refusal to acknowledge nor use actual names of people in everyday life. Victims of blackbirding were predominantly men and the name Billy evolved into a regularised term or name for male slave labour (Pacific Islander labour) in many plantations in Fiji in that era. The lyricist’s last line points to the locus of identity situated in personal names being violently stripped, and by a seemingly simple, convenient, therefore, acceptable action — refusal to acknowledge a name, a natural progression stemming from an inability to recognise another human being.
The song is laced with grief because it is the voice and point of view of a child or minor. Only a child is exposed to the temporary vulnerability of being left alone with parents gone gardening and fishing. Only a child venturing off ‘to a strange place’, often within the vicinity of their home or community, can be abducted or kidnapped. A child’s view of the world is smaller than adult’s. In an island setting, the mere end of a coastal bay or peninsula is a ‘strange place’ in the world of a child unaccompanied by a parent or adult.
The line, ‘Au gade ki serea’ is not linked to Serea (Naitasiri) in Fiji (as some allude) because the lyrics refer to a place before abduction. Therefore, the Playbill translation, to a strange, ‘a far-off place’ is appropriate in lieu of an exact location. Given the diversity of places that victims of Blackbirding originated from, it could be a place of the same, or similar-sounding name. Blackbirded slaves were from Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Line Islands, Gilbert Islands, Loyalty Islands, Ellice Islands, among other archipelago countries at the time. The song or children’s rhyme may have been composed by a single poet or singer, then as all oral pieces do, evolved over the last century and a half. The fact that it is in Vosa Vakaviti Raraba suggests the loss of original Pacific Islands languages and to the utility of absorbing the local indigenous broadly-spoken language by Pacific Islanders — a natural progression, but tragic for the severance of memory and intangible cultural heritage associated with uprooting and loss.
The Melanesian Blackbirding sequence is clever in its use of this familiar children’s folk song as the piece to musically and lyrically render Apolonia’s story. Through its use, Apolonia becomes the original subject (person) of the song, which brings into focus, Eugene Dakunivosa (Apolonia) and Tevita Tobeyaweni (choreographer).
Tobeyaweni’s choreography focuses on the artistic presentation of abduction, hard labour, suffering, and the loss of a life. Depicting Pacific Islander (Melanesian) slave labour breaking rock as part of railroad construction, Tobeyaweni uses pickaxes as a prop to visually underscore the physicality of work. Its accompanying music is robotic and punctuated with pauses. Using flashback, Apolonia’s backstory is highlighted as the scene shifts to the past depicting their kidnapping, hooding, disorienting, and subsequent presence in Fiji. Tobeyaweni places both hard, cutting dance/performance moves and subtle elements to juxtapose the past and present within the sequence.
The Power of Sound — Interpretation and Meaning
Phil Dakei’s sound design deserves mention for its meticulous attention to detail and its mastery in achieving the difficult act of being unobtrusive or overall ‘invisible’. Dakei’s audio design in creating soundscape variations to drive viewer emotion and lend authenticity to the vignettes is critical to the strength of Butakoci.
In the Melanesian Blackbirding sequence, there are several elements and layers worth separating. The sound of pickaxes denotes physical labour and its punctuated use to provide the auditory pathway on Apolonia’s coughing fit, whipping, and subsequent death is powerful. The pickaxes are provided auditory separation as a normal day’s work is conducted, then paused at Apolonia’s coughing, then resumes in punctuated fashion as one collective movement of sound, as they witness his demise which leads to the collective trauma of survivor guilt.
It also features echoes of the Fijian drum , the lali, reverberating across the cane fields. It signals the close but invisible presence of the indigenous iTaukei; the start/end of day with communal prayer; the young religion; and more importantly, it powerfully hints to the gospel of Christ juxtaposed against the scourge of slavery of peoples — to the fact of the British Empire, a Christian power, engaged in global dispossession, slavery, and theft via capitalism. Lali echoes are also present in the Indian indenture sequence as the women gather to prepare a meal, ‘shoaling’ as a protection against vulnerability to sexual attack and succumbing. The same messaging is subtly communicated in this audio device. More powerfully, it uses an auditory device to ‘describe’ the silencing and silence of indigenous iTaukei peoples under the Church and the British Empire. It also points to their very limited say in the sale and use of their tribal lands at the time, pointing to their position as victims of Empire as well.
Dakei’s use of the sound of creaking ropes and wood joints of a ship in the narrated introduction of the Blackbirding sequence place viewers below-decks in the hold of ship — the site of forced ‘imprisonment’ of Pacific Islanders as they are transported. It also points to the experience of Indian indentured labourers who went through the same experience.
