3 Dec 2015

Samoan educational audio made available online

4:11 pm on 3 December 2015

A lack of new Samoan language resources in New Zealand has prompted a team to make available online old recordings of Samoan traditional songs and stories.

Victoria University of Wellington's Language Learning Centre embarked on a mission to digitise a number of high quality Maori and Samoan cassette tapes from the 1980s and 90s.

The Rays of Sound project includes recordings of Samoan music composed over a 100 year period, and stories about making palusami and the gathering of the palolo.

Rays of Sound project was born out of a determination to save recordings of culturally valuable stories and songs, and to make them more accessible for everyone to enjoy.

Photo: victoria.ac.nz

The Language Learning Centre's senior administrator, Balint Koller, says they wanted to put the audio online so they can remain available for people to listen to in the future.

"It's also because we've noticed in the last few years, there are not many new Samoan resources coming out from commercial publishers that are of a similar nature. There are some children stories but not a lot of audio that we have been able to identify. We thought why not give these older resources a new lease on life."

Balint Koller says he hopes the resources can be useful for Samoan early childhood centres, which might be struggling to find audio learning resources.