Ongo (sounding/hearing/feeling), mate (death), fonua (people and place) and tā-vā (time-space): new foundations for Tongan music composition, performance and sound art

This thesis identifies and examines key Indigenous aesthetic concepts and practices of faiva fasi (Tongan music) to establish new theoretical and methodological foundations for contemporary composition, performance and sound art. It asks: ‘what are the key Indigenous aesthetic concepts and practices of faiva fasi, and how can they be employed as Indigenousled theoretical and methodological approaches to contemporary composition, performance and sound art?’. These aims are led by the global project of decolonisation, Indigenous selfdetermination and social justice. The research focuses on ongo fa'ahikehe (sound of the dead or ancestral sound) and tu'akautā (to beat outside, behind or beyond the beat) to acknowledge Tongan ontologies and epistemologies of ongo (sound) in relation to mate (death), fonua (people and place) and tā-vā (time-space). The thesis employs the Indigenous Tongan Tā-Vā (Time-Space) Philosophy of Art, and a combination of talanoa (talking critically yet harmoniously) with specialists in Tongan music, arts and culture, and music analysis of sound archives and museum collections using case studies of the tangilaulau (crying and reciting poetry), fakatangi (chanting in the style of crying) and fangufangu (bamboo noseflute). The research is accompanied by a creative exhibition, which is grounded in the three Tongan arts genres: faiva (performance arts), tufunga (material arts) and nimamea'a (fine arts). It includes five new works in composition, performance and sound art—as well as photography, video, sculpture and print—which are also examined in contribution to the research inquiry. The written and creative components of the thesis employ a method of ‘resounding’ (in the manner of ‘re-reading’ and ‘re-writing’ as post- and decolonial methodologies) existing archives on Tongan music by walking forward into the past and backwards into the future as a Moana Oceanian framework. This includes a critique of existing scholarship in which key aesthetic concepts and practices of Tongan music are disregarded or misinterpreted. It also shines a light on the colonial legacies of Eurocentrism and heteropatriarchy on Tongan music and adjacent art forms.