Small Island Big Song is a music, film and performing arts project uniting the islands of the Pacific and Indian Ocean through artistic collaboration, a contemporary and relevant musical statement from a region that shares an ancient seafaring heritage and the impact of our changing sea.
Be prepared to have your view of islander music shattered, as leading artists of the blue continent, the Pacific & Indian oceans unite in a powerful & timely cultural statement, a voice for our changing seas – ‘Our Island’.
Small Island Big Song — a collaboration between artists of Island nations drawing from their shared seafaring heritage to unite the Pacific & Indian Oceans. The performance ‘Our Island’ brings together some of the most prominent artists of Taiwan, Madagascar, Mauritius, Papua New Guinea, and Tahiti, who have made a choice to maintain the cultural voice of their people, to sing in the language, and to play the instruments of their land. These unique lineages mixed with their diverse contemporary styles - roots-reggae, beats, folk & spoken-word, establish a contemporary musical dialogue between cultures, drawing on their ancestral lineage to confront contemporary issues with a hope driven vision of the future. Framed with live visuals filmed across 16 island nations on a 3-year field trip by the project’s co-founders, creating “Beautiful cinematography and incredible music, one coherent, jaw-dropping piece" as described by Rob Schwartz - Billboard.
Motivated by their concerns for the ocean, a couple, Taiwanese theater producer BaoBao Chen and Australian music producer / filmmaker Tim Cole, quit their jobs after hearing the predicted effects of climate change to the oceanic nations, and spent the following eight years recording and filming with over a hundred artists on sixteen island nations, layering up songs from island to island. Outcomes include two award-winning albums, a feature film, impact program, and two world-touring productions.
Music critic Tom Orr has noted in the RootsWorld review “Small Island Big Song sound like one very big, very happy family doing what they do best while helping get the word out on a most serious issue.”
“How can we respond to the issue of our era, our planet’s future as theater and music creators?”
Culture is the framework through which we understand our relationship to our social and physical environments. It is our shared patterns of behavior, interactions, and beliefs. Fluid, ever evolving and whether we are aware of it or not, it is the core of our guiding personal narratives, our sense of self.
Our dominant global culture is failing us. Our planet’s natural ecosystem on which we depend for our very survival, is collapsing around us. The evidence is tangible, lived and indisputable. Yet we fail to respond with the resolve and urgency that nature, that our future generations demand.
Those of the ocean have maintained successful communities on fragile islands for countless generations and their cultural lineage embodies this. Small Island Big Song is an ensemble of such people, artists who against the mainstream have made a choice to sing foremost in the language and maintain the musical sensibilities of their heritage. They are the songkeepers continuing an unbroken cultural lineage back to their first ancestors to step, sleep, die and be born on their homelands. Their music embodies this knowledge, and as with music itself, it is only revealed through movement as it is shared, through your listening it lives.
Some of us will lose our island homes to rising sea levels and all of us are witnessing the death of our reefs and disappearing sea life, it’s soul destroying. Our response is to share that loss in song, supporting each other and you, the listener, but also to celebrate nature and our cultures. We do live in extraordinarily beautiful places and we want to share that, too. We have to, for our island we all share.
-Small Island Big Song co-founders - BaoBao Chen & Tim Cole
Songwriter & Performer | Emlyn - Creole heritage, Mauritius
Featured on CNN, Emlyn is leading a wave of performers across the Indian Ocean proudly reclaiming their unique rhythms and cultural mix. Written with a reactive pen and sung in Mauritian Creole, her songs express her concerns for her island’s environment. Emlyn brings the infectious grooves of Sega with the sounds of her traditional frame drum, Ravann, which originated from the rhythms of African/Madagascan people during the slave trade.
SIBS fell in love with Sega music during their field trips to Mauritius in 2016 and 2017, and was finally collaborating with Emlyn in 2020. She has been part of the album & world tours since.
