Musical Marshallese

One of my favorite things to do during class when my students are working on something like a journal or definitions for our spelling words is to walk around singing popular songs and changing the words.

“Beautiful Girl” becomes “Beautiful 6C,” and “Nobody Want To See Us Together” becomes “Nobody Bothered With Homework.”

I usually get a pen or a ruler to be my microphone and I channel my best sleazy lounge-singer act and I close my eyes and belt out the tunes. I trample through pitches way too high for me and I dabble in tones much too low. I usually sound like a teenage kid going through puberty who is giving a speech.

“You are so bulaat, Mr. Tim,” my kids say as they laugh and giggle hard. Bulaat is the Marshallese word for tone-deaf.

The reason why it is such a crack-up to these kids for me to be singing at the top of my much-less-than song-worthy lungs is because they themselves are such good musicians.

All of my kids can sing more songs from memory than a DJ spins in an hour. Not only do they know all of the words to these songs, they also can sing them well. They move from high to low with the unfettered freedom of birds.

This is in stark contrast to how things where when I grew up in the states — nobody wanted to be heard singing. Unless you were a good singer anyway and went to voice lessons, kids kept their voices tucked away. Maybe you would sing to yourself when you were in the shower, or maybe you would sing along in a duet with the radio in the car, but you would never just sing with a bunch of your friends.

This is definitely not the case here in the Marshall Islands. A common sight are kids of all ages, boys and girls, to be walking down the street with their friends, strumming on a ukelele and singing a song beautifully. Men sit with their wives in door stoops and pick through a new song, or sing an old one. English or Marshallese, it doesn’t matter, it is all music and they are all good at it.

One of the best times to walk here is right after the sun has set. First of all that is the time of night when there is a soft light coating everything — attaching itself to people’s faces, window and mirrors in one final stand against the darkness. Also there is the smell of smoke from cooking fires hanging in the air and playful sight of kids running around chasing each other in a never-ending game that I still don’t understand. And finally, over it all, there is the soft pattern of music.

For the kids, it is surprising that I can’t sing. For them, everyone simply can sing — at least on some level.

Maybe everyone here can sing because having things like radios, CD’s and iPods is so recent. Maybe 100 years ago, before there was radio in America, everyone could sing in the states too. Maybe we just all got lazy because we could have music with a flick of a switch.

Or maybe Marshallese have some sort of singing gene. They did use singing as a way of navigating long-ago, so it would be a desirable trait.

Whatever it is, I am bulaat and they all think that it is hilarious. Meanwhile this place has made the malfunction of my iPod less relevant. Walking through neighborhoods and past benches is like tripping through different radio stations with you feet being the tuner knob. When you find something you like, you just stop moving your feet and sit and listen a while. If they are kind people, then you might sing along as well.

Bulaat.

The love you give comes back in the end.
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