Easter Island Music and the Voice of Kiko Pate: A Biographical History of Sound Recording

This article provides a history of sound recording on Easter Island (Rapanui) through the biography of Rapanui master musician Luis Avaka "Kiko" Pate (b. 1920s). Albums of Rapanui music began to appear internationally in the 1970s in the form of field recordings produced by outsider ethnographers and commercial recordings by amateur enthusiasts. In the following decades, Rapanui musicians developed their own interests in sound recording, and many musicians are now fluent in music production processes. Throughout this history of production, Kiko Pate has played an unparalleled role in determining the ways in which perceived traditional music forms are remembered and recorded. The conceptualisation of tradition has become a defining feature of Rapanui culture in the twenty-first century, and the performances and recordings of new generations of musicians owe much of their success to the earlier revitalisation efforts of Kiko Pate. His role in this recording history is, however, not immediately apparent because all of the extant recordings featuring Kiko Pate's distinctive voice are the result of outsider research and production, and emphasize exotic content over performer identity. Through the medium of biography, this article reveals Kiko Pate's presence in Rapanui sound recording history and illuminates many of the factors contributing to the contemporary understanding of music and tradition on Rapanui.