Making music in the Marquesas
The Aranui 3 was a legendary cargo ship that set forth every two weeks to bring freight from Papeete, the capital of Tahiti, north to the Marquesan Islands, which are located in the so-called “middle of nowhere” in the South Pacific between Tahiti and the Hawaiian Islands. The Aranui 3 has been replaced by the Aranui 5 and is now no more. If you are asking what happened to the Aranui 4 then you know nothing of Chinese culture. The word four in Chinese sounds like death, so they have removed it from the numbering system, although it is impossible to do that so they simply don’t pronounce it out loud or use it to number cargo ships.
The Aranui 3 was famous for many reasons, one of which was its legendary bar. That’s where the parties happened, or so I am told. More about the bar soon. Aside from freight, the Aranui 3 had berths for about 200 guests, give or take a few and/or depending whether anyone wanted to travel third class. There are few ships that ply the waters of the South Seas to stop at the Marquesas, so any local folks from the seven Marquesan Islands who wanted to travel to Tahiti had to book a place on the Aranui. Where they slept I don’t know.
Nearly all the passengers were rich foreigners, mostly from France, to whom Polynesia was just an exotic colony to visit and enjoy the sunshine. There were berths below decks and some above, depending on the size of your wallet. There was also a section of one deck where those folks who couldn’t afford thousands of dollars for the fare could sleep in bunks and share showers. There is also an airstrip on one of the islands, but I understand that you would need to sell your house first in order to afford the fare.
There were not a lot of amenities aboard the Aranui 3. I haven’t sailed on the Aranui 5 yet. In all honesty I don’t go to the South Seas very often. I’m still waiting for another free ticket, like the one that I received for writing about the region in Canadian newspapers for Tahiti Tourism. It may be that if I wish to venture there again I would need to pay the fare myself, which is never going to happen, but should you get the itch to go there after reading this, let me be the first to explain the attractions of the Aranui on the voyage.
It may be useful to consider who travels to the Marquesan Islands, and why. First to make the leap of faith was American sailor Hermann Melville, who did himself a great favour and jump started his literary career by jumping off his whaling ship “Acushnet” on Fatu Hiva in June 1842. Melville’s adventures, somewhat romanticized, became the subject of his first novel, Typee (1846). His book was a bestseller back home in America, the first ever about the South Seas.
The allure of a beautiful South Seas paradise complete with head hunters and gorgeous young girls summoned the likes of writers Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London and Thor Heyerdahl to follow, along with painter Paul Gauguin and singer Jacques Brel. It was Gauguin’s exotic paintings of the South Seas that planted the seeds of a romantic paradise, completely false images that still exists today.
The typical travelers to the Marquesan Islands today are from the bourgeoisie class of France, mainly Paris, who have the time, money and interest to fly all the way from Europe in order the chase the myth of an earthly paradise. It’s a long flight, but they are joined in their journey by the Germans, who make up perhaps a quarter of the passengers on the Aranui cruises, along with a scattering of Dutch, Brits and Americans. This makes for an interesting mix because historically the French and British have not been the best of friends, and the Germans (something to do with World War Two) are not liked by either the French or British. It brings up images of the phrase “a motley crew.” The ship’s staff is Polynesian with a handful of European guides and translators. The owners, of course, are Chinese as they tend to be in the South Seas and elsewhere. The Chinese are good in business and the Polynesians have few entrepreneurial skills or business history.
The Aranui 3 onboard amenities were somewhat limited. There was a lounge at the front where lectures were given and chairs available to read books. There was a small pool on the main deck although I saw few people ever using it. This was convenient because the French are still given to wearing the bikini which, in all honesty, does not flatter middle-aged and elderly men with pot bellies and women with sagging boobs and bums. The dining room was rather large, since the ship served breakfast every morning and most dinners as well, fine dining being absent from most of the Marquesan Islands. There was also the aforementioned bar, too small for the 200 or so guests aboard, but evidently the scene of some revelry if you did the same amount of research about the vessel as I did before making the long journey to the South Pacific.
On the night of departure from Papeete the Aranui bar was crowded with cheerful partiers, jostling together to grab a beverage and listen to the Polynesian tunes cranked out by the ship’s band. This was a most remarkable set of musicians and the music itself unique to Polynesia. The lead instrument was a ukulele played by an assistant cook from the kitchen. He was a cheerful fellow, Polynesian, always with a smile on his face and his arms covered in tattoos. He also did some backup singing.
The other ukulele player was a translator/tour guide, a very fat Polynesian lady, always cheerful and smiling. She spoke at least three languages — French, Tahitian and English — and did some singing. Playing acoustic guitar was a worker from the boiler room (I think), also Polynesian. There was no drummer. The rhythm was provided by another tour guide/translator, a German man who (as he informed me on a hike later through the jungle) spoke seven languages who played a one-string bass that was merely an upturned plastic bucket with a string attached to a broom handle. In all honesty the band was mostly instrumental and totally amateur. They were also absolutely authentic, playing a sound that I had never heard before, the music and rhythms of the South Seas.
Upon departure the band set up shop at one end of the bar and two bartenders worked feverishly to keep up with the demand. As the expression goes, “the joint was rocking.” The atmosphere was electric and I looked forward to spending some time every evening at the bar, meeting other passengers and learning what I could about their reasons for coming to the Marquesas and tapping my toes along with the music.
The first evening in the dining room provided some harsh lessons in global culture. Every passenger belonged to a certain culture and they all sat together in separate groups, the Germans with the Germans, the French with the French. I listened to the languages spoken while waiting in the line for a table and soon picked up the Yankee accents and asked to sit at the U.S. table. Wine was served generously with each meal, and it took me a couple of days to learn that if your table was polite and persistent, the waiters would serve you an extra glass of wine. Or, in the case of the Germans and the French as I noticed, several glasses of wine.
