I was born in Fiji and lived there for most of my first two decades. Island life is hard to describe when it is home rather than somewhere you visit.
I wanted to include this song because it captures that life better than I can. It also reminds me that poetry does not have to begin on a page. The Pacific is full of poems that are sung, chanted and remembered rather than printed. Too many of them are overlooked.
This is a song of farewell.
The song
The words and the shape of the refrain vary slightly between versions. This is a common complete iTaukei version.
VERSE ONE
Isa, isa, vulagi lasa dina
Nomu lako au na rarawa kina
Na cava beka ko a mai cakava
Nomu lako au na sega ni lasa.
CHORUS
Isa lei, na noqu rarawa
Ni ko sa na vodo e na mataka
Bau nanuma, na nodatou lasa
Mai Suva nanuma tiko ga.
VERSE TWO
Vanua rogo na nomuni vanua
Kena ca ni levu tu na ua
Lomaqu voli meu bau butuka
Tovolea ke balavu na bula
CHORUS
VERSE THREE
Domoni dina na nomu yanuyanu
Kena kau wale na salusalu
Moce lolo, bua, na kukuwalu
Lagakali, ma ba na rosi damu.
A pronunciation guide
Fijian spelling is regular once you know a few tricks. The vowels are close to ah, eh, ee, oh and oo. The consonants can ambush an English speaker: b sounds like mb, d like nd, c like the th in “this”, g like the ng in “singer”, and q like the ng-g in “finger”.
After that, the text is much easier to sound out. The recording below is still a better guide than any improvised phonetic spelling I could give here.
A deliberately naive translation
My deliberately simple rendering of that opening is:
Aww, truly joyful visitor.
From there, the singer grieves over the visitor’s departure, asks them to remember their happiness together and Suva, dreams of reaching their home across the rough sea, and ends among the flowers and garlands of the islands.
Reading it now
I already knew this one. At primary school, it was our go-to song at the end of every school year. We sang it to say goodbye not just to friends, but to the year itself.
I also grew up hearing adults draw out “Isaaaaa” when somebody told them a sad story. The meaning was in the sound. I knew it long before I ever tried to translate it.
The song tells the person leaving to remember the happiness they shared. Reading it now, I remember mine.
Hearing it again
I listened to Junior Soqeta sing “Isa Lei”.
The sentiment is simple. You are leaving and I am sad. Remember our good times. Your home is lovely and I long to visit you. That is practically the whole poem. Put it to music, though, and everything comes to life. Island life does too.
After reading a good translation
Rod Ewins’s literal translation stays close to the iTaukei. Ewins was born in Fiji and spent decades researching Fijian society and culture. He opens:
Alas, alas, most welcome guest...
He keeps the rough sea, the wish to visit the guest’s home, and the island’s garlands and flowers.
His version is much closer to what I had read into the poem. Apparently my naive reading was not entirely naive. The sorrow has more weight, and I still hear in it a longing to see the person again.
What I learned
The history is a little slippery. Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba, later the Tui Nayau, is generally credited with the iTaukei words. In a letter published in 1962, he remembered hearing two Tongan visitors sing “Si Lile Viola Lose Hina” at yaqona gatherings in Suva in 1915. He loved the tune and wrote new words to say farewell to them.
Other accounts put the song in 1916 or 1918, and they also disagree about who wrote the Tongan original. Whatever the exact date, a Tongan love song crossed the sea and became Fiji’s great song of farewell. That is the part I like best.
It is still sung when people leave, often by a group singing to whoever is going. A 1955 field recording from Kadavu captures schoolchildren singing from the shore while their visitors head back to a ship.
Isa does not map neatly onto one English word. It can carry sorrow, sympathy, regret or yearning. It is not just “goodbye”, and the drawn-out “Isaaaaa” from my childhood makes more sense to me than any dictionary definition.
Rereading it
I did not expect a song from primary school to send me into the centuries-old relationship between Tonga and Fiji, but it has.
The final verse names flowers and a salusalu. For me, it brings back the garlands Fijians give on special occasions. I can almost smell the sandalwood and oils, and see the green of the islands again.