The 10-piece Solomon Island band Narasirato Pan Pipers undertook a two week voyage to arrive at the Fuji Rock site in Naeba. For one member of the band, pan-piper, Jeffrey Houairia, it was the first time he has ventured off the island or traveled in an airplane.

Houairia describes himself as a good hunter in addition to playing music. He lives an idyllic existence on the island, always catching a few fish when he goes out in a canoe, harvesting coconuts, and best of all, hunting mountain pig with a spear and a dog.

“Maybe we go out for 3-4 hours and get two pigs sometimes, sometimes nothing.”

He says the rest of the island’s is supplied by gardens which each family operates, cultivating cassava, yam, sweet potato, taro and banana. All grown in the same patch of land.

But the best thing about his island is bush walking, or going into the woods with a machete and finding the necessities needed for making music.

About 10 hours before Narasirato Pan Pipers are scheduled to play at the Crystal Palace, every member of the group is assembling the instruments they will be performing on this evening. For travel purposes, their bamboo keyboards, also known as the bass thong-o-phone. The instrument consists of sections of bamboo dried in the sun for 1-month, ranging from half a meter to two meters in length. As many as a dozen sections of bamboo are later tied together with strips of old tire, packing tape, and whatever else is available.

Best of all, the mallets which are used to play the instrument used to simply be rubber sandals worn by band members, but recently Houairia says they have found that the foam insulation from life jackets sound better.

The level of preparation before every show is remarkable, and pan flutes are tuned with a box cutter according to Jason Mayall, who has recorded the band and produced their first album recorded in Solomon Islands.

Mayall first came across the band in Australia, performing at the AWMI Expo, and from that moment on he was hooked. He says the rugged remoteness and simplicity of life on the Solomon Islands intrigued him, noting that there are 8 different languages in the area, depending upon which side of the mountain you were born.

“The album is called ‘Man of Culture’ and they have even recorded a song call Mount Fuji,” says Mayall, adding that some of the lyrics are sure to win over the local audience, including the refrain, “Naeba, I love you.”