December 2, 2023 • 52 mins
Crowley, Terry. 1995. “The National Drink and the National Language in Vanuatu.” Journal Of the Polynesian Society 104 (1): 7–22.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20706599.
In this episode, we discuss Dr. Terry Crowley, a significant figure in linguistics, particularly in relation to Vanuatu. Crowley was born in 1953 in Essex and completed his doctoral thesis on Vanuatu languages at the National Australian University. He had a profound interest in the Bislama and Creole languages of Vanuatu and worked in the Department of Languages at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby. Later, Crowley became the director of the Pacific Languages Unit at the University of South Pacific in Port Villa, Vanuatu, and eventually a professor of linguistics at Waikato University, New Zealand.
Crowley's work included 21 books and over 70 journal articles, focusing on various languages from the Australian and Austronesian Oceanic language families, along with Bislama and K Creole. He played a significant role in standardizing the Bislama dialect and was involved in linguistic development projects in Melanesia.
The podcast delves into Crowley's impact on Vanuatu's linguistic scene, his contributions to the standardization of the Bislama language, and his efforts in promoting literacy and education in the Pacific region. It also covers the socio-linguistic aspects of his work, including the impact of languages like English and French on local languages in Vanuatu, particularly in the context of independence and national identity.
Significantly, the podcast highlights the cultural and social aspects of kava in Vanuatu. Discussions include the traditional and modern practices of kava drinking, the evolution of kava bars (nakamals), and the role of kava in Vanuatu's national identity. The hosts also touch upon the linguistic innovations related to kava in the Bislama language, illustrating how language evolves with cultural practices.
Overall, the episode provides a comprehensive overview of Dr. Terry Crowley's life, his academic and linguistic contributions, and the cultural significance of kava in Vanuatu, along with its linguistic reflections in the Bislama language.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Douglas LaRose (00:00):
Welcome to the Kava Lounge with the Kavasseur and Jimmy Price
Knead up your kava.
Pour in the 10 and sit down and enjoyanother session of the Kava Lounge
Jimmy Price (00:15):
Hi, I'm Jimmy.
Today's podcast is gonnabe about the national.
And the national language of Vanuatu.
This was a paper dated 1995.
The author was , Dr.
Terry Crowley.
And we're gonna do a little bit ofan introduction on Terry just to talk
about, , a little bit of his life and whathe did and how important he was to the
(00:35):
linguistics scene, especially in Vanuatu.
He was born in 1953.
in Essex.
And , he went to the National AustralianUniversity where he completed his doctoral
thesis in Vanuatu on the study of Palm.
And I'm not sure if I'm , I'm probablynot saying that correctly, but Pese
maybe but do this Van Vanuatu languagesbecame his incredible lifelong love.
(00:58):
Loved the Bislamas and the Creolelanguages that were around.
He was , a lecturer in theDepartment of Languages at the
University of PNG in Port Mosby.
And we were just remarking aboutthat momentarily that he must have
seen some really interesting stuffgo on down in where he was stationed,
cuz that's a a well-known spot.
If you type that in and it willshow you a travel warning on
(01:19):
Google where they say, do not visit
Douglas LaRose (01:21):
When you talk in my field of international development and
humanitarian aid when you talk aboutcountries that you should feel nervous
about visiting or you should ask.
am I sane ? Before I traveling into oneof these countries, Papa New Guinea, is up
there with the Somalias, the South Sudans.
(01:43):
Yeah, just like thebasket cases of the world.
It's a very challenging country.
Very dangerous.
Yeah, so he lived a shortlife and I'm sure probably
has something to do with it.
Jimmy Price (01:53):
Most certainly.
He went from PNG Port Mosby there toVanuatu and 1983 to become the director of
Pacific Languages Unit in the Universityof South Pacific and Port Villa.
After that he finally went onto Hamilton New Zealand and was
professor of linguistics at theWaikato University in Hamilton.
And the guy wrote 21 books And over70 journal articles in his life.
(02:19):
It's amazing.
These included grammars of sevendifferent languages from Australian
and Austronesian , oceanic languages,families along with Bislama and K Creole.
And he was extremely interestedin the Vanuatu languages.
He did so many other things too.
He , was a member of the let'ssee if I'm saying this right, a
Klong bislama, which kind of makessense now that I say it out loud.
(02:41):
Bislama committee for much of the 1980sa semi-official body kind of dealing with
the standardization and other issues.
So he helped standardizea certain bislama nouns.
Verbs, just basically thedialect so they could make it
to where you could write it down
Douglas LaRose (02:54):
local.
Yeah.
Documented.
Documented the language.
Yeah.
Jimmy Price (02:57):
From his beginning, he talked about being in interested in languages
, and writing in scripts and all that stuff.
Very important to Vanuatu and the peoplethere he was a co-convenor at UNESCO
workshops on languages and development.
In Melanesia in December, 1985.
Let's see here.
. He was a member of the MelanesianLiteracy Consortium awarded a
UNESCO grant to oversee pilotprojects in literacy development.
(03:20):
And that was in 1990.
To his friends, he was alwaysknown as a kind person.
Terry's generosity did muchto reciprocate the hospitality.
He received remote villages.
He would like typically spendseveral months a year living pretty
much like a local in Vanuatu.
He frequently supported Pacificstudents studying in his home.
So he like let him stay with him whilethey were studying and he would often put
(03:41):
their parents up when they would graduate.
Anybody from overseas or Vanuatu,he would let them stay there and
make sure that they had a place to,to stay while their kid graduated.
Cuz most of them were firsttime academic achievers.
None of their families had everbeen through any sort of schooling.
So it was a pretty big moment whentheir family got to witness that
and he always would make sure thathe had plenty of space for that.
(04:03):
But that kind of concludes a littlebit of an overview on Terry Crowley.
Very interesting individual.
Very, yeah.
Like it, yeah.
The guy has a huge history.
And I'll let you talk for a little bit,
Douglas LaRose (04:13):
Doug.
Yeah we should raise ashell to Terry Crowley.
This article when I readit I was blown away.
First of all, great writer,really good communicator.
Really the passion he has for histopic just really shines through words.
Going through history thereof his academic career and his
interests and his participation ondifferent committees and things.
, one thing , that, as an myself, one thingthat sticks out and out in the paper
(04:38):
is he's what's called a socio linguist.
Not only did he document language thegrammar, the structure, the kind of
the way that these different languageswork and the words are put together.
But he also looked at the waythat language changed over time
and how English and French wereincorporated into, to local languages.
The bislama being the kind of the primaryone that is dealt with in this paper.
(05:01):
I tip my hat to people like this becausethey really get out there and see the
world with their own eyes and, touchthe soil and talk to people and, sit
around at nakamals and drink a lot ofkava and they spend their life learning.
There's nothing that I admiremore than somebody who can make
a job out of their passion.
And you can see that in this workthat we're about to look at here.
(05:24):
This is a really good paper.
And Jimmy, thank you so much for bringingit to my attention, . You're welcome.
It's it's 16 pages of pure joy agreed.
Absolutely.
Let's start, yeah, let's dive in.
Jimmy Price (05:37):
We've divided this out into sections.
, I'm sure the link will be in thedescription, so you'll be able to
follow along if you wanna read thepaper as well with us, we're dividing
it out into the different sectionshere in the first one we have here
is pre-Independence era, Vanuatu.
It is for titled Kava and Vanuatu
Douglas LaRose (05:55):
and so basically this would be the colonial period.
Yeah.
Yes.
, Jimmy Price (05:59):
Kava had been drunk in Vanuatu for forever.
Was basically was conceived there.
It was bred there.
It was made there.
It was propagated.
There.
It was.
It was Farmed there to the pointwhere there, we talked about
in the last episode around 247different sub-varieties of kava.
So Kava had a strong footholdin Vanuatu at this time.
They think that this was prior tothe 17th and 18th century because
(06:22):
it had well, established ceremonialtraditional consumption when we first
made contact, when the west first madecontact there, there was already, , all
this, all this kava activity going on.
So we know that it had a really stronghold over populace there and talks
here about from the mid 18 hundreds,Christian missionaries came in,
(06:43):
various denominations began spreadingtheir influences, and of course it
depended on the denomination, butthe reactions were varied, they tended
to skew towards total prohibition.
Of course, we'll see lateron that was the case.
But here they were just what is this?
I guess this represents the timewhere they were just trying to
understand what the thing, was.
, obviously they came to the conclusionthat it was communicating with
(07:04):
the spirits and therefore demonicor whatever you want to call it.
And it was essentially demonized andsaid that it was bad and all that.
We'll get into that butI'll let you go Doug.
I just wanted to talk about that.
Up to, we're about to the secondparagraph of the first part
of the pre-independence era.
Douglas LaRose (07:21):
Yeah think one thing to point out in the very first paragraph,
he does briefly mention the fact thatin the local languages, in Vanuatu
there are words for kava the differentwords from the different local languages
to describe kava and kava ceremonies.
The reason that he brings that upis to show that kava , was something
that was discussed locally in locallanguage prior to the colonial period.
(07:43):
Later on in the paper, hetalks about the the different
cultures of kava in port Villa.
So people from Pentecost willgo to one nakamal people from
Tana, will go to another nakamal.
So there are all thesedifferent kava traditions.
And actually, , if you look back.
We talked about all the differentkava cultures in the Pacific.
Vanuatu is like a microcosm of that, whereyou have all these different language
(08:07):
groups, ethnic groups, and most of themconsumed kava and they all had their
different kind of traditions around it.
So I think it's pretty cool that hekinda like puts that front and center.
Prior to this colonial period, therewas this rich kava tradition that
was disrupted , by the Anglo ofFrench condominium colonial period.
He gets into his own experience Ithought it was really interesting reading
(08:28):
about how he a young anthropologist,linguist in the 1970s which that
would've been during the colonial period.
He went to Vanuatu and was in thevillages doing research and didn't
see that much kava being consumed.
This guy Terry, he was.
, he was there when this likerevolution happened, when this
(08:49):
kava renaissance happened.
He only saw kava prepared, and onthree or four occasions I think all
of those occasions were weddings.
And it was only older men whodrink kava in those ceremonies.
At that time people werestill going for the booze.
. People were still hitting the bottle.
Sounds like beer and winewere the drink of choice.
And so Terry watched Vanuatuliterally go from this colony
(09:14):
where, , people were boozing it up toa country where people embraced kava
and the the independence period.
Jimmy Price (09:21):
certainly.
And that brings us perfectly into theIndependence Renaissance is his titled
we Know just a moment ago, Doug talkedabout the beer and red wine that were
favored by the young men in the villagesand people weren't drinking kava.
, it talks here about how there, during thetime late seventies alcohol was involved
with good bit of the violence that wasengendered by the political tensions
(09:41):
associated with becoming independent.
And it also, there were a coupleof bars on the island, and it
was common to see people possiblydrunk in the streets, in Villa in
Santo staggering home on weekends.
In public holidays.
It says Vanuatu Gains gainedits independence in 1980.
And after a struggle with the colonialpowers, of course 1970s and early 1980s
was definitely a period of intense debate.
(10:03):
He talks about the Melanesian peopleand talking about their attempt
to define themselves politically,economically, and socially as United
Melanesian people who were thecitizens of the Republic of Vanuatu.
And this meant questioning therole of European powers and
also some European practices.
So Vanuatu did not go along thesame path as the other islands
like Solomon Islands, Papua NewGuinea, Fiji, and accepting English.
(10:25):
They actually accepted Bislamaas de fact national, language.
, we should define some of these words.
Bislama is the homegrown Englishlexier pigeon language, which
had become the major medium forpolitical debate and had become the
accepted language of conversation,between people on the island.
That was a kind of a mixture between someFrench words and local words and English.
(10:46):
It's a very, it's phonetic,it's a very phonetic language.
Douglas LaRose (10:49):
Yeah.
I just wanted jump in here really quick.
Go ahead.
Because the so in visiting theSolomon Islands I was there for about
three months and Solomon Islandersspeak a language similar to bislama.
I don't know that it'sactually called Bislama.
I think it might just becalled Solomon Islands Pigeon.
But when you first get , to the SolomonIslands, or when you first get to Vanuatu
and you talk to people, it soundslike a completely different language.
(11:13):
Like you hear words , like you hearEnglish words but you cannot hold
a conversation with somebody andunderstand , what they're saying if
they're speaking to you in bislama.
And, and, another point I wanted to makeabout choosing a language when a country
gets independence from a colonizer, moreoften than not, that country was not
a country before , the colonizer came.
(11:35):
In the example of Vanuatu, , youhad all these different islands
with different ethnic groupswho spoke different languages.