Songwriter & Performer | Richard Mogu - Magi heritage, Papua New Guinea
From the south coast of Papua New Guinea, Richard has been a feature musician in PNG for many years as a musician and producer in both traditional and contemporary styles. He’s a master of traditional instruments including the Kwakumba flute, Garamut drumming, and PNG’s iconic Kundu drums.
Tim and Richard have been long-time collaborators; they met up again during SIBS’s field trip to Papua New Guinea in 2016. He’s featured in both SIBS’s albums and concert world tours.
Songwriter & Performer | Sammy - Merina heritage, Madagascar
Sammy followed his passion for Madagascar’s musical heritage by mastering and learning how to make most of Madagascar’s instruments. His efforts came to the notice of the UK’s world music scene as his band ‘Tarika Sammy’ gained international recognition, becoming a regular on major festival stages and being acknowledged as one of the world’s “Best Ten Bands”, alongside U2, by TIME Magazine.
SIBS met Sammy at his house during their inspiring field trips to Madagascar in 2016 & 2017. He’s featured in both albums and concert tours around the world since 2018.
Songwriter & Performer | Yuma Pawang - Atayal heritage, Taiwan
Yuma, a member of the Atayal tribe of Taiwan, is a multidisciplinary artist expressing her thoughts on "Atayal," cultural preservation, transformation, essence, and social equity in film, music, painting and performance. With Taiwan’s respected Minang performance group, she was invited by Indigenous nations of Northern Europe for a cultural exchange. This experience along with studying film performance made her aware of the significance of cultural practice in the context of Atayal life, where written language was historically limited. SIBS first met Yuma as a special guest for a SIBS concert in Taiwan in 2023, and she is now part of the family.
Songwriter & Performer | Airileke Ingram - Motu heritage, Papua New Guinea
Airileke grew up between the shores of both PNG and the Top End, Australia. Airileke is a musical pioneer and a sonic fighter for freedom traversing a timeless sonic globe without frontiers. He is a percussionist, producer, composer, activist, and, in the words of Britain's Songlines magazine, "cause for celebration". Airileke is a master drummer with one foot in the world of traditional drumming of Melanesia and his other in the modern world of beat production and hip-hop.
Tim and Airileke have been long-time collaborators; they met up again during SIBS’s field trip to Papua New Guinea in 2016. His driving beats are featured in both SIBS albums.
Songwriter & Performer | Mea Joy Ingram - Motu heritage, Papua New Guinea & Australia
Mea comes from a long line of drummers and dancers. She was taught by her father, master percussionist Airileke Ingram in the tradition of Manus Garamut, Cook Island Pate, and Gabagaba Motu Mavaru. The Garamut drumming of PNG was traditionally an artform dominated by men, however Mea, having just turned 18, represents the new generation of female log drummers emerging from Oceania.
Choreographer & Performer | Mathieu Joseph - Creole heritage, Mauritius
Mathieu has been a professional dancer and choreographer since the age of 14 when he was discovered breakdancing on the suburban streets of Port Louis, Mauritius by renowned choreographer Stephen Bongarçon. Quickly embedding himself in Bongarçon’s SRDance, his dedication earned him the gold medal for dance at "Les Jeux de la Francophonie'' in 2009. Leading to a succession of shows and companies, including choreographing "Di Sel”, a tribute to the salt workers of Mauritius which won the "Les Jeux de la Francophonie" in France in 2017.
Tim Cole - Australia
Director, Music producer, filmmaker
Cole is an Australian music producer and filmmaker who’s passionate about cross-cultural arts projects. He has produced numerous albums, films and concerts for Australian aboriginal, Torres Strait islander and Pacifica artists including Archie Roach, Telek, and Shellie Morris. He has also toured internationally with Circus Oz for 8 years as theater and sound designer with seasons on Broadway NYC & West End London. He was a senior music producer at CAAMA - Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association before beginning Small Island Big Song. Cole has received a Churchill fellowship and invitations to speak at the United Nations HQ, APAP NYC, and WOMEX.
