Chapter 05
String Bands, Bamboo Bands and the Radio Nation
7 min
A string band can make a small set of instruments sound like a whole evening. One guitar lays down the chord cycle. Another answers with a bright figure. Ukulele sharpens the middle. A homemade or commercial bass gives the floor weight. Several voices arrive in close harmony, and the words turn a familiar progression into a song about a named place, person or event.
What to listen for
This format became one of the great social technologies of Solomon Islands. Instruments were portable, repairable and suited to homes, church grounds, ships, schools and radio rooms. A group did not need a large electrical system to fill a gathering. Repertory could absorb hymn harmony, Hawaiian and other Pacific songs, local-language texts, country inflection and dance pulse.
String bands grew strongly in the 1950s and 1960s, but their history is not a straight copy of foreign music. Musicians selected tunings, vocal blend, bass patterns and languages that worked for local audiences. A borrowed chord sequence could carry an entirely local story. Radio then made one island's performance familiar in another province.
Solomon Dakei and the sound of a recorded group
Solomon Dakei and His Solomon Islanders recorded “Auki Love Song,” “Puni Munu Munu” and a version of “Walk About Long Chinatown.” “Auki Love Song” is a useful beginning because its title locates affection through a Malaita town while the ensemble presents a polished popular frame. Listen for how the lead voice sits inside group support and how the string attack keeps the track moving without a heavy drum kit.
Dakei's group also appears with Nelson Meja and His Bamboo Band on “Tini Ngirisi.” That collaboration places strings, voices and bamboo percussion inside one recorded arrangement. The categories overlap in practice. A bamboo band can provide bass movement and rhythmic spectacle while a singer carries a popular verse.
Emanuel Sale's “Kisi Mai” and Henry Tom with The Buma Boys on “Bina Wai” add other named musicians to the period. A national history needs these credits because old compilation labels can make early musicians disappear into “South Pacific” anonymity. Their individual works show a recording field already richer than one famous song.
“Walkabout Long Chinatown” belongs to people and movement
Edwin Nanau Sitori composed “Walkabout Long Chinatown” in Honiara in the 1950s with Rone Naqu and Jason Que part of its creation story. Sitori was working at the Honiara power house and played in bands. The song's setting in Chinatown gave urban life a memorable, singable scene.
Fred Maedola's early Viking recording helped make the work widely known. Solomon Dakei recorded it. Fijian performer Sakiusa Bulicokocoko later transformed its pace and carried it farther through the Pacific. Each version changes the song's body. A relaxed string-band treatment, a brighter dance arrangement and a communal singalong can all keep the same core recognisable.
The work is often described as an unofficial national song. That affection comes from repetition across generations, radio play and the ease with which people join the refrain. Its reach should not erase the creators. Naming Sitori, Naqu, Que and Maedola makes the shared song more human.
Fred Maedola's career also proves that Solomon Islands had local stars before the current streaming era. SIBC listeners in the 1960s and 1970s knew his voice. A younger audience can discover him now through old recordings and family memory. Radio creates this kind of intergenerational familiarity even when record-company archives remain incomplete.
Bamboo bands build rhythm from air columns
A bamboo band commonly uses open-ended tubes of different lengths struck against the ground. The trapped air responds with a pitched thump. Large tubes make low bass notes; shorter tubes create quicker, higher attacks. Players arrange patterns across the set, turning what looks like a row of simple cylinders into a tuned percussion ensemble.
Earlier players used available padding at the striking end. Rubber sandals became common because they protected the bamboo and supplied a firm, repeatable impact. The visual action is direct: lift, strike, rebound, wait. Precision determines whether several low tubes create groove or clutter.
Nelson Meja and His Bamboo Band recorded “Tianzutu,” “Tinoa Hola” and “Tini Ngirisi.” In “Tianzutu,” listen below the voice for the depth of the longest tubes, then notice how shorter attacks articulate the rhythm. The bamboo does not merely decorate a string song. It functions as bass line, drum section and tonal arrangement.