So before they were a colony,they never saw themselves as a
republic, as one united people.
So they had to choose a language thatthey could all mutually understand.
That wasn't English, that wasn't Frenchand wasn't one of their local languages.
(11:57):
So they had to basicallycreate a new language.
And that's what bislama is akind of compromise language.
That probably like developed out oftrade networks and people from different
backgrounds communicating with each other.
But you see this all over the world informer European colonies where you have
all these, , like in Ghana west Africa,there are 65 local languages, but most
(12:18):
people speak English because you can'ttake one of those local languages and
try to force other people to speak it.
And English just happens to be alanguage that it's like nobody's gonna
be offended if we speak English becausethat's an outside language that doesn't
belong to any of our ethnic groups.
So it almost becomes likethis peaceful compromise.
So I just thought thatwas some good context.
(12:40):
When you're looking at these languagesthat appear to be like, like bislama
sometimes when you hear it spoken itsounds a little like an undeveloped
language, but it's really thiskind of compromise type situation.
Jimmy Price (12:53):
Yeah.
, that makes sense.
And then I think this rolls right into.
The next portion of it as alcohol,talking about , what changed and what
caused sort of a swap over to the kava.
And it was a good bit monetary based.
I thought it was a lot due to thegovernment, like pushing kava,
but that may not necessarily beenthe case in this regard of the
(13:14):
first like explosion of kava.
In 1982 Vanuatu looking atestablishing currency and the French
government control of the exchange ratebetween the French franc and the New
Hebrides Franc, which still remained incirculation was they think manipulated.
And of course it, it caused a massiveinflation in prices for imported goods.
(13:35):
And beer rose 170% Wine Rose540% between 1979 and 1982.
So it started to be very unattainablein terms of pricing for the locals.
And, kava started to pickup a bit more interest.
It was in this context, it says the, apolitical redefinition in dramatically
rising prices in the 1980s, the kavasuddenly hit the urban scene in Villa.
(14:00):
It's quite, quite an ironicthing that prices go up.
Alcohol, , Hey, whoa, , they,they, and part of this says
that three shells of kava.
It cost around a hundred vatuor one US dollar at the time.
And for most people, three shellswas sufficient to produce a feeling
of relaxation and wellbeing.
, they, they got their kava feeling.
And although the effect of kavaand alcohol on the system must
be calibrated on two completelydifferent scales, everyone agreed
(14:23):
that 300 vatu worth of beer wouldhardly even get you started, let alone
you can happily on your way home.
Knew the utility of kava recreation.
It was all of a sudden, , hey, this isway cheaper than alcohol, and we go home
and we feel better and all that stuff.
And it took hold that way.
But Let's see.
It talks about how developmentsplace in different areas there
(14:45):
with kava bars starting to pop up.
And the last report, and let's see,this villa in 1995, there are 140
kava outlets and a in a town with apopulation of 18,000 or one kava bar
for approximately each 130 people.
So it's a very densely kavad area.
But it went back from almostobscurity to complete conversion
(15:08):
with society once again.
And that's where it picked up fromthere and started gaining speed.
Douglas LaRose (15:13):
When I see figures like that, wonder why I live where I live.
. If there was a kava bar forevery 180 people in my town would
be that would be like, that.
That sounds like the best town ever.
Jimmy Price (15:24):
right?
. It's like nobody's mad
. Douglas LaRose: Yeah, exactly.
I thought it was interesting readingabout , how during that time, , there
were these entrepreneurs who movedto, to Port Villa from places like
Pentecost, and they put up theseimprovised knakamals or kava bars.
There was there's a discussionabout one gentleman who started
(15:45):
an establishment called Mona.
Mona, m a u n a.
, that was where a shellof kava cost 100 Vatu.
, and people to go to and get theirthree shells . What was really cool
and this reminds me of some otherplaces around the world, people
would put out these little kind ofbutane candles like with diesel wicks.
And they would light them andput them outside on the road to
(16:07):
signify that they had kava for sale.
And it didn't have to be like anakamal, it could just be somebody's
home and they would prepare kava andthen you could go to that person's
home or backyard or whatever and,, you'd pay your 100 vatu or whatever.
But that was their way of conveying to youthat, Hey, we just made a bunch of kava.
Come on, come in, have a, she.
, it, it seems like a great likethat sounds like paradise to me.
(16:30):
I want to be in Seaside Villa in 1980drinking kava with people for 100
Vatu, right?
a dollar.
Douglas LaRose (16:40):
There was also, in Santo, a similar trend where these kava bars
started opening and then that spreadthis kind of culture of the nakamal
this culture of the Kava bar spreadfrom Vanuatu to New Caledonia with these
migrant workers who left Vanuatu to findbetter opportunities in New Caledonia.
(17:00):
So really what's being described hereis literally the birth of the Kava bar.
Yes.
Because Crowley makes it very clear thatprior to this period, kava was this kind
of like old man marriage ceremony, funeraldrink that It was like, it wasn't cool.
Like, , let's have somebeers, let's have some wine.
But after the independence and this kindof financial crisis that the country
(17:23):
was going through, kava became thislike thing, this like social beverage
that people would drink at Kava bars.
I just think it's so cool that like hecaptured that he was living through this
and he was able to capture kava goingfrom this like kind of obscure religious
ritual kind of old man kind of thing tobeing something cool and young and vibrant
(17:46):
and let's hang out and drink some kava.
Jimmy Price (17:48):
Yeah.
We did it, it started to go into Noumeanew Caledonia, and it says in the paper
that it was about $4 a shell there.
But it seems that the money wasn't aproblem in New Caledonia at the time,
which is probably drew people too fromthe other islands to the location to Yep.
And also Drew kava in.
And yeah, that, that's ahuge kava export place now.
Like New Caledonia is oneof the largest exports.
(18:11):
Kiribati, New Caledonia areextremely large tonnage in terms
of what they import from Vanuatu.
It's quite impressive.
In fact, I think it was more thanUnited States for one of 'em.
We come on to , the next portion of this.
, if we move, moving right alonglet's see, continuity and innovation
in the culture of kava drinking.
And it talks about how in many aspectsthe drinking of kava in these commercial
(18:34):
establishments in towns represents adirect continuation of ancient customs.
The kava outlets are always dimlylit as dictated by custom, as usual.
Of course, this is quite, quitecontrast to what we see in America.
The noise is kept to a minimum.
Kava can be drunk according to whateverlocal custom one feels comfortable with.
It was always drunk in onegulp as required by tradition
(18:55):
everywhere in Vanuatu.
. This is what I think of when Ithink of kava drinking culture.
This is what I think of in my head.
The dimly lit room.
The noise kept to a minimum, butthat doesn't always translate
over when you cross the Pacific.
We have our local bands playingthe kava bars and the, the spoken
words and the all, all the otherthings that we have that go on in
(19:16):
kava bars over here in America.
It's quite a contrast.
But I believe represents kavaas it's physiological effect.
Like when you drink strong kava.
, you want to sit down.
You don't want peoplescreaming in your ear.
You don't want the lightsflashing on and off.
You want, , calm, you don'twant anything moving around.
It's more of a reflection of whatKava wants to be honest with you.
(19:37):
It seems like.
Yeah.
I feel like it, it embodies whatkava would like you for you to
do, and that's for you to getin a dark place that's quiet.
and be contemplative.
And it just reflects in the kavabar at the time or the nakamals.
It's interesting that differentpeople have such different
traditions of drinking kava.
People from the north will squat to drinktheir shell according to the local custom.
(19:58):
And then while people from the centraland South Islands will generally
stand but apart from the will havetheir backs turned to everybody else.
One thing, I don't think it's mentionedhere, but in nakamals is when you
leave, is that no one ever says goodbye.
You never say goodbye.
You just get up and you go home.
Douglas LaRose (20:13):
Yeah, your point about kava bars in the US a really good one.
I've been to, oh, I don't know,maybe 10 or 15 kava bars in the us.
A lot of them in California,a lot of them in Florida.
Some are better than others.
In a lot of instances , JeffBowman , the knock in Boca Raton,
Florida like on many days, you'llgo in there and it is very mellow.
(20:36):
He keeps the lights lowkeeps the music pretty soft.
And I've actually talked to him about itand he said that, yeah, , when you go to
Vanuatu he's been to all these places.
, you go into these kava bars and people,they sit there quietly, and . They
drink their kava and they whisper toeach other and, but it's mostly this
very kind of meditative, mellow mood.
I don't wanna to judge people too much,, like how they wanna drink their kava,
(20:58):
, if, you like to get together with yourbuddies at the Kava bar in San Diego,
and listen to heavy metal music whileyou drink your kava, , that's your thing.
But it's n never gonna be my thing.
I think it's cool on the paperhow he talks about how all these
different depending on where youcome from in Vanuatu or where the
people came from at this time inparticular there's a section about the
(21:21):
Tannes people, the people from Tana,
if you, went to their kava bar at thetime, you would hear them, , speaking of
these like very quiet like whispers ascontrasted to the Pentecost clientele
who are considered more raucous.
And so even when they are drinkingkava they're a little bit louder.
And so it's interesting how, , I feel likein the 1980s and 1990s maybe when this,
(21:45):
these kava bars started popping up youprobably saw a lot more difference between
the kava bars and like where the peoplecame from who frequented those kava bars.
And I'm sure, , to this day, I'm surethat, , if you're in Port Villa you
know which Kava bar you wanna go to.
The one that sells the type ofkava that you like to drink that
has the, , the mood that you like.
(22:06):
yEah.
Jimmy Price (22:06):
Super cool stuff.
And he goes into talking aboutsome linguistics , of the the
kava culture in this portion.
Where he talks about . One popularkava bar features a hand painted.
Picture of a man sitting pensivelywith the following, irresistible,
caption meet hot kava icom we com.
I can feel the kava reallyhaving an effect on me.
(22:27):
Another outlet of advertisingaimed at the primarily Tannesse
clientele guaranteed that the boysserving kava were genuine virgins.
All yeah.
Yep.
And that was a big thing.
Like it was, , it was thought that ifyou were a more experienced male and
you'd chewed the kava, it would reremove portion of the effect of the kava.
(22:47):
So, , they thought that if virgin boysand girls were the ones that were chewing
the kava, that it would be stronger.
Douglas LaRose (22:54):
No, I wonder and I don't think this was explained in the
paper, but at this time If Kava was kavabeing prepared that way, like in the
1980s at these namas and Port Villa.
I don't know if it was, it
Jimmy Price (23:05):
says they were
. Douglas LaRose: Okay.
They're actually, it
was advertised that they were
Douglas LaRose (23:10):
okay that way.
But in terms of this, like the chewingand spiting, the kava into the bowl,
like they were making that much.
That's, it's a good question.
I,
Jimmy Price (23:18):
I'd like to Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know if they were actually making.
Through chewing or not.
And at this point throughthe bars, I doubt it.
I think they were grinding it witha meat Grindr, cuz I think that's
a lot easier to do in mass Yeah.
Than make an effort for, , tons of people.
Yeah.
But yeah, they were probably, hadthe boys out there grinding them.
The kava, the
Okay.
Here's the part that that we tread intoa little bit of issue back and forth
(23:39):
especially with what we see online.
Yeah.
Here's where they said a few kavaoutlets now sell cold beer along
with their kava because they foundthat drinking a beer afterwards
what they say shores up their kava.
But this is not a endorsementof that practice is just showing
that this is about the time where.
Started happening in the South Pacificwhere they where, where they were
(24:00):
observing the bars that began tosell alcoholic beverages as well.
And when we say don't drink afterkava, we're, we talk about drinking
in the American sense like a drink.
Drinking is like going out andgetting binge like binge drinking.
Yeah.
Completely.
, drunk blackout well made forsome people blackout drunk.
And that's the weekend.
They were drinking a beer afterwards.
(24:20):
But it says however, the people thatdid do this were expected to respect the
quietness and the sanctuary of the kavabar and not behave boisterously is if
they would in the bar which makes sense.
And they would be shush if necessary andasked to leave if they didn't comply.
Yeah, it wasn't like they were you.
Inviting a bad culture in, it justseemed like they were trying to , people
(24:42):
were doing that and they're like,all right, we can sell this and
that at the same time let's make,make a little extra cash on top.
But it didn't seem to be a big issue
Douglas LaRose (24:49):
but yeah, you can't say
and it's not even really the it's not evenreally related to the topic because no.
Yeah, you're right.
But it could be, it could, because thefirst thing that people think of in
the US who drink kava is that, , mixingthe two together is bad for you.
But that's a different topic.