There were two servings, at 6 pm and 7 pm, and if you chose the 7 pm serving you could linger over the wine and stretch the meal to 8.30, by which time those passengers sufficiently lubricated seemed to head directly to their berths in order to get their rest and attack the breakfast meal with gusto. Nobody went to the bar. The booze there cost money.
Breakfasts every morning proved to be endlessly entertaining. There was a long queue waiting at the dining room well before the doors opened, a perfect opportunity for the Parisiennes to jump the line pretending to look for their compatriots to say bonjour, although — to the astonishment of the Brits, who will queue with the best of them — the bourgeoisie seldom retreated to the end of the queue. In this fashion the lines got wider rather than longer. When the doors opened the bourgeoisie made a rush for their favourite tables, after which a secondary rush immediately ensued by the French ladies for the croissant bins stacked on the buffet tables.
It may have been that there was a shortage of croissants in France at the time, or that the lure of free croissants was more that the French ladies could endure, but I watched in astonishment as they stuffed the croissants into their purses, pockets and even down their blouses. I was severely tempted to shoot video footage of the melee but hell hath no fury like a French bourgeoisie scorned, so discretion took the better part of valour and I simply sat and stared.
The fact that wine poured like water at dinner had a dampening effect on the attendance at the bar at night. I returned there after dinner the first night curious to see if the bar was hopping and the band playing but there was no sight of either. A couple of lonely French men escaping their wives company stood forlornly at the bar sipping scotches and of the musicians there was no sign at all.
I went out on deck and walked around and there was no sign of anyone. The evening entertainment consisted of going straight to bed in order to steel oneself for the croissant wars in the morning. The legend of the famous Aranui 3 bar was apparently just a myth. Perhaps on other Aranui cruises there had been vivacity, or the booze was free. I was completely out of luck.
The next evening proved more of the same. Wine ran like water at dinner and people sat on their purses. Why pay for booze when it is provided for free? Nonetheless I wandered down to the bar again after dinner on the off chance there might be someone to talk to. Nothing, no one, nada, so I ordered a beer for myself and had a chat with the bartender. Did the band only play the first evening, I asked? Or did they play on other nights and if so what was the schedule?
The band, I was informed, played only when and where they wanted to play and they seldom played in the bar. Why, if I had another wander around a bit later, when the cook and boiler room guy came off shift, I might find the musicians stationed out by the back rail or under the back stairwell.
On the second night my persistence paid off. It was well after dinner, somewhere around 9 pm, still an early hour, when I spotted the German tour guide heading out the back door carrying a bucket. I followed and sat in a chair by the pool to see what might transpire. Sure enough, soon the other tour guide — the fat lady who played ukulele — made an appearance and they pulled up some chairs underneath the back stairs where there was no wind and sat down to wait. In a few minutes time the rest of the group showed up, sat down and began to play.
The ukuleles sounded like banjos, so there was a hint of country music to the songs. The other ukulele guy finger-picked like crazy and the German one-string plucker seemed to be in heaven, his eyes closed and his feet stomping to the beat. The notes rose into the crystal clear night sky and drifted over the sides of the ship like luminous jewels to fall upon the waters below. The audience of one — me — sipped his beer and clapped after every tune. But the band played for no one but themselves, just for the pure love of playing, huge smiles on their faces as they laughed at musical miscues, jamming away with no rules or directions.
Then from the back door of the bar stepped forth delicately the concierge, aka ladies dance instructor and activities director, like a fawn emanating from the depths of the forest into a clearing looking for her mother. I had met her the first day at dance class and was too nervous to talk to her. Several people had signed up for dance lessons, because on every cruise there was a Polynesian Night when passengers were urged to come to the stage by the pool by cultural group and dance, sing or perform, the Germans chanting oom-pa-pa songs, the French maybe an Edith Piaf pub song, the Brits some music hall rags. The old, fat French ladies who attended the dance classes stumbled around like wounded water buffalos writhing in pain, stomping the floor in frustration. It was embarrassing to watch. Their Polynesian dance instructor on the back deck, on the other hand, was a different animal altogether.
Under the starry skies in front of the band the dance instructor moved like a snake, a lithe and sinuous creature whose spine had been removed and replaced with a rope. Her silky black hair cascaded past her knees, swaying in time to her movements like a separate component of her body. Her hands reached out for the sky in a smooth caress, her eyes stood wide open staring at the skies, her mouth open in wonderment at the joy of life and movement. She was the living embodiment of the South Seas goddess that Gauguin had tried to paint; exotic, innocent and erotic all at the same moment. She paid no notice to her audience of one, dancing purely for the joy of the moment, her passion emanating across the waves like electricity. I sat in awe, dumbstruck.
The literature distributed by the Tahiti Tourism Board states that the Marquesan Islands, located halfway between the Tahitian and Hawaiian Islands, are the island group “furthest away from any body of land” in the world, making the Marquesas the most remote place on the planet. On the way back the Aranui found itself half way between Tahiti and the Marquesas, making that exact location the most remote place in the world. When the band came out to play, I was sitting on my chair ready to listen. This time they set up by the back rail, with a different German guy plunking at the bucket strings.
The night sky was a brilliant paint box of a billion stars, tiny pinpoints of light in the majesty of the universe. There was no sign of land, no passengers, no other sounds, no distractions, just the tour guide and the assistant cook and the boiler room guy and the German translator playing only for fun, the sheer joy of it, a celebration of life. The audience of one sat silent, in the exact middle of nowhere, in awe of the vast universe and his tiny inestimable place in it, and the beauty that could be found if you just knew where to look.