Solomon bamboo-band practice later travelled into Papua New Guinea and became influential there. That history is a strong example of Pacific movement with a traceable direction. A Papua New Guinean ensemble remains Papua New Guinean even when it works with a format learned from Solomon musicians. Influence creates relation, not a merged nationality.
Makira's Iare Bamboo Band appears in national cultural mapping, while other provinces maintain their own groups. Public performance may combine bamboo tubes with panpipes, guitar, keyboard or dance. The word “bamboo” names a material; the playing action tells the listener which family is sounding.
A 1970 Viking album by the Bamboo Band of Roviana Western Solomons gives this history another exact address. Bamboo Rhythms of the Solomons moves the ear away from Malaita without pretending that one Western Province ensemble represents Roviana as a whole. Its low tubes, shorter attacks and ensemble timing make a useful comparison with Nelson Meja's recorded bamboo band and with blown panpipes.
SIBC gives acoustic music a national radius
The broadcaster that began as BSIBS became Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation after independence. From its early tape machine onward, recording local music was part of its national role. Staff carried equipment to provinces, invited groups into studios and replayed songs across distance.
SIBC history names a remarkable chain: Solomon Dakei, Hetty Bea, Joseph Nona, Kiko Willy Ngoro, Edwin Sitori, Fred Maedola, Jim Baku, Joseph Kokobi and Isaac Houma. Kokobi brought polyphonic custom music to broadcasts in the early 1970s. Houma brought an 'Are'are panpipe band to Honiara in 1978. These actions turned radio into a crossroads among village practice, popular song and national celebration.
The station's live string-band programme continues that work. Musicians gather around microphones and perform for listeners far beyond the room. The format preserves a social duration that a three-minute commercial single may not. Announcers can name language, village and composer, giving context that an anonymous recording loses.
Provincial radio matters too. Radio Happy Lagoon provides a Western Province connection. Radio Temotu's former operation reminds listeners that transmitters, funding and maintenance are uneven. National circulation depends on infrastructure that can fail, be repaired and shift toward phones or online streams.
Cassettes and studios make songs portable
Cassette recording expanded the life of local bands from the 1970s onward. A tape could be duplicated, sold in a shop, carried on a boat and played from a battery-powered machine. Sound quality changed with every copy, but familiarity grew. A song could become part of family life without a formal national release.
Local entrepreneurs and studios built a recording economy around this demand. Musicians learned microphone placement, overdubbing and the discipline of a take. A group accustomed to long social performance had to choose a compact arrangement. Producers balanced voice against bamboo bass or electric instruments. Cover art and handwritten labels became part of how audiences identified a release.
The cassette did not end radio. The two supported each other. Airplay created demand for a tape; a tape gave announcers a track to repeat. Boats and buses carried both musicians and copies. Honiara became a production centre, while provincial languages and stories kept feeding its catalogue.
Electric bands emerge from the same social ground
By the late twentieth century, electric guitar, bass, keyboards and drum kit were common in Honiara bands, schools, churches and hotel entertainment. Reggae became deeply loved, but it entered an existing world of close harmony, guitar rhythm and songs about place. The offbeat guitar stroke found ready conversation with string-band timing.
Bands rehearsed in compounds, church spaces, school rooms and makeshift studios. Electricity and equipment access affected membership. A broken amplifier could stop a show; a skilled technician became part of the musical community. DJs and producers later extended that role into digital recording.
Sharzy's path from 2-4-1 to a solo career shows how the band era fed the artist era. On “Ta'umai,” his voice carries melodic directness over a polished island-pop frame. He can move among Simbo, Roviana, Pijin and English, allowing different audiences to hear intimacy without every song using the same language.
The radio nation is still made by listeners
National music does not exist only because a station broadcasts it. It becomes national when people request, remember, sing and argue about songs. A listener in Gizo hears a Malaita string band. A Honiara child learns a chorus from parents. A Temotu song reaches a phone in Auckland. Audience activity joins the islands.
Across this history, bamboo tubes, acoustic guitar, cassette, AM signal, FM studio and compressed phone audio all solve a problem of coordination. They let performers share timing with people who are not in the same place. Solomon Islands popular music grew by making distance singable.