Think that the point that Crowley makesthat's really interesting re related
to this topic, is that these kava bars.
(25:10):
, even though they offered beerand, they would, sell beer,
make a profit, , it's a business.
If people were going there for thestrict purpose of, , having two
or three beers and starting to getruckus, they would ask them to leave.
And so that tells me that theywere trying to uphold a cultural
norm of the Kava Bar beinga quiet, kava centric place.
(25:34):
Yes.
They were offering beer to peoplewho wanted to buy it, but they didn't
want it to become a bar so I thinkthat's the point that he's making,
is that some people, , would have acouple shells and then have a beer.
As long as they didn't.
Take it too far.
Like it wasn't considered a big deal.
And from what I've heard that, , thatthat still happens in the Pacific Islands.
People will have beer atthe end of a kava session.
(25:56):
I can't imagine having a beerafter drinking kava just because
, it already dehydrates you.
So I don't, wouldn't wanna drink a beerafter having kava, but hey, look , it's,
I'm not gonna try to prescribe people,, their, their choices and behaviors.
Jimmy Price (26:10):
This is where I say that,, they'll use the argument of
they do it in the South Pacific.
Well, they do?
However you can see this paper,they didn't do it that long ago.
, kava has been aroundfor thousands of years.
, this combination is not thishas only been around for a.
Slight portion, just like a couple,, obviously here about 40 years, , 40,
(26:30):
50 years they've been drinkingsomething else with their kava.
It's only like a tiny fractionof what Kava culture really is.
So that's all I ask to, to keep inconsideration is that, , when we
talk about that, , people's theydo it in this South Pacific way.
Yeah, they do.
But you gotta remember, it's not,that's, it's like us doing it here.
It wouldn't make it right.
, just, just because we do that.
(26:50):
It doesn't, it's not representative ofthe kava culture that we speak of when
we talk about the kava culture, thatspans, , Just, just a long, , and cons.
Comparatively, not a longtime, but still a long time.
, 3000 years is a long time fora plant to be propagated and
consumed and continue to be farmed.
And, , we still have living specimensof this today from 3000 years ago
(27:13):
to go back to Piper, which manai.
It's just such a long history.
We just wanna keep it inperspective that this Yeah.
Isn't something that's goneon for a very long time.
And it's not necessarilywhat would be called culture.
It's just an addition that's been broughton due to, eh, the West as always.
Douglas LaRose (27:29):
Also, and we'll talk about this in a later episode, but it's
also to, it's also important to rememberthat alcohol was not Fermented and
didn't exist in a lot of these contexts.
Yes.
Prior to the colonial period.
. But we'll talk about that in a, ata later time in a different article.
Jimmy Price (27:46):
Yeah.
Let's skip on down to adifferent section here.
We've talked about this for quite a while.
Yeah.
And we can just talk about Villa now.
They, before it was very uncommon forwomen to even consider being involved in a
kava ceremony or just drinking ka at all.
It says, for one thing, womenwere, in most cases, traditionally
not allowed to drink kava at all.
And on some islands, women couldeven be put to death for catching
(28:08):
sight of a man drinking kava.
So that's, that's pretty serious.
And then nowadays, villa,it's not uncommon for women.
The lone are in groups,occasionally in the company of
men to drink kava at the kava bar.
So it's, it had become more sociallyacceptable at this point for
women to join the kava drinking.
And it does say that it still shockssome traditionalists in newcomers
(28:29):
from outer islands, and some kava barsdo subtly make women feel unwelcome.
But this is becoming uncommon.
Douglas LaRose (28:35):
Women's money is after all, just as good as men's money, right?
That's, yep, that's
Jimmy Price (28:38):
right.
money is green
. Douglas LaRose: Depending when you're , I do wonder, , that that statement about
a woman could even be put to death forcatching sight of a man drinking kava.
, sometimes there are things thatpeople say but don't actually
like, play out very often.
So I wonder, , how manytimes that actually happened?
It might have been like part of the,like in some specific cultural context
(29:00):
in Vanuatu that might have been likean, that might have been , a religious,
religiously based kind of belief.
And a woman should not see aman drinking a kava, and if she
does , she should be killed.
, whatever.
But, , and the Christian Judeo-Christiantradition, there's also things in the
Bible that say , you should be killedif you like, speak ill of your father.
, it, who knows how many timesthat actually happened.
(29:21):
I don't think that Vanuatu was this
The
Douglas LaRose (29:22):
pre-colonial period, they were just slaughtering women
left and right because they caughta glimpse of a man drinking kava.
Jimmy Price (29:28):
Yeah.
I don't read too many accounts of that.
But yeah.
And just to sum up this section, itsays in the 1970s young men disdain
kava, where today is difficult to finda man in his early twenties in Villa
that has not drank at least sometimeand may drink several times a week.
So it went from a complete swapfrom nobody drinking kava to
(29:49):
a lot of people drinking kava.
And then we go on to our next sectioncalled Kava and National Identity.
Douglas LaRose (29:56):
Yeah.
So this is where the paper talks aboutthe decrease in alcohol use and the
related increase in kava drinking.
It's a little bit repetitive from theprevious discussion we had on this, but I
did highlight some language here becauseI actually found it to be really funny.
So Terry says Previously, in order to getdrunk enough to have a good rage at the
disco one had to spend a lot of moneyand a lot of time drinking beer first at
(30:21):
the somewhat more classy bar at the Rossi.
I just, I found that havea good rage at the disco.
I like, I actually don'tknow what that means.
I dunno if that's like a violent thing orif that's, anyway, and then he says thus,
partly is a way of achieving a cheaperhigh, and partly as a way of expressing
one's me, Melanesian Kava has become anestablished part of the emerging national.
(30:44):
As against local or regional identity asa kind of neo tradition, kava drinking can
now be considered both modern and trendy.
And it is therefore a respectable, evennecessary thing for young guys wearing
jeans and Reebok to be engaging in.
I just thought it was so funny that hementioned your Reebok cuz I remember
(31:06):
I, I don't know if we're the sameage, but I remember when I 11 or 12
years old, the Reebok pumps came out.
Yeah.
And the Reebok pumps if you didn't havea pair of re Reebok pumps, like you
might as well just not show up to school.
Like you're gonna get like trash can.
Like they were all the rage.
And, but it's just so funny, like in2023, like I can't even remember the
(31:28):
last time I heard the word Reebok
So anyways, I just thought that wasa good funny little, it was a funny
little Time capsule within thisarticle that , he captured there.
Jimmy Price (31:36):
Yep.
Essentially alcohol consumption decreaseddramatically since their independence.
So it's just great.
That's a great thing.
Yeah.
Usually you hear about theother, go the other way.
It's always drinking is increasingit's great to see that go
the opposite way for once.
Let's see.
, and we're gonna go here nowinto linguistics of, of kava.
Douglas LaRose (31:53):
Yeah.
This is like the second half of thepaper, like the if you were to divide
this paper into two parts, the firstpart would be the kind of that historical
and the historical summary of kava.
And the second part would be this,linguistic exploration of all
the language that surrounds kava.
And it's really fascinating.
So hold onto
Jimmy Price (32:11):
your hats.
Yep.
We got some new terms here too.
That's they're really really interesting.
And let's see., I've read elsewherethat the youth in Villa and Santo
as being a linguistically innovativegroup, coining and spreading a huge
number of instantaneously popularslang expressions in bislama.
These expressions cover a wide rangeof urban and youthful experiences
concentrating in areas of financialhardship, physical confrontation,
(32:34):
and sexual adventurism being such anessential ingredient of modern urban life.
In Vanuatu lexicon of covent drinking toterminology has of course also evolved.
And here we get into the interesting anddiverse different words and phrases that
have come along with kavas induction.
And it's consumption.
And it says the word kavaitself is attested in written
(32:57):
sources from very early on.
There are other co related words fromoverseas origins, and it could be
have entered into the language underconditions of social contact , that
were operative a century ago.
For instance, Tombo and Naba Nambia,not Nambia referred to a wide iron
pipe, welded to a metal base whichallowed them to pound the kava roots and
has a source from the Solomon Island.
(33:18):
So there, there were differentsources for these words.
And let's see here.
. Yeah.
And the phrase "pu pu" and it means to, rinse one's mouth out after drinking kava.
And that generally meansjust cleanse your palate.
, this was something that came upduring our Hawaiian talanoa.
Went to the get together beforethe main meeting, and they were
(33:38):
like, where's the poo-poos?
? My wife just looked at me and was like,what did they just say ? I was like, oh.
It was like, I ate earlier butno, they and they gave Morgan
crap for not bringing poo-poos.
And yeah, that was my firstsort of exposure to that word,
and I was just like, oh, okay.
All right.
All right.
So it means,
Douglas LaRose (33:57):
What did they mean, Jimmy?
When snacks by not singing
Jimmy Price (34:00):
snacks.
Snack snacks.
Yeah.
They were just looking for snacks.
Yeah.
They were looking for snacks and yeah.
I didn't even know that was a requirement.
So if you, and this is a word to the wise,you ever go to a Talanoa stop by the store
before you go there and get just like, just get some chips, just get anything,
just to snack on and bring that with you.
Because that is one of the thingsthat people love is the, when you
(34:22):
bring poo-poos your snacks and, yeah.
sorry side note there,
. Douglas LaRose: Yep.
If you ever find yourself at a tele Yes.
Don't, you can't sayJimmy didn't tell you.
That's right.
They'll,
they'll ask where the poos are at and you'll
be like, ah, . I knew it.
I knew I should, that was episode twoof could have spared myself that.
Douglas LaRose (34:42):
So as this part of the article moves forward, I love.
Reading pigeon bi lama and pigeonEnglish because it's just so funny.
Literally funny to thinkabout some of these words.
The word for the biz lamaword for the the pestol that
they use to pound the kava.
They call it a Ramafrom Ramer in English.
(35:02):
From the filtering clothfrom sef, so seieve.
And then the filter the passingkava through a filter is Pasm,
like pasm Kava, long se, and Kai.
Kai this when I workedin the Solomon Islands.
Kai is the word for eat to chew.
So when you go to somebody'shouse and they'll say oh, you like
(35:26):
It means do you want to eat chicken?
So it also, I guess apparentlymeans masticate, like to
chew the kave in your mouth.
And then to pound kava is to ram 'em,ram . So is this It's funny to hear these
words and know, the it's this marriageof English and these local grammars.
And then I think the gem of the articlethe holy grail that is buried within
(35:47):
this article is the description of thedifferent types of kava and relating to
their maturity, strength, and appearance.
And the famous tudei.
Kava, which comes from twodays, it lasts for two days.
That's one that we all know.
But Jimmy, I will hand over to youthe honor of introducing our dear
(36:08):
listeners to the the holy Grail of
Jimmy Price (36:10):
this article.
So you've heard two day, sitback we actually have a term in
our lexicon in the very, verylocal lexicon of three day kava.
That's the stuff you don'twant to get ahold of.
That's just like the worst ever.
But now, oh, now we have a new word,foday, which is kava, that quote with
an effect that lasts four days inparenthesis, or at least a very long
(36:34):
time, . So now we have Foday kava two.
Three day locally and foday kava.
So if anybody gets some fodaykava, please let us know
Douglas LaRose (36:44):
Or try it
. Jimmy Price: Yeah.
Or try it and tell youto put this drug away.
. But yeah it's, I had not,I have not heard that.
I'm glad that this came up in thispaper cuz there's also several young
kava, white kava, young kava Kava.
Kava is, it's young kava, right?
That's, yep.
Jimmy Price (37:03):
White kava.
What a kava.
With a grayish colored flesh.
And
Douglas LaRose (37:07):
I think it's wet.
Wet.
Like white cava.
White kava.
Yeah like I think itcomes from the word wet.
Jimmy Price (37:14):
Oh, okay.
Gotcha and then of course it goesand it talks about one of the
words we hear all the time, maus.
Yeah.
And maccas is not a kava specific word.
It is used basically just to,to describe anything after it's
chewed saw dust or any of any kind.
It's just leftover residues or powders,not specifically at kava, but it is,
Maccas is the leftovers after you're donewith your kava, when you've strained your
(37:35):
kava and the pieces of root that are leftover in your bag afterwards, that's maccas
and Yeah.
Here is the stuff you throw away.
Yeah.
And it's, and I'm glad to seethis described in a paper.
Cause I have actually not seen ittalked about in terms of kava.
I just thought it was a Hawaiian word.
Good to see where it comes from and.
Douglas LaRose (37:51):
Then we get into the good stuff where Terry talks
about the some of the expressionsdescribing the effects of kava.
And I just love this stuff.
Listen, long kava.
