Abstract
This study focuses on the Micronesian marching dance, a widespread post-European contact dance form in the region, and examines its neglected origin and multi-layered history based on written documents, oral traditions, linguistic data, and comparative analysis of contemporary performances and music. We identify as its birthplace the Marshall Islands, where, around 1900, these islanders’ tradition of war dances and a Western symbol of war—marching—and probably also Western dances introduced by Christian missionaries were combined. During the period of the German administration in the early 1900s, the dance was introduced directly to the neighboring Pohnpei area. A large-scale diffusion of the marching dance took place in Nauru among the men from eastern Micronesia and Chuuk who mined phosphate there. Subsequently, Chuukese spread the dance to the miners from the western Carolines in Angaur; and, almost simultaneously, over 400 Pohnpeian exiles from the 1910–1911 uprising spread it to Palauans. In this dissemination process, various foreign elements were adopted, such as, probably in Nauru, the German military’s goose-step and drill commands that transformed the dance, and the beginning of the islanders’ indigenizing based on the traditional dances and cultural norms of their own islands. During the Japanese administration, the popularity of the marching dance reached a peak, with a reintroduction of foreign (Japanese and Japanese–Western) elements of music and dance through colonial policies, especially school education, and introduction of Japanese popular music and folk culture through Japanese migrants to the area, most conspicuously in western Micronesia. An east–west difference in indigenization— conservative eastern Micronesians (except for Marshallese) and innovative western Micronesians—accords with our musical analysis of dance song materials. Further, we argue that indigenization has been an active process of creating islanders’ identities, and that the dance is a multi-layered historical product which imbeds their colonial experiences.
