GEORGE "TOOFIE" CHRISTIAN
Pilli Lornga N.I.
Coral Music (2001)
http://www.coralmusic.mq.edu.au

A couple years ago I read a book about exotica edited by Phil Hayward at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Who would imagine that so many people get paid to study musical stars like Les Baxter and Yanni? I saw Hayward's name associated as "executive producer" and in a way knew what was coming.

Toofie Christian is from Norfolk Island, which is where nothing else is, but roughly on a line between New Caledonia and New Zealand. About half of the residents are mixed descendants of the H.M.S. Bounty crew and the Polynesians that they picked up during their adventures. Toofie (many of the residents have nicknames) is a descendent of Fletcher Christian. At 52, he is a lifelong resident and since the1970's has performed in various pop-rock cover bands. The album Pilli Lorenga N.I., which could be called "Nor-folk," contains 11 of his own compositions depicting Norfolk Island life and culture, "something which helps remember and keep alive some of the things in the islands which are getting lost." The producer, Dennis Crowdy, has a masters degree in Melanesian string bands and has added arrangements which he believes speak of Norfolk...basically a mix of popular music, folk, and hula, orchestrated with cello and flute on one end and ukelele and lap steel on the other. Toofie cites "tropicalist" (wow!) Jimmy Buffet as a partial model."Musically we are probably closer to Hank Snow, his hula songs, than the Pacific Islands."

The songs themselves are straight-on and interesting. Many NIers are bidialectic, like the dichotomous way I'd talk to northerners and then say to a clerk in a 7-11 back in Texas, "Thizallawunt." Toofie has written two of the songs in "Australian English." Both ballads were inspired by the pre-Bounty days when NI was a penal colony; these may be the first the listener picks out because they carry stories in understandable words. "Sentry" is the fascinating story of a convict, masquerading as a sheep, who planned to murder the guard and take his clothes. Unfortunately for the convict, the guard just decided to shoot the sheep! Another, "Friendship" is the story of a shipwreck, with convicts making rescues in chains. Toofie has also added a "traditional song"...actually a funny "skit" song from World War II...called "Norfolk Rangers." The item, in a sort of Australian country-folk camp song mode, tells what the NIRs will do to you if they catch you breaking the law.

The others are all sung in NI dialect; it's an odd and very difficult blend of Australian sound, "normal" words, sound twists, and special vocabulary. Happily there are little glossaries.
For example the line:
Stiddy, aartuti ooda dem coral dem play
or Stiddy, aarturi (types of fish) out there them coral them play
This song, "Lewen In Harmony," is about the need to keep the environment clean "from a plastic en debris" so that islanders can continue to fry and barbecue the great variety of fish. Most of these songs are steeped in a tropical sound, and often hula and lap steel. They have a definite easy going aura reflecting the substance of Norfolk Island life. Toofie sings about the horses of bygone days, homesickness for the island, sweet potatoes, and the hula itself. These are his best songs, where the words fit the rhythms the best.

Pilli Lornga is fun and interesting and I am surely ready to go visit Norfolk Island!!!

judith@gorge.net