Listen to the kava.
Listening to the kava, hear 'emkava like feeling, hearing the kava.
These are all things that, oh my God,like I can I wish that I could stand
(38:12):
on the top of the highest mountain withthe loudest loudspeaker in the world and
remind people that, you don't take kava.
You.
People talk about you kava, dosing kava,and oh, how big of a dose do you take?
It's no.
Shut up.
Like . When you drinkkava, you just hear 'em.
Kava listen long.
Kava, like like it, you havea conversation with the kava.
(38:35):
When you drink the kava.
When you drink your kava, your bodyand the kava are having a conversation.
And if you're not ready to havethat conversation, you're not
gonna get anything out of it.
It's a very subtle.
Lover . It's something that like reallywhen you drink kava for a long time
(38:55):
and you know what it feels like andyou can hear it and you understand
the language that it speaks it's afeeling that cannot be described like
alcohol or marijuana or anything else.
And so I just want everybodyto always use that language.
And I like, I kind of wanna be a bitof a dictator about it because it's
so important to me that people don'tconfuse kava with other intoxicants.
(39:16):
. This is something that like, I just.
I can't I'll shut up, but it's asoapbox that I proudly stand upon,
Jimmy Price (39:22):
but it and it makes sense if you drink kava,
it pushes you this direction.
Yeah.
You want things to be quiet.
You want to listen, you want tosit there and be contemplative.
It's, I feel like the Vanuatu kava cultureis more viscerally interacting with kava
as a plant and as a physiological agentthan a lot of these other cultures are
that are more ceremonially structuredand traditionally more like hierarchy.
(39:47):
So I think this kind of it kavais powerful, say, like to Tonga
and it talks about, we've talkedabout that in our last podcast.
But it they think of it as powerful stuffbecause of its sociopolitical importance.
But here I think it's more reflectedthat kava is important because of its,
Like actual biological effect because ofwhat it actually does and how it, we see
(40:10):
these direct correlations between howkava makes us feel and what they suggest
doing or what they did in practice.
And they're, they're justtheir drinking traditions.
It makes sense because it shows thatthey appreciated those qualities of
kava that were more physiologicaland not necessarily representative
of hierarchy or any sort of politicalstanding or anything like that.
(40:30):
It just, it's interesting to see howthat translated to reality from going
and drinking kavas in different ways.
And I, is there one culturethat's, right or wrong?
So it's just, I truly don't believe so,but it's interesting how they differ
in the utility that they ascribe kava,because, , different cultures say
that kava is, the facilitator, , it'swhat allows the tall Noah to exist.
(40:53):
And for others it's more of a personalcommunication with kava that , you just
buy your kava and you drink it and,this comes out as listen to the kava.
Yeah.
Douglas LaRose (41:03):
I, yeah.
I think this kind of goes back a littlebit to Nancy Pollock's paper or this
conversation does, there is no right orwrong way to, to drink kava, just like
there's no right or wrong way to eat food.
Like every , like cultures havedifferent ways of, having dinner.
Like some people eat as a family,some people eat separately.
And this paper is, focusing , onVanuatu kava traditions.
(41:26):
And even Terry's even getting intolike, How people from different parts
of Vanuatu drink kava differently.
I think the big takeaway isthere should be no gatekeepers.
There should be no like kava policethat are telling you how, what the right
and wrong ways are of drinking kava,because there are no right or wrong ways.
Jimmy Price (41:45):
Well, Except for dosing it except for,
Douglas LaRose (41:48):
yeah.
Or doing or pounding kava shots
.This moves very nicely into the kava bar . , speaking of kava bars, this
this paper starts talking about . Weall know the word nakamal from reading
about kava, from learning about kava.
, there's a, , Namal at home is a a companythat sells kava here in the United States.
(42:09):
And nakamals are what peoplecall kava bars in Vanuatu.
And I didn't know that this wasever controversial, but now I do.
That the word actually comesfrom a local Vanuatu language.
And it was referred to the communalmeeting houses and villages in rural
areas where the elders and the chiefswould hold discussions visitors
(42:33):
and have like community events.
It was a more ritualistic place forpeople to settle differences and for
village affairs to be worked out.
But it became a a word for forkava bars in its traditional usage.
It would be an area inthe village under a tree.
Where men would get together,drink , drink kava, and
(42:54):
talk about and Tana, right?
Yeah.
Talk about local issues.
But then it becamerelated to, to kava bars.
And this was so controversial thatthe National Council of Chiefs , which
in a lot of these traditionalindigenous countries that have strong
kind of ethnic identities, theyhave these councils of chiefs that
they preside over cultural affairs.
(43:15):
They publicly came out anddeplored the use of the word
namal to describe a kava bar.
And they proposed thatpeople called them kava bas.
, another cool fact that cameout of this, this paper for me,
Jimmy Price (43:27):
definitely same here.
That's one of my highlighted spots.
, that the word knock mk was actuallycontroversial . But he talks about
drinking kava in Vanuatu beinga fun thing to do on the evening.
And much of this vocabulary associatedwith it falls into that category of
kind of being fun, so slang, and wewe roll into our second spot of slang.
(43:48):
This also was another fun sectionof this paper, and I think most
people would enjoy this spot a lot.
He talks about the rise and fallof slang in Vanuatu and bislama.
Starts out in September, 1990,radio Vanuatu began a campaign
to promote breastfeeding ofbabies over bottle feeding.
And in one of the advertisements,it says, Tata Batel.
(44:09):
Tt him I number one.
Which means goodbye bottle breastsare bests . And within two months of
that same year, it'd become all therage for someone to say instead of
goodbye or Tata, to say Tata batel.
And for everyone to bust outlaughing when you said that.
So that was one of the examplesof slang kind of adoption in pop
culture the bislama language.
(44:31):
And of course we get into the kavadrinking session of this and I
think I'll let Doug talk about thatcuz that's, it's entertaining.
Douglas LaRose (44:38):
Yeah.
That first part.
Terry's trying to explain how slang works.
Sometimes slang is a temporary thing andit just becomes like a joke that people
tell I, I think like when we use wordslike woke these are things that, 20 years
from now, we probably won't still betalking about wokeness and being woke.
Like it's slang comes into the cultural,that discourse and then it goes away.
(45:00):
Probably for the better in that case.
Yeah.
But he goes into how some of these thingsactually become embedded and permanent.
And one of the coolest things,and I'm gonna start using this
all the time now come drink kava.
, in English, that means come anddrink kava here, just one shell.
And you'll have four wheels up in the air.
(45:21):
And four wheels up in the air isbasically a car that's flipped
over and wheels are up in the air.
So it basically means thatlike you've had a lot of kava.
And I think that my new way of describingmyself when I've had enough kava to,
to make a Saturday night, like a goodSaturday night is gonna be fully on top.
(45:44):
On top.
I thought that was really funny.
. Oh, really quick.
There was, there's an anecdote inhere that I thought was so funny.
He's talking about fo weil on topand then he goes on to say that That
there was an instance where therewere a group of Christian singers
fun like fundamentalist evangelicalChristian singers who had created
this like anti kava drinking sect ofChristianity where they were, of course,
(46:07):
deploring Kava, the, the Devil's Root.
And they were singing hymns of praiseto God very close to a knock ole
where, you know, as we heard earlier,people at Knock oles, they want,
they're quiet, they want peace.
They don't want, zealots shouting,about how they're going to hell.
And and the kave drinkers are in,this is the knock ball and . And they
(46:27):
said long on top, four wheel on top.
Same basically meaning Hey, watch out.
If I go over there, you'regonna be all laid out flat.
You're gonna be four wheels on top, . Sothey weren't actually angry, but , in
this anecdote, they said it amongstthemselves oh, these people, like
they're complaining about us drinkingkava and trying to make a point of it.
(46:51):
But we'll go over there and lay 'em out.
. , I just thought it was
Jimmy Price (46:54):
funny.
That was a good one.
We'll move on to the sourcesof kava drinking terminology.
It talks about the sourcesof kava drinking terminology.
, and they begin with.
What is particularly interesting about thedevelopment of kava terminology in Bislama
in the 1980s is that the process havebeen an entirely melanesian one, most
of the lexile expansion in other semanticfields in Bislama, since independence has
(47:15):
involved direct borrowing from words inEnglish and to a lesser extent French.
Thus, we find English derived politicalterms as the following, are now
well-established in lexicon, though theywere unattested before 19 seven, such
as Pa Paman like Parliament parliament.
Thank you.
Democracy, which is obviously democracy.
Rebel, which is rebel election, whichis obviously an invoked V O T vo vote.
(47:39):
While , there's now a sizableamount of European kava files.
Haunting the kava bars of Vila.
Obviously, neither French nor Englishis provided to be viable sources of
co related vocabulary in Bislama.
For the most part, ni Vanuatu had to relyon their own linguistic creativity and
coming up with a necessary terminology.
So it, it is a truly homegrownsort of thing where they had to
(48:01):
come up with their own words.
And it looks like they were making somesort of instant kava cuz they've here
it talks up about a word that wasn'tnecessarily in the lexicon, but it is the
word nes kava, which is something that'sprobably a playoff of words from Nescafe.
And what they had was somesort of fine gray powder they
were putting in their glass.
And it would dissolve and they weregetting a tolerable quote unquote hit.
(48:25):
So it, I believe it was somesort of instant cava that they
were, they had made or maybe somesort of water soluble extract.
But it was something back in the daywhere, and it was something they said
that, they were playing with and youwould see it every now and then, but
it wasn't a regular sort of item.
But that was an interesting aside there.
Douglas LaRose (48:42):
Another one another one of these bislama adaptations that is another
just absolutely beautiful word that I'mgoing to include in my lexicon is duck.
And and duck.
Duck is.
used to describe people who whenyou've had a lot of kava and you're,
you're really here in the kava.
Like maybe it's a little bit too loud.
(49:02):
And it's referring to theunsteady way that a person walks.
So duck.
It's like saying the word duck twice.
Yeah, exactly.
. And and then the word for the bucketsthat they ladle the kava out of, and
kava bars is a pubele and pubellein French is the word for a bin.
Like a trashcan.
(49:23):
Trashcan,
. It oftentimes, when you see pictures of namas and Vanuatu,
you'll see like a big rubber.
Trashcan, like literally a trashcan.
, and it's full of kava andthat's what they like.
Keep at the kava in, and people go tothe kava bar and they take your shell
and they go and they ladle kava into yourshell from the Kube super interesting
(49:44):
. Jimmy Price: Yeah.
And I think this brings a spec,there's a couple of other things here.
It talks about knockout kava NO k A O t knockout and t k O.
And that's also, from tko o or technicalknockout, which are boxing terms that
have been drafted to, to be used inthe kava descriptions, which are app,
there's some kavas that are knockouts.
Boxing I, I think is a pretty big sport in Vanuatu.
(50:06):
. So I think that that makes sense.
They, they watched boxing and they sawpeople getting knocked out and they
were like, oh, this kava him, knockout,
, Jimmy Price: and then work lit.
That's another one that they use.
The bislama word for kava, workletkava, which means you're getting to
work late with this one . You're notgonna wake up with your alarm clock
. The sun is not gonna wake you up.
(50:28):
You're going get sleep.
To be honest, when I drink kava, when I have a good kava
session and I fall asleep at 1130 or12 o'clock at night kava makes me sleep
so well and it gives me the best dreams.
Like I just have these reallyvivid, intense dreams when I go to
sleep after drinking kava and whenit's 7:30 AM and I'm supposed to be
(50:53):
getting up to go to work,, I struggle.
I'm like, I really don'twanna get outta bed.
Cuz every time I close my eyes, I goback into these like vivid dreams.
Yep.
So I know work late.
very well.
work late.
Jimmy Price (51:04):
And that brings us to the conclusion of Terry's paper where he
says that in this paper I presented arange of examples of illustrating how
new terminology relating to kava drinkingin its preparation has evolved among
predominantly young urban niVanuatu.
Douglas LaRose (51:18):
Renaissance of Covid drinking in town was partly a response
to purely economic factors, there hasalso been a significant political content
to the changes and that a kava has.
It's become one of the main ways inwhich a national as against a purely
regional or local identity has come tobe expressed in independent Vanuatu.
Jimmy Price (51:35):
As cultures evolve, so do languages which develop means of
expressing what is important to membersof that culture in Vanuatu, as kava has
become an important part of daily lifetown dwellers so too has newly developed
kava terminology been an important partof daily day speech In the language it
expresses this , national culture bislama.
(51:56):
And that concludes TerryCrowley's paper in 1995.
