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THE GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY OF TUPOU HIGH SCHOOL
was held during the second week of June 2013 in Nuku'alofa. The Tongans
love to have this kind of celebration whenever a significant timespan has been
achieved by an institution. Since the annual church conference followed right
after the Jubilee, and with the feasts happening at the same location they just
seemed to blend together (I put the feast photos together). So you can see that this
type of celebration seems to be happening just about all the time, but some are
bigger than others. This particular one was very big, however. I attended
the event along with the principal Tui'Pulotu Finau, who I met way back in 2002
when he visited my church in Hilo, Hawaii. There were parades, singing concerts,
dancing, bands playing, church services, many honorees and of course many feasts.
The musician at the left is Hopoi Vou, one of the finest Tongan musicians. You
should hear his performance of Sisu E - a magnificent work of great beauty.
I have enjoyed his music greatly when I catch him performing or when his many
recordings are on the local radio broadcast. He has programmed many church music
songs on his Yamaha PSR keyboard, which are used by many of the Tongan churches.
I know it is possible to program and record vocal tracks with harmony supplied
by the IVL software found in the PSR keyboards, but I believe that Ho'opoi lays
down the vocal harmonies in recorded tracks within the PSR instead of using the
harmonizing feature. I have also heard the harmonizer used very effectively. Here
he was performing at the old Tupou High School location in downtown Nuku'alofa
where all the alumni were coming for registration. This campus is now Tupou
Tertiary Institute, offering only post-secondary degree programs. Tupou High
School is now just the Vaololoa location in Fanga, just south of downtown.
Here is a group
of several of my colleagues at the registration the first morning at TTI. Everyone is
dressed in the Wesleyan dark blue school colors and has their identification proudly
displayed. The band is dressed in their blue and black marching uniforms and getting
ready for the parade. We are listening to Ho'opoi and the Tongan Broadcasting Services is making
a live radio broadcast of the opening ceremony. Soon after this we began a huge
procession from TTI down Wellington street to the Centennial Church, with all the alumni present
marching in groups by the year of their attendance. I marched along with the 2005
group since I was a teacher at TTI during that year and knew many of the others
both students and teachers who were along for the march.
Here on the left is
my friend Tevita Fauonuku at the Ma'amaloa Grounds adjacent to the big
central Free Wesleyan church, called Sione or Centennial. Tevita is a very
talented Tongan musician and dancer, who choreographed a major dance that
will be performed by the entire Tupou High School for the Princess. There is going
to be some big feasting going on, with the usual organized dancing, the
typical unorganized dancing, the presentation of gifts to Princess
Pilolevu and other royalty, many speeches, and eating. I managed to
snap this great picture of Feleti Atiola participating in a dance by
all the administrators of the Free Wesleyan schools, with Unga'tea
sneaking up behind him to give a little encouragement. It's not often
that I will see my friend Feleti involved in this kind of activity and
this is probably what Unga'tea was thinking too. Feleti was the director
of education for many years and I was sure the job was going to kill him,
but they finally moved him to principal of Tupou College out in the bush.
At the left you can see Tevita preparing the entire school body to begin the
performance of his 'Heiva'. In the four millenia plus of Tongan arts history,
there really was no distinction between music and dance. This is common in many
native cultures around the world. The first Europeans who had contact with the
Tongans learned that the word 'Heiva' applied to the music that accompanied the
dance, as you don't have dance without music. But the truth is that the Tongans
mostly did not have music without dance either. Preparing for this performance
took many weeks as the song had about 7 or 8 verses. I can remember many times
Tevita had been working the students until his voice became quite worn out, but
his enthusiasm never diminished one bit. In addition to the performances at the
feasting grounds, the band and choir performed several items at the Vaololoa
campus assembly hall and at the Centennial church services. It was a very busy
time for all of us. I had been earnestly working to finish the new studio at
Tupou Music School in time for the blessing and gave myself a major case of
'drywall elbow' that lasted for months thereafter!

I was so proud of all the students and the wonderful performances that they
had prepared. It was so much work that they even moved into the school classrooms
for a few weeks during the preparations. We were very fortunate to have Save Mataele
on hand to help us. Save was the choir director a couple of years ago but has moved
to New Zealand as he is working to finish his Bachelor's of Music at the New Zealand
School of Music. Many of the students who had sung in the choir when Save was at THS
had come back to sing for him again and performed at the Jubilee.
The Golden Jubilee of Tupou High School was a very special event, with a memorial
plaque being presented to the school by King Tupou VI. Standing on the left of the
plaque is Dr. John Norman, who was the first principal of Tupou High School from
1963 - 1965. I had a chance to have dinner with John, a wonderful gentleman who
had some very entertaining stories about all of the Tongan administrators. He said
that when he was asked to come to Tonga by the president of the Free Wesleyan church,
he had to ask why they would want him to do this, and he was told that there were
only two other people in Tonga with a terminal education degree at the time, and
one of those was the King. He said that he had not been back to Tonga since that
time, and so we were very fortunate to have him present for the Jubilee.
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