Melody Is

Famous Fiji Melody Is From Tonga

From a Correspondent

Suva.

Who was the composer of Isa

Lei, the haunting Fijian farewell

melody that is known to every South Seas traveller and which grows in popularity each month? years it has been popular opinion that it was Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba, Tui Nayau (King of Lau), father of Ratu K. K. T. Mara.

Fiji basked in that knowledge till about the middle of January when a Tongan noble, the Hon. Tuivakano, on arrival at Auckland from Sydney with Queen Salote, told reporters he had written the song in 1915.

In Fiji at the time this astonishing news broke was the Premier and Crown Prince of Tonga, Prince Tungi, who supported the Hon.

Tuivakano’s claim. Tuivakano, said Prince Tungi, had written the song when his (Prince Tungi’s) father be came engaged to Queen (then Princess) Salote.

Soon after Ratu Tevita heard the song sung by Tongan visitors to Fiji and asked a forestry assistant, named Inoke Sateki, to write Fijian words to the same tune in honour of a young woman of rank who was living in Fiji.

Prince Tungi said that in Tonga the song was invariably sung with the Tongan and then with the Fijian words. Only in Fiji was it sung with the Fijian words alone.

"Wide Publicity"

The Tongan account was given wide publicity here, and as a result Ratu Tevita was contacted in Lau.

Ratu Tevita tells a different story, and claims that Tuivakano’s story told to NZ reporters was not correct.

He agrees that the tune and the Tongan words were brought to Fiji by a couple of Tongans who were accompanied by a Tongan noble.

They told him that a man named Paula had written the original music and the Tongan words.

He fell in love with the tune the first time he heard it and wrote to Tonga for the music. When he re ceived it he sent it away to be in terpreted into the international scale.

He claims he wrote the Fijian words, which are different in sense

from the Tongan. Prince Tungi’s belief that he (Ratu Tevita) had asked Inoke Sateki to write the Fijian words was not true. Inoke, in fact, had nothing to do with Isa Lei, but featured in another Fijian song.

It seems, at any rate, that the melody of Isa Lei is Tongan.

The original Tongan title is “Viola lose hina”, which means, “With a white rose”.

Footnote: The Maori farewell, Now is the Hour, was written by an Aus tralian.