Douglas LaRose (52:00):
And I think that, That conclusion that last sentence
there, that where he talks about howthat the day-to-day speech of people
expresses the national culture.
That is Terry's work in a nutshellbecause . That's sociolinguistics.
That is the way that we talk, the waythat we talk to our friends and family.
Shapes the way that we see the worldand the way that we identify and
(52:23):
create and recreate our culture.
The implications of thispaper go beyond just kava.
He's actually making a statementabout all of humanity, the way that
we talk about things over time.
It changes, and it changesthe way we see the world.
A again, I just wanna raise a shell toTerry , who passed away 17 years ago, but
really incredible legacy that he left.
(52:44):
And let's go walk about Duck
Jimmy Price (52:45):
Duck and we gotta get DJ full wheel on.
At our next Rave
. Douglas LaRose: That's right.
Yep.
The next, yep.
The next panic at the Disco.
Disco.
The disco.
The raging at the Disco . All right.
Thanks for listening guys.
Welcome to the Kava Lounge with the Kavasseur and Jimmy Price
Knead up your kava.
Pour in the 10 and sit down and enjoyanother session of the Kava Lounge
Jimmy Price (00:15):
Hi, I'm Jimmy.
Today's podcast is gonnabe about the national.
And the national language of Vanuatu.
This was a paper dated 1995.
The author was , Dr.
Terry Crowley.
And we're gonna do a little bit ofan introduction on Terry just to talk
about, , a little bit of his life and whathe did and how important he was to the
(00:35):
linguistics scene, especially in Vanuatu.
He was born in 1953.
in Essex.
And , he went to the National AustralianUniversity where he completed his doctoral
thesis in Vanuatu on the study of Palm.
And I'm not sure if I'm , I'm probablynot saying that correctly, but Pese
maybe but do this Van Vanuatu languagesbecame his incredible lifelong love.
(00:58):
Loved the Bislamas and the Creolelanguages that were around.
He was , a lecturer in theDepartment of Languages at the
University of PNG in Port Mosby.
And we were just remarking aboutthat momentarily that he must have
seen some really interesting stuffgo on down in where he was stationed,
cuz that's a a well-known spot.
If you type that in and it willshow you a travel warning on
(01:19):
Google where they say, do not visit
Douglas LaRose (01:21):
When you talk in my field of international development and
humanitarian aid when you talk aboutcountries that you should feel nervous
about visiting or you should ask.
am I sane ? Before I traveling into oneof these countries, Papa New Guinea, is up
there with the Somalias, the South Sudans.
(01:43):
Yeah, just like thebasket cases of the world.
It's a very challenging country.
Very dangerous.
Yeah, so he lived a shortlife and I'm sure probably
has something to do with it.
Jimmy Price (01:53):
Most certainly.
He went from PNG Port Mosby there toVanuatu and 1983 to become the director of
Pacific Languages Unit in the Universityof South Pacific and Port Villa.
After that he finally went onto Hamilton New Zealand and was
professor of linguistics at theWaikato University in Hamilton.
And the guy wrote 21 books And over70 journal articles in his life.
(02:19):
It's amazing.
These included grammars of sevendifferent languages from Australian
and Austronesian , oceanic languages,families along with Bislama and K Creole.
And he was extremely interestedin the Vanuatu languages.
He did so many other things too.
He , was a member of the let'ssee if I'm saying this right, a
Klong bislama, which kind of makessense now that I say it out loud.
(02:41):
Bislama committee for much of the 1980sa semi-official body kind of dealing with
the standardization and other issues.
So he helped standardizea certain bislama nouns.
Verbs, just basically thedialect so they could make it
to where you could write it down
Douglas LaRose (02:54):
local.
Yeah.
Documented.
Documented the language.
Yeah.
Jimmy Price (02:57):
From his beginning, he talked about being in interested in languages
, and writing in scripts and all that stuff.
Very important to Vanuatu and the peoplethere he was a co-convenor at UNESCO
workshops on languages and development.
In Melanesia in December, 1985.
Let's see here.
. He was a member of the MelanesianLiteracy Consortium awarded a
UNESCO grant to oversee pilotprojects in literacy development.
(03:20):
And that was in 1990.
To his friends, he was alwaysknown as a kind person.
Terry's generosity did muchto reciprocate the hospitality.
He received remote villages.
He would like typically spendseveral months a year living pretty
much like a local in Vanuatu.
He frequently supported Pacificstudents studying in his home.
So he like let him stay with him whilethey were studying and he would often put
(03:41):
their parents up when they would graduate.
Anybody from overseas or Vanuatu,he would let them stay there and
make sure that they had a place to,to stay while their kid graduated.
Cuz most of them were firsttime academic achievers.
None of their families had everbeen through any sort of schooling.
So it was a pretty big moment whentheir family got to witness that
and he always would make sure thathe had plenty of space for that.
(04:03):
But that kind of concludes a littlebit of an overview on Terry Crowley.
Very interesting individual.
Very, yeah.
Like it, yeah.
The guy has a huge history.
And I'll let you talk for a little bit,
Douglas LaRose (04:13):
Doug.
Yeah we should raise ashell to Terry Crowley.
This article when I readit I was blown away.
First of all, great writer,really good communicator.
Really the passion he has for histopic just really shines through words.
Going through history thereof his academic career and his
interests and his participation ondifferent committees and things.
, one thing , that, as an myself, one thingthat sticks out and out in the paper
(04:38):
is he's what's called a socio linguist.
Not only did he document language thegrammar, the structure, the kind of
the way that these different languageswork and the words are put together.
But he also looked at the waythat language changed over time
and how English and French wereincorporated into, to local languages.
The bislama being the kind of the primaryone that is dealt with in this paper.
(05:01):
I tip my hat to people like this becausethey really get out there and see the
world with their own eyes and, touchthe soil and talk to people and, sit
around at nakamals and drink a lot ofkava and they spend their life learning.
There's nothing that I admiremore than somebody who can make
a job out of their passion.
And you can see that in this workthat we're about to look at here.
(05:24):
This is a really good paper.
And Jimmy, thank you so much for bringingit to my attention, . You're welcome.
It's it's 16 pages of pure joy agreed.
Absolutely.
Let's start, yeah, let's dive in.
Jimmy Price (05:37):
We've divided this out into sections.
, I'm sure the link will be in thedescription, so you'll be able to
follow along if you wanna read thepaper as well with us, we're dividing
it out into the different sectionshere in the first one we have here
is pre-Independence era, Vanuatu.
It is for titled Kava and Vanuatu
Douglas LaRose (05:55):
and so basically this would be the colonial period.
Yeah.
Yes.
, Jimmy Price (05:59):
Kava had been drunk in Vanuatu for forever.
Was basically was conceived there.
It was bred there.
It was made there.
It was propagated.
There.
It was.
It was Farmed there to the pointwhere there, we talked about
in the last episode around 247different sub-varieties of kava.
So Kava had a strong footholdin Vanuatu at this time.
They think that this was prior tothe 17th and 18th century because
(06:22):
it had well, established ceremonialtraditional consumption when we first
made contact, when the west first madecontact there, there was already, , all
this, all this kava activity going on.
So we know that it had a really stronghold over populace there and talks
here about from the mid 18 hundreds,Christian missionaries came in,
(06:43):
various denominations began spreadingtheir influences, and of course it
depended on the denomination, butthe reactions were varied, they tended
to skew towards total prohibition.
Of course, we'll see lateron that was the case.
But here they were just what is this?
I guess this represents the timewhere they were just trying to
understand what the thing, was.
, obviously they came to the conclusionthat it was communicating with
(07:04):
the spirits and therefore demonicor whatever you want to call it.
And it was essentially demonized andsaid that it was bad and all that.
We'll get into that butI'll let you go Doug.
I just wanted to talk about that.
Up to, we're about to the secondparagraph of the first part
of the pre-independence era.
Douglas LaRose (07:21):
Yeah think one thing to point out in the very first paragraph,
he does briefly mention the fact thatin the local languages, in Vanuatu
there are words for kava the differentwords from the different local languages
to describe kava and kava ceremonies.
The reason that he brings that upis to show that kava , was something
that was discussed locally in locallanguage prior to the colonial period.
(07:43):
Later on in the paper, hetalks about the the different
cultures of kava in port Villa.
So people from Pentecost willgo to one nakamal people from
Tana, will go to another nakamal.
So there are all thesedifferent kava traditions.
And actually, , if you look back.
We talked about all the differentkava cultures in the Pacific.
Vanuatu is like a microcosm of that, whereyou have all these different language
(08:07):
groups, ethnic groups, and most of themconsumed kava and they all had their
different kind of traditions around it.
So I think it's pretty cool that hekinda like puts that front and center.
Prior to this colonial period, therewas this rich kava tradition that
was disrupted , by the Anglo ofFrench condominium colonial period.
He gets into his own experience Ithought it was really interesting reading
(08:28):
about how he a young anthropologist,linguist in the 1970s which that
would've been during the colonial period.
He went to Vanuatu and was in thevillages doing research and didn't
see that much kava being consumed.
This guy Terry, he was.
, he was there when this likerevolution happened, when this
(08:49):
kava renaissance happened.
He only saw kava prepared, and onthree or four occasions I think all
of those occasions were weddings.
And it was only older men whodrink kava in those ceremonies.
At that time people werestill going for the booze.
. People were still hitting the bottle.
Sounds like beer and winewere the drink of choice.
And so Terry watched Vanuatuliterally go from this colony
(09:14):
where, , people were boozing it up toa country where people embraced kava
and the the independence period.
Jimmy Price (09:21):
certainly.
And that brings us perfectly into theIndependence Renaissance is his titled
we Know just a moment ago, Doug talkedabout the beer and red wine that were
favored by the young men in the villagesand people weren't drinking kava.
, it talks here about how there, during thetime late seventies alcohol was involved
with good bit of the violence that wasengendered by the political tensions
(09:41):
associated with becoming independent.
And it also, there were a coupleof bars on the island, and it
was common to see people possiblydrunk in the streets, in Villa in
Santo staggering home on weekends.
In public holidays.
It says Vanuatu Gains gainedits independence in 1980.
And after a struggle with the colonialpowers, of course 1970s and early 1980s
was definitely a period of intense debate.
(10:03):
He talks about the Melanesian peopleand talking about their attempt
to define themselves politically,economically, and socially as United
Melanesian people who were thecitizens of the Republic of Vanuatu.
And this meant questioning therole of European powers and
also some European practices.
So Vanuatu did not go along thesame path as the other islands
like Solomon Islands, Papua NewGuinea, Fiji, and accepting English.
(10:25):
They actually accepted Bislamaas de fact national, language.
, we should define some of these words.
Bislama is the homegrown Englishlexier pigeon language, which
had become the major medium forpolitical debate and had become the
accepted language of conversation,between people on the island.
That was a kind of a mixture between someFrench words and local words and English.
(10:46):
It's a very, it's phonetic,it's a very phonetic language.
Douglas LaRose (10:49):
Yeah.
I just wanted jump in here really quick.
Go ahead.
Because the so in visiting theSolomon Islands I was there for about
three months and Solomon Islandersspeak a language similar to bislama.
I don't know that it'sactually called Bislama.
I think it might just becalled Solomon Islands Pigeon.
But when you first get , to the SolomonIslands, or when you first get to Vanuatu
and you talk to people, it soundslike a completely different language.
(11:13):
Like you hear words , like you hearEnglish words but you cannot hold
a conversation with somebody andunderstand , what they're saying if
they're speaking to you in bislama.
And, and, another point I wanted to makeabout choosing a language when a country
gets independence from a colonizer, moreoften than not, that country was not
a country before , the colonizer came.
(11:35):
In the example of Vanuatu, , youhad all these different islands
with different ethnic groupswho spoke different languages.
So before they were a colony,they never saw themselves as a
republic, as one united people.
So they had to choose a language thatthey could all mutually understand.
That wasn't English, that wasn't Frenchand wasn't one of their local languages.
(11:57):
So they had to basicallycreate a new language.
And that's what bislama is akind of compromise language.
That probably like developed out oftrade networks and people from different
backgrounds communicating with each other.
But you see this all over the world informer European colonies where you have
all these, , like in Ghana west Africa,there are 65 local languages, but most
(12:18):
people speak English because you can'ttake one of those local languages and
try to force other people to speak it.
And English just happens to be alanguage that it's like nobody's gonna
be offended if we speak English becausethat's an outside language that doesn't
belong to any of our ethnic groups.
So it almost becomes likethis peaceful compromise.
So I just thought thatwas some good context.