Arguably the most haunting sounds subtly embedded in Dakei’s soundscape are those from nature — from Fiji’s fauna. His positioning of the sounds of chirping birds and insects at night and day are juxtaposed against the heavy labour scenes and the sites of sexual violence and vulnerability in both the Blackbirding and Indenture sequences.
Crickets and other insects fill the air with song among sugarcane at night. Roosting birds settle in the sugar labour lines in twilight. Chirping birds provide an anthem for the survival and continuity of life as Apolonia faces his end. As the British Empire leads the stripping of resources in a world where it has limitless, unchecked power, as it commodifies nature and people, the natural world still speaks. Even as Apolonia’s life fades as he collapses, his departure is marked by chirping birds. It is woven so delicately into the fabric of the sequence that it remains unobtrusive. This is a core element to the power of Butakoci.
Butakoci is a Triumph of Lighting Design
Butakoci stands as an unforgettable experience on the strength of its Lighting Design. It is a testament to Talei Draunibaka’s Lighting direction. There are elements of lighting shared with other art productions, but two design elements lift Butakoci out onto a higher platform.
There is a deliberate, conscious decision to drape the production in crepuscular tones of twilight, predawn, or shifting darkness. Its use of ‘daylight’ is substantially lower. This decision plays a significant role in building the dark, menacing visual tones of surrounding acts of violence performed both on- and off-stage. It underscores the vulnerability of victims by heightening their disorientation, fear, and suffering. The viewer sitting in the darkness of the Suva Civic Centre Auditorium (live performances) is visually drawn into the performance and halted at the shifting light tones and haze of smoke, or in full light, where this is used.
For the second, a comparative experience has to be shared. It does not have to do with Lighting Design. It has to do with how both art productions achieve the same end, that of suddenly dragging the viewer into the performance to ‘live and breathe’ the experience of those whose story is being reenacted — but through different technical devices.
In 1998, Hollywood director Steven Spielberg’ Saving Private Ryan threw global audiences into the searing experience of the Allied D-Day landings (from the Second World War) through the use of the hand-held camera in the middle of battle-scene performance action. The movie opens with a 23-minute sequence with the hand-held camera capturing young men’s faces moments before the barge ramps drop and slaughter begins. It continues for the next 22 minutes. It had never been done before. With Polish cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, whom he had worked with in Schindler’s List (1993), Spielberg changed the way future war movies and battle scenes would be depicted. It has also moved beyond war movies into other genres of film. It has been etched in my memory as in others who experienced that moment in 1998 and after.
The searing experience in Butakoci is not linked to camera work but Draunibaka’s Light Design. Its most searing use of Light is when the bright lights positioned on stage, are suddenly turned toward viewers to pull down or collapse the fourth wall, the imaginary wall between the performance and the audience or viewer. Audience blinders are usually reserved for live concerts, at the point when audiences are in the throes of emotional contact with singers. In Butakoci, the audience blinders, the intense lights throws the viewer as as ‘complicit’ in the act of blackbirding. Dakunivosa’s Eugene and other troupe members are in a seated sequence, and the blackbirders are hooding them — he is the last one from whom daylight is snatched.
The fast-paced audience blinders make the whole theatre an enormous stage. The whole audience is suddenly thrust in full view of each other and become part of the performance. Three key things occur: the viewer suffers with the victims; the viewer becomes the blackbirder hooding the victims; the viewer is also witness to everything, including their very own action, inaction, and complicity. We become the blackbirder, we become the victim, we become the witness rendered powerless. It is Butakoci’s most powerful moment as it immerses us in suffering under the act, committing the act, and watching ourselves perform the act of violence of hooding and kidnapping.
The lighting design becomes the hand-held camera in a film recording scene. We are placed in the visceral and searing experience of specific, direct violent actions. The audience blinders also transport us to the light and sensory atmosphere of modern-day sites usually associated with human trafficking: both bright and subdued tones of ports, train stations, wharves, night roads, highways, airports, trucks, cities, streetlights, and to our very own lit homes at night— our protection from the world, and more often than not, our sites of violence and abuse. Talei Draunibaka and the ensemble of creatives of Butakoci clearly demonstrate the persisting histories of violence that remain embedded in our cultures and in our daily lives.
Talei Draunibaka demonstrates she is not made for singing or music alone. This is her time. She has arrived. One can only hope this nation and its people are generous enough to recognise her light.
Recommended Citation: Rokonadravu, M., (2024) ‘A Spectacle of Persistent Histories — A Review: Butakoci (Stolen) — A Musical Theatre Production on Human Trafficking in Fiji’, Medium, Suva. Accessed: [Insert Date and Time].
