Every performance of a fātele re-establishes the place of the dance within the Tokelau community, and remakes that idea! community which is revealed in successful performance. At the start of each new performance uncertainty awaits: Will the dancers have the skill and confidence to begin slowly with characteristic Tokelau modesty and diffidence? Will the drum lead an exhilarating acceleration of the tempo? Will the group's order and harmony be maintained even though individuals become ecstatic in the dance? Will the rush of inspiration be communicated to the audience who will understand anew what it means to be a Tokelau community?

This book is a description of a people's interaction and involvement with their favorite dance and music, and of my involvement with it and with them. I place myself within this fātele description in a reflexivity which I believe is an increasingly productive perspective in Ethnomusicology. I hope that the reader will better understand the conclusions drawn by seeing the process through which they are obtained. Here is a dialectic: Tokelauans do their dances, I write about them; I learn the dances better to write about them, they learn new dances to nourish their community. I have had more than ten years study of this little dance the fātele. While this has been a long involvement and my progress slow, I also ask why should it be otherwise? These arts are intimately involved with the culture and identity re-creation of a people. Tokelauans see the arts as a lifetime study in which (as in all things) one will only become truly accomplished and expert as an elder.

The fātele is a vigorous form. Introduced early in the 20th Century and by now deeply known and loved by all Tokelauans the fātele is nevertheless adventurous—testing new imagery in dance and text, improvising vocal parts with consummate skill, responding to different events and audiences, and composing new repertoire at a remarkable pace. But interwoven in this fabric are features of the past which connect the society to its roots. This is a living tradition which is both old and new.

In every performance of a fātele no matter how conventional the song or simple the performance, Tokelauans reach out to their Utopian ideals of cooperation and well being. The ideals of island life are thus those expressed in fātele performances in both the central Pacific homeland and in New Zealand.