(12:40):
When you're looking at these languagesthat appear to be like, like bislama
sometimes when you hear it spoken itsounds a little like an undeveloped
language, but it's really thiskind of compromise type situation.
Jimmy Price (12:53):
Yeah.
, that makes sense.
And then I think this rolls right into.
The next portion of it as alcohol,talking about , what changed and what
caused sort of a swap over to the kava.
And it was a good bit monetary based.
I thought it was a lot due to thegovernment, like pushing kava,
but that may not necessarily beenthe case in this regard of the
(13:14):
first like explosion of kava.
In 1982 Vanuatu looking atestablishing currency and the French
government control of the exchange ratebetween the French franc and the New
Hebrides Franc, which still remained incirculation was they think manipulated.
And of course it, it caused a massiveinflation in prices for imported goods.
(13:35):
And beer rose 170% Wine Rose540% between 1979 and 1982.
So it started to be very unattainablein terms of pricing for the locals.
And, kava started to pickup a bit more interest.
It was in this context, it says the, apolitical redefinition in dramatically
rising prices in the 1980s, the kavasuddenly hit the urban scene in Villa.
(14:00):
It's quite, quite an ironicthing that prices go up.
Alcohol, , Hey, whoa, , they,they, and part of this says
that three shells of kava.
It cost around a hundred vatuor one US dollar at the time.
And for most people, three shellswas sufficient to produce a feeling
of relaxation and wellbeing.
, they, they got their kava feeling.
And although the effect of kavaand alcohol on the system must
be calibrated on two completelydifferent scales, everyone agreed
(14:23):
that 300 vatu worth of beer wouldhardly even get you started, let alone
you can happily on your way home.
Knew the utility of kava recreation.
It was all of a sudden, , hey, this isway cheaper than alcohol, and we go home
and we feel better and all that stuff.
And it took hold that way.
But Let's see.
It talks about how developmentsplace in different areas there
(14:45):
with kava bars starting to pop up.
And the last report, and let's see,this villa in 1995, there are 140
kava outlets and a in a town with apopulation of 18,000 or one kava bar
for approximately each 130 people.
So it's a very densely kavad area.
But it went back from almostobscurity to complete conversion
(15:08):
with society once again.
And that's where it picked up fromthere and started gaining speed.
Douglas LaRose (15:13):
When I see figures like that, wonder why I live where I live.
. If there was a kava bar forevery 180 people in my town would
be that would be like, that.
That sounds like the best town ever.
Jimmy Price (15:24):
right?
. It's like nobody's mad
. Douglas LaRose: Yeah, exactly.
I thought it was interesting readingabout , how during that time, , there
were these entrepreneurs who movedto, to Port Villa from places like
Pentecost, and they put up theseimprovised knakamals or kava bars.
There was there's a discussionabout one gentleman who started
(15:45):
an establishment called Mona.
Mona, m a u n a.
, that was where a shellof kava cost 100 Vatu.
, and people to go to and get theirthree shells . What was really cool
and this reminds me of some otherplaces around the world, people
would put out these little kind ofbutane candles like with diesel wicks.
And they would light them andput them outside on the road to
(16:07):
signify that they had kava for sale.
And it didn't have to be like anakamal, it could just be somebody's
home and they would prepare kava andthen you could go to that person's
home or backyard or whatever and,, you'd pay your 100 vatu or whatever.
But that was their way of conveying to youthat, Hey, we just made a bunch of kava.
Come on, come in, have a, she.
, it, it seems like a great likethat sounds like paradise to me.
(16:30):
I want to be in Seaside Villa in 1980drinking kava with people for 100
Vatu, right?
a dollar.
Douglas LaRose (16:40):
There was also, in Santo, a similar trend where these kava bars
started opening and then that spreadthis kind of culture of the nakamal
this culture of the Kava bar spreadfrom Vanuatu to New Caledonia with these
migrant workers who left Vanuatu to findbetter opportunities in New Caledonia.
(17:00):
So really what's being described hereis literally the birth of the Kava bar.
Yes.
Because Crowley makes it very clear thatprior to this period, kava was this kind
of like old man marriage ceremony, funeraldrink that It was like, it wasn't cool.
Like, , let's have somebeers, let's have some wine.
But after the independence and this kindof financial crisis that the country
(17:23):
was going through, kava became thislike thing, this like social beverage
that people would drink at Kava bars.
I just think it's so cool that like hecaptured that he was living through this
and he was able to capture kava goingfrom this like kind of obscure religious
ritual kind of old man kind of thing tobeing something cool and young and vibrant
(17:46):
and let's hang out and drink some kava.
Jimmy Price (17:48):
Yeah.
We did it, it started to go into Noumeanew Caledonia, and it says in the paper
that it was about $4 a shell there.
But it seems that the money wasn't aproblem in New Caledonia at the time,
which is probably drew people too fromthe other islands to the location to Yep.
And also Drew kava in.
And yeah, that, that's ahuge kava export place now.
Like New Caledonia is oneof the largest exports.
(18:11):
Kiribati, New Caledonia areextremely large tonnage in terms
of what they import from Vanuatu.
It's quite impressive.
In fact, I think it was more thanUnited States for one of 'em.
We come on to , the next portion of this.
, if we move, moving right alonglet's see, continuity and innovation
in the culture of kava drinking.
And it talks about how in many aspectsthe drinking of kava in these commercial
(18:34):
establishments in towns represents adirect continuation of ancient customs.
The kava outlets are always dimlylit as dictated by custom, as usual.
Of course, this is quite, quitecontrast to what we see in America.
The noise is kept to a minimum.
Kava can be drunk according to whateverlocal custom one feels comfortable with.
It was always drunk in onegulp as required by tradition
(18:55):
everywhere in Vanuatu.
. This is what I think of when Ithink of kava drinking culture.
This is what I think of in my head.
The dimly lit room.
The noise kept to a minimum, butthat doesn't always translate
over when you cross the Pacific.
We have our local bands playingthe kava bars and the, the spoken
words and the all, all the otherthings that we have that go on in
(19:16):
kava bars over here in America.
It's quite a contrast.
But I believe represents kavaas it's physiological effect.
Like when you drink strong kava.
, you want to sit down.
You don't want peoplescreaming in your ear.
You don't want the lightsflashing on and off.
You want, , calm, you don'twant anything moving around.
It's more of a reflection of whatKava wants to be honest with you.
(19:37):
It seems like.
Yeah.
I feel like it, it embodies whatkava would like you for you to
do, and that's for you to getin a dark place that's quiet.
and be contemplative.
And it just reflects in the kavabar at the time or the nakamals.
It's interesting that differentpeople have such different
traditions of drinking kava.
People from the north will squat to drinktheir shell according to the local custom.
(19:58):
And then while people from the centraland South Islands will generally
stand but apart from the will havetheir backs turned to everybody else.
One thing, I don't think it's mentionedhere, but in nakamals is when you
leave, is that no one ever says goodbye.
You never say goodbye.
You just get up and you go home.
Douglas LaRose (20:13):
Yeah, your point about kava bars in the US a really good one.
I've been to, oh, I don't know,maybe 10 or 15 kava bars in the us.
A lot of them in California,a lot of them in Florida.
Some are better than others.
In a lot of instances , JeffBowman , the knock in Boca Raton,
Florida like on many days, you'llgo in there and it is very mellow.
(20:36):
He keeps the lights lowkeeps the music pretty soft.
And I've actually talked to him about itand he said that, yeah, , when you go to
Vanuatu he's been to all these places.
, you go into these kava bars and people,they sit there quietly, and . They
drink their kava and they whisper toeach other and, but it's mostly this
very kind of meditative, mellow mood.
I don't wanna to judge people too much,, like how they wanna drink their kava,
(20:58):
, if, you like to get together with yourbuddies at the Kava bar in San Diego,
and listen to heavy metal music whileyou drink your kava, , that's your thing.
But it's n never gonna be my thing.
I think it's cool on the paperhow he talks about how all these
different depending on where youcome from in Vanuatu or where the
people came from at this time inparticular there's a section about the
(21:21):
Tannes people, the people from Tana,
if you, went to their kava bar at thetime, you would hear them, , speaking of
these like very quiet like whispers ascontrasted to the Pentecost clientele
who are considered more raucous.
And so even when they are drinkingkava they're a little bit louder.
And so it's interesting how, , I feel likein the 1980s and 1990s maybe when this,
(21:45):
these kava bars started popping up youprobably saw a lot more difference between
the kava bars and like where the peoplecame from who frequented those kava bars.
And I'm sure, , to this day, I'm surethat, , if you're in Port Villa you
know which Kava bar you wanna go to.
The one that sells the type ofkava that you like to drink that
has the, , the mood that you like.
(22:06):
yEah.
Jimmy Price (22:06):
Super cool stuff.
And he goes into talking aboutsome linguistics , of the the
kava culture in this portion.
Where he talks about . One popularkava bar features a hand painted.
Picture of a man sitting pensivelywith the following, irresistible,
caption meet hot kava icom we com.
I can feel the kava reallyhaving an effect on me.
(22:27):
Another outlet of advertisingaimed at the primarily Tannesse
clientele guaranteed that the boysserving kava were genuine virgins.
All yeah.
Yep.
And that was a big thing.
Like it was, , it was thought that ifyou were a more experienced male and
you'd chewed the kava, it would reremove portion of the effect of the kava.
(22:47):
So, , they thought that if virgin boysand girls were the ones that were chewing
the kava, that it would be stronger.
Douglas LaRose (22:54):
No, I wonder and I don't think this was explained in the
paper, but at this time If Kava was kavabeing prepared that way, like in the
1980s at these namas and Port Villa.
I don't know if it was, it
Jimmy Price (23:05):
says they were
. Douglas LaRose: Okay.
They're actually, it
was advertised that they were
Douglas LaRose (23:10):
okay that way.
But in terms of this, like the chewingand spiting, the kava into the bowl,
like they were making that much.
That's, it's a good question.
I,
Jimmy Price (23:18):
I'd like to Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know if they were actually making.
Through chewing or not.
And at this point throughthe bars, I doubt it.
I think they were grinding it witha meat Grindr, cuz I think that's
a lot easier to do in mass Yeah.
Than make an effort for, , tons of people.
Yeah.
But yeah, they were probably, hadthe boys out there grinding them.
The kava, the
Okay.
Here's the part that that we tread intoa little bit of issue back and forth
(23:39):
especially with what we see online.
Yeah.
Here's where they said a few kavaoutlets now sell cold beer along
with their kava because they foundthat drinking a beer afterwards
what they say shores up their kava.
But this is not a endorsementof that practice is just showing
that this is about the time where.
Started happening in the South Pacificwhere they where, where they were
(24:00):
observing the bars that began tosell alcoholic beverages as well.
And when we say don't drink afterkava, we're, we talk about drinking
in the American sense like a drink.
Drinking is like going out andgetting binge like binge drinking.
Yeah.
Completely.
, drunk blackout well made forsome people blackout drunk.
And that's the weekend.
They were drinking a beer afterwards.
(24:20):
But it says however, the people thatdid do this were expected to respect the
quietness and the sanctuary of the kavabar and not behave boisterously is if
they would in the bar which makes sense.
And they would be shush if necessary andasked to leave if they didn't comply.
Yeah, it wasn't like they were you.
Inviting a bad culture in, it justseemed like they were trying to , people
(24:42):
were doing that and they're like,all right, we can sell this and
that at the same time let's make,make a little extra cash on top.
But it didn't seem to be a big issue
Douglas LaRose (24:49):
but yeah, you can't say
and it's not even really the it's not evenreally related to the topic because no.
Yeah, you're right.
But it could be, it could, because thefirst thing that people think of in
the US who drink kava is that, , mixingthe two together is bad for you.
But that's a different topic.
Think that the point that Crowley makesthat's really interesting re related
to this topic, is that these kava bars.
(25:10):
, even though they offered beerand, they would, sell beer,
make a profit, , it's a business.
If people were going there for thestrict purpose of, , having two
or three beers and starting to getruckus, they would ask them to leave.
And so that tells me that theywere trying to uphold a cultural
norm of the Kava Bar beinga quiet, kava centric place.
(25:34):
Yes.
They were offering beer to peoplewho wanted to buy it, but they didn't
want it to become a bar so I thinkthat's the point that he's making,
is that some people, , would have acouple shells and then have a beer.
As long as they didn't.
Take it too far.
Like it wasn't considered a big deal.
And from what I've heard that, , thatthat still happens in the Pacific Islands.
People will have beer atthe end of a kava session.
(25:56):
I can't imagine having a beerafter drinking kava just because
, it already dehydrates you.
So I don't, wouldn't wanna drink a beerafter having kava, but hey, look , it's,
I'm not gonna try to prescribe people,, their, their choices and behaviors.
Jimmy Price (26:10):
This is where I say that,, they'll use the argument of
they do it in the South Pacific.
Well, they do?
However you can see this paper,they didn't do it that long ago.
, kava has been aroundfor thousands of years.
, this combination is not thishas only been around for a.
Slight portion, just like a couple,, obviously here about 40 years, , 40,
(26:30):
50 years they've been drinkingsomething else with their kava.
It's only like a tiny fractionof what Kava culture really is.
So that's all I ask to, to keep inconsideration is that, , when we
talk about that, , people's theydo it in this South Pacific way.
Yeah, they do.
But you gotta remember, it's not,that's, it's like us doing it here.
It wouldn't make it right.
, just, just because we do that.
(26:50):
It doesn't, it's not representative ofthe kava culture that we speak of when
we talk about the kava culture, thatspans, , Just, just a long, , and cons.
Comparatively, not a longtime, but still a long time.
, 3000 years is a long time fora plant to be propagated and
consumed and continue to be farmed.
And, , we still have living specimensof this today from 3000 years ago
(27:13):
to go back to Piper, which manai.
It's just such a long history.
We just wanna keep it inperspective that this Yeah.
Isn't something that's goneon for a very long time.
And it's not necessarilywhat would be called culture.
It's just an addition that's been broughton due to, eh, the West as always.
Douglas LaRose (27:29):
Also, and we'll talk about this in a later episode, but it's
also to, it's also important to rememberthat alcohol was not Fermented and
didn't exist in a lot of these contexts.
Yes.
Prior to the colonial period.
. But we'll talk about that in a, ata later time in a different article.
Jimmy Price (27:46):
Yeah.
Let's skip on down to adifferent section here.
We've talked about this for quite a while.
Yeah.
And we can just talk about Villa now.
They, before it was very uncommon forwomen to even consider being involved in a
kava ceremony or just drinking ka at all.
It says, for one thing, womenwere, in most cases, traditionally
not allowed to drink kava at all.
And on some islands, women couldeven be put to death for catching
(28:08):
sight of a man drinking kava.
So that's, that's pretty serious.
And then nowadays, villa,it's not uncommon for women.
The lone are in groups,occasionally in the company of
men to drink kava at the kava bar.
So it's, it had become more sociallyacceptable at this point for
women to join the kava drinking.
And it does say that it still shockssome traditionalists in newcomers
(28:29):
from outer islands, and some kava barsdo subtly make women feel unwelcome.
But this is becoming uncommon.
Douglas LaRose (28:35):
Women's money is after all, just as good as men's money, right?
That's, yep, that's
Jimmy Price (28:38):
right.
money is green
. Douglas LaRose: Depending when you're , I do wonder, , that that statement about
a woman could even be put to death forcatching sight of a man drinking kava.
, sometimes there are things thatpeople say but don't actually
like, play out very often.
So I wonder, , how manytimes that actually happened?
It might have been like part of the,like in some specific cultural context
(29:00):
in Vanuatu that might have been likean, that might have been , a religious,
religiously based kind of belief.
And a woman should not see aman drinking a kava, and if she
does , she should be killed.
, whatever.
But, , and the Christian Judeo-Christiantradition, there's also things in the
Bible that say , you should be killedif you like, speak ill of your father.
, it, who knows how many timesthat actually happened.
(29:21):
I don't think that Vanuatu was this
The
Douglas LaRose (29:22):
pre-colonial period, they were just slaughtering women
left and right because they caughta glimpse of a man drinking kava.
Jimmy Price (29:28):
Yeah.
I don't read too many accounts of that.
But yeah.
And just to sum up this section, itsays in the 1970s young men disdain
kava, where today is difficult to finda man in his early twenties in Villa
that has not drank at least sometimeand may drink several times a week.
So it went from a complete swapfrom nobody drinking kava to
(29:49):
a lot of people drinking kava.
And then we go on to our next sectioncalled Kava and National Identity.
Douglas LaRose (29:56):
Yeah.
So this is where the paper talks aboutthe decrease in alcohol use and the
related increase in kava drinking.
It's a little bit repetitive from theprevious discussion we had on this, but I
did highlight some language here becauseI actually found it to be really funny.
So Terry says Previously, in order to getdrunk enough to have a good rage at the
disco one had to spend a lot of moneyand a lot of time drinking beer first at
(30:21):
the somewhat more classy bar at the Rossi.
I just, I found that havea good rage at the disco.
I like, I actually don'tknow what that means.
I dunno if that's like a violent thing orif that's, anyway, and then he says thus,
partly is a way of achieving a cheaperhigh, and partly as a way of expressing
one's me, Melanesian Kava has become anestablished part of the emerging national.
(30:44):
As against local or regional identity asa kind of neo tradition, kava drinking can
now be considered both modern and trendy.
And it is therefore a respectable, evennecessary thing for young guys wearing
jeans and Reebok to be engaging in.
I just thought it was so funny that hementioned your Reebok cuz I remember
(31:06):
I, I don't know if we're the sameage, but I remember when I 11 or 12
years old, the Reebok pumps came out.
Yeah.
And the Reebok pumps if you didn't havea pair of re Reebok pumps, like you
might as well just not show up to school.
Like you're gonna get like trash can.
Like they were all the rage.
And, but it's just so funny, like in2023, like I can't even remember the
(31:28):
last time I heard the word Reebok
So anyways, I just thought that wasa good funny little, it was a funny
little Time capsule within thisarticle that , he captured there.
Jimmy Price (31:36):
Yep.
Essentially alcohol consumption decreaseddramatically since their independence.
So it's just great.
That's a great thing.
Yeah.
Usually you hear about theother, go the other way.
It's always drinking is increasingit's great to see that go
the opposite way for once.
Let's see.
, and we're gonna go here nowinto linguistics of, of kava.
Douglas LaRose (31:53):
Yeah.
This is like the second half of thepaper, like the if you were to divide
this paper into two parts, the firstpart would be the kind of that historical
and the historical summary of kava.
And the second part would be this,linguistic exploration of all
the language that surrounds kava.
And it's really fascinating.
So hold onto
Jimmy Price (32:11):
your hats.
Yep.
We got some new terms here too.
That's they're really really interesting.
And let's see., I've read elsewherethat the youth in Villa and Santo
as being a linguistically innovativegroup, coining and spreading a huge
number of instantaneously popularslang expressions in bislama.
These expressions cover a wide rangeof urban and youthful experiences
concentrating in areas of financialhardship, physical confrontation,
(32:34):
and sexual adventurism being such anessential ingredient of modern urban life.
In Vanuatu lexicon of covent drinking toterminology has of course also evolved.
And here we get into the interesting anddiverse different words and phrases that
have come along with kavas induction.
And it's consumption.
And it says the word kavaitself is attested in written
(32:57):
sources from very early on.
There are other co related words fromoverseas origins, and it could be
have entered into the language underconditions of social contact , that
were operative a century ago.
For instance, Tombo and Naba Nambia,not Nambia referred to a wide iron
pipe, welded to a metal base whichallowed them to pound the kava roots and
has a source from the Solomon Island.
(33:18):
So there, there were differentsources for these words.
And let's see here.
. Yeah.
And the phrase "pu pu" and it means to, rinse one's mouth out after drinking kava.
And that generally meansjust cleanse your palate.
, this was something that came upduring our Hawaiian talanoa.
Went to the get together beforethe main meeting, and they were
(33:38):
like, where's the poo-poos?
? My wife just looked at me and was like,what did they just say ? I was like, oh.
It was like, I ate earlier butno, they and they gave Morgan
crap for not bringing poo-poos.
And yeah, that was my firstsort of exposure to that word,
and I was just like, oh, okay.
All right.
All right.
So it means,
Douglas LaRose (33:57):
What did they mean, Jimmy?
When snacks by not singing
Jimmy Price (34:00):
snacks.
Snack snacks.
Yeah.
They were just looking for snacks.
Yeah.
They were looking for snacks and yeah.
I didn't even know that was a requirement.
So if you, and this is a word to the wise,you ever go to a Talanoa stop by the store
before you go there and get just like, just get some chips, just get anything,
just to snack on and bring that with you.
Because that is one of the thingsthat people love is the, when you
(34:22):
bring poo-poos your snacks and, yeah.
sorry side note there,
. Douglas LaRose: Yep.
If you ever find yourself at a tele Yes.
Don't, you can't sayJimmy didn't tell you.
That's right.
They'll,
they'll ask where the poos are at and you'll
be like, ah, . I knew it.
I knew I should, that was episode twoof could have spared myself that.
Douglas LaRose (34:42):
So as this part of the article moves forward, I love.
Reading pigeon bi lama and pigeonEnglish because it's just so funny.
Literally funny to thinkabout some of these words.
The word for the biz lamaword for the the pestol that
they use to pound the kava.
They call it a Ramafrom Ramer in English.
(35:02):
From the filtering clothfrom sef, so seieve.
And then the filter the passingkava through a filter is Pasm,
like pasm Kava, long se, and Kai.
Kai this when I workedin the Solomon Islands.
Kai is the word for eat to chew.
So when you go to somebody'shouse and they'll say oh, you like
(35:26):
It means do you want to eat chicken?
So it also, I guess apparentlymeans masticate, like to
chew the kave in your mouth.
And then to pound kava is to ram 'em,ram . So is this It's funny to hear these
words and know, the it's this marriageof English and these local grammars.
And then I think the gem of the articlethe holy grail that is buried within
(35:47):
this article is the description of thedifferent types of kava and relating to
their maturity, strength, and appearance.
And the famous tudei.
Kava, which comes from twodays, it lasts for two days.
That's one that we all know.
But Jimmy, I will hand over to youthe honor of introducing our dear
(36:08):
listeners to the the holy Grail of
Jimmy Price (36:10):
this article.
So you've heard two day, sitback we actually have a term in
our lexicon in the very, verylocal lexicon of three day kava.
That's the stuff you don'twant to get ahold of.
That's just like the worst ever.
But now, oh, now we have a new word,foday, which is kava, that quote with
an effect that lasts four days inparenthesis, or at least a very long
(36:34):
time, . So now we have Foday kava two.
Three day locally and foday kava.
So if anybody gets some fodaykava, please let us know
Douglas LaRose (36:44):
Or try it
. Jimmy Price: Yeah.
Or try it and tell youto put this drug away.
. But yeah it's, I had not,I have not heard that.
I'm glad that this came up in thispaper cuz there's also several young
kava, white kava, young kava Kava.
Kava is, it's young kava, right?
That's, yep.
Jimmy Price (37:03):
White kava.
What a kava.
With a grayish colored flesh.
And
Douglas LaRose (37:07):
I think it's wet.
Wet.
Like white cava.
White kava.
Yeah like I think itcomes from the word wet.
Jimmy Price (37:14):
Oh, okay.
Gotcha and then of course it goesand it talks about one of the
words we hear all the time, maus.
Yeah.
And maccas is not a kava specific word.
It is used basically just to,to describe anything after it's
chewed saw dust or any of any kind.
It's just leftover residues or powders,not specifically at kava, but it is,
Maccas is the leftovers after you're donewith your kava, when you've strained your
(37:35):
kava and the pieces of root that are leftover in your bag afterwards, that's maccas
and Yeah.
Here is the stuff you throw away.
Yeah.
And it's, and I'm glad to seethis described in a paper.
Cause I have actually not seen ittalked about in terms of kava.
I just thought it was a Hawaiian word.
Good to see where it comes from and.
Douglas LaRose (37:51):
Then we get into the good stuff where Terry talks
about the some of the expressionsdescribing the effects of kava.
And I just love this stuff.
Listen, long kava.
Listen to the kava.
Listening to the kava, hear 'emkava like feeling, hearing the kava.
These are all things that, oh my God,like I can I wish that I could stand
(38:12):
on the top of the highest mountain withthe loudest loudspeaker in the world and
remind people that, you don't take kava.
You.
People talk about you kava, dosing kava,and oh, how big of a dose do you take?
It's no.
Shut up.
Like . When you drinkkava, you just hear 'em.
Kava listen long.
Kava, like like it, you havea conversation with the kava.
(38:35):
When you drink the kava.
When you drink your kava, your bodyand the kava are having a conversation.
And if you're not ready to havethat conversation, you're not
gonna get anything out of it.
It's a very subtle.
Lover . It's something that like reallywhen you drink kava for a long time
(38:55):
and you know what it feels like andyou can hear it and you understand
the language that it speaks it's afeeling that cannot be described like
alcohol or marijuana or anything else.