BaoBao Chen - Taiwan
Producer, Manager
Having produced and managed Small Island Big Song's two multimedia concert productions, two award-winning albums, documentary, as well as curating world tours across 18 countries in Europe, the USA, Asia and Oceania, BaoBao is one of Taiwan’s most prominent producers of cross-cultural arts projects and an ISPA (International Society for the Performing Arts) fellow 2023-25. A vivid storyteller and fluent in English and Mandarin, she has a social media following of 130K+, and has been invited to speak at TEDx, WOMEX, APAP NYC, Stanford Live, and numerous arts festivals.
Back in 2012 when we were in Vanuatu filming ‘Vanuatu Women’s Water Music’, we discovered an incredible heritage they shared with island communities spread across the Pacific & Indian Oceans. Most of these communities were established by the ancient seafarers who originally set sail from Taiwan thousands of years ago.
We’re not anthropologists but theater and music producers, our focus is creating contemporary and creative collaboration across this region.
One of the songs born of this collaborative process is Gasikara, it began when we visited Gabagaba (Drumdrum) village on the southern coastline of Papua New Guinea. Responding to the loss of fish due to coral bleaching, master drummer Airileke recorded a driving rhythm using his village's Kundu & Garamut drums. Other coastal villages that we also visited were experiencing the same loss of their vital coral reefs, one of which was Madagascar's west coast. Sammy, a world music legend and dedicated multi-instrumentalist, contributed musical backing using a rare and threatened instrument the Jejy. In Taiwan, Indigenous Paiwanese singer Sauljaljui sung a powerful chant, and for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Torres Strait Islander songman Mau Power rapped of the wisdom to protect the reef through maintaining custom practice. The song traveled with us to many other islands before the version you now see on YouTube and in our album, but on stage, you will get to see the live version featuring Airileke, Sammy, and Emlyn, who sings in Mauritian Creole, paying respect to the extinct Dodo bird on her island.
Gasikara (small island mix) music video on Small Island Big Song YouTube channel.
Songwriter Note from Airileke:
"My approach to music is that it comes from the beat first. Like the heart beat, the first rhythm, the first sign of life. The first drum I heard was the Gaba from my grandfathers, then came the Log drum, the Garamut, from my neighbors. At a grassroots level we use it for communication, for ceremonies, not for entertainment. Now we communicate on a world wide scale… to connect, to reconnect and reunite.
Rhythm reminds me of family, even though we are separated by oceans the rhythm is like home. It speaks of youth and ancestry, history and future. To keep us connected in our daily life to the heart ... family." - Airileke
Airileke at his Gabagaba village in Papua New Guinea when Tim & BaoBao recorded with him.
CREATIVE & PRODUCTION TEAM
Co-founder, Producer, Manager, Cinematography, Lighting designer - BaoBao Chen
Co-founder, Artistic Director, Visual Design, Cinematography, FOH Sound Engineer, VJ - Tim Cole
Songwriters - Emlyn, Sammy, Airileke Ingram, Mea Joy Ingram, Yuma Pawang, Mathieu Joseph, Richard Mogu, Tim Cole
Tour Manager - Nini Liu
PERFORMERS
Vocals, Garamut, Kundu, Kulaps, Conch, Kwakunba, Bass - Richard Mogu
Vocals, Ravanne, Calabash, Marravan, Triangle, Dance - Emlyn
Vocals, Ravanne, Calabash, Marravan, Triangle, Dance - Mathieu Joseph
Vocals, Kabosy, Jejy, Valiha, Sodina, Garamut, Shakers, Dance - Sammy
Vocals, Garamut, Kundu, Kulaps, Warup, Conch, Kwakunba - Airileke Ingram
Vocals, Garamut, Kundu, Kulaps - Mea Joy Ingram
Vocals, Jawharp, Flute - Yuma Pawang
SPONSORED BY:
Sharon & John Dobson
This programming is supported in part by the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) and the National Endowment for the Arts.
SEASON SPONSOR:
