Where No Creases are Needed for Trousers!

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 502, 3 November 1928, Page 26

Where No Creases are Needed for Trousers!

ROVINGS IN AUSTRALIA AND THE PACIFIC OFFER GLIMPSES OF REFRESHING UNCONVENTIONALITY ... A BEAUTY PARADE IN DISCARDED FLOUR-BAGS!

(Written for THE SUM bo BERNARD C. RYDEIO. E.R.G.S.J

ASHIONS m trousers may come and go. They may be wide this year and tight next. They may be creased down the front or down

the sides. But there will be quite a number of people at least to whom such changes will have no awe, and they will be the people of the Pacific and the Australian black, for they have no trouseys to crease. Despite his scanty wardrobe, the “black-pheller” and his "lubra” have adopted many of our little fashion whims, and strange as it may sound, many that we have adopted have been used by them for centuries past. The Eton crop, bingliug, buster cuts, have been in vogue among the blacks for countless ages, for to them hair as an adornment has no charm. It has other purposes, of utility. The belt which the women wear is made entirely of human hair, while string used by them for tying and carrying is made from the same. One could hardly imagine a Prime Minister, with the responsibility of I

office, wending his way to attend the duties of state minus his trousers, yet when in Vavau, the most northerly of the Friendly Islands, the writer had the good fortune to espy, no less than the Prime Minister ot Tonga, loudly applauding a laka-laka (native dance) sitting there with the very necessary garments missing. What matters it if the scion of a noble house is espied walking to his civic duties attired in but a yard of calico? We are long familiar with the comicpaper idea of native kings waiting for a succulent missionary, wearing upon their heads the insigna of rank —an old top hat, yet on the transcontinental railway at Ooldea (Australia), one will frequently see dignified “blackfellers” strutting up and down attired in a straw hat bestowed upon them by some humorous passenger, and though the gift may be years old, the proud possessor wears it on all state occasions—such as the bi-weekly passing of the train —with its lid badly dented, but withal—a straw hat.

Jazz, the product of our modern generation,' is but akin to the music produced by natives, for rhythm forms the main essential. Blackfellows would be little disturbed at the effects produced by saxophone, for it is but allied to their own “harmonious” renderings. The blackfellow” wriggles his toes to rhythm just as his Western cousin does to the latest Savoy hit, while the Polynesian who beats a hollow log derives as great a pleasure as the trap drummer in a jazz orchestra. It is certainly a

novel sight to see natives who have had practically no association with the white man beating time to the latest New York hit on the gramophone, though it requires much coaxing and the bestowal of large quantities of sweets before they can be persuaded to board the vessel near their camps.

When their first fears are dispelled, they will tap away with evident enjoyment as the gramophone grinds out “When the Red Red Robin Comes Bob-bob-bobbing Along”; but should one produce a violin to sooth their savage breasts with a nocturne, they will betray great concern, imagining the violin strings were some human agency, that the soul of some unfortunate was crying out in anguish, or that a “bullroarer” was in the vicinity. So it is with the recorded voice on the gramophone. At the first notes of Battistini, or the trills of Galli Curci, they would have dived overboard if the machine had not been stopped, being plainly under the impression that a woman or man was secreted in the little box. They will look everywhere for the origin of the voice, even down the aperture. But their fears are allayed when tlie“Broadway Blues” thunders out, while they will beam with delight at the rhythm of the saxophone in “Red-hot Homma.”

A strange scene, these primitive men and women in a modern setting —natives with Eton crops and bustered hair, listening with great joy to the latest 1928 hits, and tapping away with their feet as though they in fancy were dancing the steps of the fox-trot or black blottom. And though the innovation of trousers has not yet reached these primitive people, yet they display great delight at the possession of any European attire. The bestowal of a piece of brightly coloured cloth upon a woman will see a scramble among the remainder of the tribe, until finally they emerge from the scrum, each proudly holding a small piece. This they will place in their human hair belts.

At the mission station in Collier Bay the native women are all attired in flour bags, which make excellent “one-piece” garments, though it is difficult to refrain from smiling when one sees two dozen “gins” proudly displaying the brand of a well known flour as they are lined up at the mission station for inspection and approval. And the native, in his lava-lava, and the old man who greets the train at Ooldea in his ISS9 boater, are surely happier than we, who must perforce climb into a “boiled shirt” to call “three no trumps” at the home of Mrs. Hawkins, or toddle round a dance floor, emulating the black fellow, in a collar that strangles.