And so I just want everybodyto always use that language.
And I like, I kind of wanna be a bitof a dictator about it because it's
so important to me that people don'tconfuse kava with other intoxicants.
(39:16):
. This is something that like, I just.
I can't I'll shut up, but it's asoapbox that I proudly stand upon,
Jimmy Price (39:22):
but it and it makes sense if you drink kava,
it pushes you this direction.
Yeah.
You want things to be quiet.
You want to listen, you want tosit there and be contemplative.
It's, I feel like the Vanuatu kava cultureis more viscerally interacting with kava
as a plant and as a physiological agentthan a lot of these other cultures are
that are more ceremonially structuredand traditionally more like hierarchy.
(39:47):
So I think this kind of it kavais powerful, say, like to Tonga
and it talks about, we've talkedabout that in our last podcast.
But it they think of it as powerful stuffbecause of its sociopolitical importance.
But here I think it's more reflectedthat kava is important because of its,
Like actual biological effect because ofwhat it actually does and how it, we see
(40:10):
these direct correlations between howkava makes us feel and what they suggest
doing or what they did in practice.
And they're, they're justtheir drinking traditions.
It makes sense because it shows thatthey appreciated those qualities of
kava that were more physiologicaland not necessarily representative
of hierarchy or any sort of politicalstanding or anything like that.
(40:30):
It just, it's interesting to see howthat translated to reality from going
and drinking kavas in different ways.
And I, is there one culturethat's, right or wrong?
So it's just, I truly don't believe so,but it's interesting how they differ
in the utility that they ascribe kava,because, , different cultures say
that kava is, the facilitator, , it'swhat allows the tall Noah to exist.
(40:53):
And for others it's more of a personalcommunication with kava that , you just
buy your kava and you drink it and,this comes out as listen to the kava.
Yeah.
Douglas LaRose (41:03):
I, yeah.
I think this kind of goes back a littlebit to Nancy Pollock's paper or this
conversation does, there is no right orwrong way to, to drink kava, just like
there's no right or wrong way to eat food.
Like every , like cultures havedifferent ways of, having dinner.
Like some people eat as a family,some people eat separately.
And this paper is, focusing , onVanuatu kava traditions.
(41:26):
And even Terry's even getting intolike, How people from different parts
of Vanuatu drink kava differently.
I think the big takeaway isthere should be no gatekeepers.
There should be no like kava policethat are telling you how, what the right
and wrong ways are of drinking kava,because there are no right or wrong ways.
Jimmy Price (41:45):
Well, Except for dosing it except for,
Douglas LaRose (41:48):
yeah.
Or doing or pounding kava shots
.This moves very nicely into the kava bar . , speaking of kava bars, this
this paper starts talking about . Weall know the word nakamal from reading
about kava, from learning about kava.
, there's a, , Namal at home is a a companythat sells kava here in the United States.
(42:09):
And nakamals are what peoplecall kava bars in Vanuatu.
And I didn't know that this wasever controversial, but now I do.
That the word actually comesfrom a local Vanuatu language.
And it was referred to the communalmeeting houses and villages in rural
areas where the elders and the chiefswould hold discussions visitors
(42:33):
and have like community events.
It was a more ritualistic place forpeople to settle differences and for
village affairs to be worked out.
But it became a a word for forkava bars in its traditional usage.
It would be an area inthe village under a tree.
Where men would get together,drink , drink kava, and
(42:54):
talk about and Tana, right?
Yeah.
Talk about local issues.
But then it becamerelated to, to kava bars.
And this was so controversial thatthe National Council of Chiefs , which
in a lot of these traditionalindigenous countries that have strong
kind of ethnic identities, theyhave these councils of chiefs that
they preside over cultural affairs.
(43:15):
They publicly came out anddeplored the use of the word
namal to describe a kava bar.
And they proposed thatpeople called them kava bas.
, another cool fact that cameout of this, this paper for me,
Jimmy Price (43:27):
definitely same here.
That's one of my highlighted spots.
, that the word knock mk was actuallycontroversial . But he talks about
drinking kava in Vanuatu beinga fun thing to do on the evening.
And much of this vocabulary associatedwith it falls into that category of
kind of being fun, so slang, and wewe roll into our second spot of slang.
(43:48):
This also was another fun sectionof this paper, and I think most
people would enjoy this spot a lot.
He talks about the rise and fallof slang in Vanuatu and bislama.
Starts out in September, 1990,radio Vanuatu began a campaign
to promote breastfeeding ofbabies over bottle feeding.
And in one of the advertisements,it says, Tata Batel.
(44:09):
Tt him I number one.
Which means goodbye bottle breastsare bests . And within two months of
that same year, it'd become all therage for someone to say instead of
goodbye or Tata, to say Tata batel.
And for everyone to bust outlaughing when you said that.
So that was one of the examplesof slang kind of adoption in pop
culture the bislama language.
(44:31):
And of course we get into the kavadrinking session of this and I
think I'll let Doug talk about thatcuz that's, it's entertaining.
Douglas LaRose (44:38):
Yeah.
That first part.
Terry's trying to explain how slang works.
Sometimes slang is a temporary thing andit just becomes like a joke that people
tell I, I think like when we use wordslike woke these are things that, 20 years
from now, we probably won't still betalking about wokeness and being woke.
Like it's slang comes into the cultural,that discourse and then it goes away.
(45:00):
Probably for the better in that case.
Yeah.
But he goes into how some of these thingsactually become embedded and permanent.
And one of the coolest things,and I'm gonna start using this
all the time now come drink kava.
, in English, that means come anddrink kava here, just one shell.
And you'll have four wheels up in the air.
(45:21):
And four wheels up in the air isbasically a car that's flipped
over and wheels are up in the air.
So it basically means thatlike you've had a lot of kava.
And I think that my new way of describingmyself when I've had enough kava to,
to make a Saturday night, like a goodSaturday night is gonna be fully on top.
(45:44):
On top.
I thought that was really funny.
. Oh, really quick.
There was, there's an anecdote inhere that I thought was so funny.
He's talking about fo weil on topand then he goes on to say that That
there was an instance where therewere a group of Christian singers
fun like fundamentalist evangelicalChristian singers who had created
this like anti kava drinking sect ofChristianity where they were, of course,
(46:07):
deploring Kava, the, the Devil's Root.
And they were singing hymns of praiseto God very close to a knock ole
where, you know, as we heard earlier,people at Knock oles, they want,
they're quiet, they want peace.
They don't want, zealots shouting,about how they're going to hell.
And and the kave drinkers are in,this is the knock ball and . And they
(46:27):
said long on top, four wheel on top.
Same basically meaning Hey, watch out.
If I go over there, you'regonna be all laid out flat.
You're gonna be four wheels on top, . Sothey weren't actually angry, but , in
this anecdote, they said it amongstthemselves oh, these people, like
they're complaining about us drinkingkava and trying to make a point of it.
(46:51):
But we'll go over there and lay 'em out.
. , I just thought it was
Jimmy Price (46:54):
funny.
That was a good one.
We'll move on to the sourcesof kava drinking terminology.
It talks about the sourcesof kava drinking terminology.
, and they begin with.
What is particularly interesting about thedevelopment of kava terminology in Bislama
in the 1980s is that the process havebeen an entirely melanesian one, most
of the lexile expansion in other semanticfields in Bislama, since independence has
(47:15):
involved direct borrowing from words inEnglish and to a lesser extent French.
Thus, we find English derived politicalterms as the following, are now
well-established in lexicon, though theywere unattested before 19 seven, such
as Pa Paman like Parliament parliament.
Thank you.
Democracy, which is obviously democracy.
Rebel, which is rebel election, whichis obviously an invoked V O T vo vote.
(47:39):
While , there's now a sizableamount of European kava files.
Haunting the kava bars of Vila.
Obviously, neither French nor Englishis provided to be viable sources of
co related vocabulary in Bislama.
For the most part, ni Vanuatu had to relyon their own linguistic creativity and
coming up with a necessary terminology.
So it, it is a truly homegrownsort of thing where they had to
(48:01):
come up with their own words.
And it looks like they were making somesort of instant kava cuz they've here
it talks up about a word that wasn'tnecessarily in the lexicon, but it is the
word nes kava, which is something that'sprobably a playoff of words from Nescafe.
And what they had was somesort of fine gray powder they
were putting in their glass.
And it would dissolve and they weregetting a tolerable quote unquote hit.
(48:25):
So it, I believe it was somesort of instant cava that they
were, they had made or maybe somesort of water soluble extract.
But it was something back in the daywhere, and it was something they said
that, they were playing with and youwould see it every now and then, but
it wasn't a regular sort of item.
But that was an interesting aside there.
Douglas LaRose (48:42):
Another one another one of these bislama adaptations that is another
just absolutely beautiful word that I'mgoing to include in my lexicon is duck.
And and duck.
Duck is.
used to describe people who whenyou've had a lot of kava and you're,
you're really here in the kava.
Like maybe it's a little bit too loud.
(49:02):
And it's referring to theunsteady way that a person walks.
So duck.
It's like saying the word duck twice.
Yeah, exactly.
. And and then the word for the bucketsthat they ladle the kava out of, and
kava bars is a pubele and pubellein French is the word for a bin.
Like a trashcan.
(49:23):
Trashcan,
. It oftentimes, when you see pictures of namas and Vanuatu,
you'll see like a big rubber.
Trashcan, like literally a trashcan.
, and it's full of kava andthat's what they like.
Keep at the kava in, and people go tothe kava bar and they take your shell
and they go and they ladle kava into yourshell from the Kube super interesting
(49:44):
. Jimmy Price: Yeah.
And I think this brings a spec,there's a couple of other things here.
It talks about knockout kava NO k A O t knockout and t k O.
And that's also, from tko o or technicalknockout, which are boxing terms that
have been drafted to, to be used inthe kava descriptions, which are app,
there's some kavas that are knockouts.
Boxing I, I think is a pretty big sport in Vanuatu.
(50:06):
. So I think that that makes sense.
They, they watched boxing and they sawpeople getting knocked out and they
were like, oh, this kava him, knockout,
, Jimmy Price: and then work lit.
That's another one that they use.
The bislama word for kava, workletkava, which means you're getting to
work late with this one . You're notgonna wake up with your alarm clock
. The sun is not gonna wake you up.
(50:28):
You're going get sleep.
To be honest, when I drink kava, when I have a good kava
session and I fall asleep at 1130 or12 o'clock at night kava makes me sleep
so well and it gives me the best dreams.
Like I just have these reallyvivid, intense dreams when I go to
sleep after drinking kava and whenit's 7:30 AM and I'm supposed to be
(50:53):
getting up to go to work,, I struggle.
I'm like, I really don'twanna get outta bed.
Cuz every time I close my eyes, I goback into these like vivid dreams.
Yep.
So I know work late.
very well.
work late.
Jimmy Price (51:04):
And that brings us to the conclusion of Terry's paper where he
says that in this paper I presented arange of examples of illustrating how
new terminology relating to kava drinkingin its preparation has evolved among
predominantly young urban niVanuatu.
Douglas LaRose (51:18):
Renaissance of Covid drinking in town was partly a response
to purely economic factors, there hasalso been a significant political content
to the changes and that a kava has.
It's become one of the main ways inwhich a national as against a purely
regional or local identity has come tobe expressed in independent Vanuatu.
Jimmy Price (51:35):
As cultures evolve, so do languages which develop means of
expressing what is important to membersof that culture in Vanuatu, as kava has
become an important part of daily lifetown dwellers so too has newly developed
kava terminology been an important partof daily day speech In the language it
expresses this , national culture bislama.
(51:56):
And that concludes TerryCrowley's paper in 1995.
Douglas LaRose (52:00):
And I think that, That conclusion that last sentence
there, that where he talks about howthat the day-to-day speech of people
expresses the national culture.
That is Terry's work in a nutshellbecause . That's sociolinguistics.
That is the way that we talk, the waythat we talk to our friends and family.
Shapes the way that we see the worldand the way that we identify and
(52:23):
create and recreate our culture.
The implications of thispaper go beyond just kava.
He's actually making a statementabout all of humanity, the way that
we talk about things over time.
It changes, and it changesthe way we see the world.
A again, I just wanna raise a shell toTerry , who passed away 17 years ago, but
really incredible legacy that he left.
(52:44):
And let's go walk about Duck
Jimmy Price (52:45):
Duck and we gotta get DJ full wheel on.
At our next Rave
. Douglas LaRose: That's right.
Yep.
The next, yep.
The next panic at the Disco.
Disco.
The disco.
The raging at the Disco . All right.
Thanks for listening guys.
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