History of Samoa who brought the tools necessary to create the art of tatau, or in English tattoo, whence came the traditional Samoan "malofie" (also known as "pe'a" for men and as "malu" for women). The foundation of the cultural tradition of Samoa, or the fa'asamoa came with the rise of the warrior queen Nafanua. Her rule instituted traditions of the fa'amatai or local family and village and regional chiefly systems, a decentralized system. Her niece Salamasina continued under this system and their time is considered a golden age of Samoan cultural traditions. For a long period, a Tongan aristocracy ruled in Samoa.
Tongan music notation Tongan music notation The Tuungafasi or Tongan music notation is a subset of the standard music notation, originally developed by the missionary James Egan Moulton in the 19th century for singing church hymns in Tonga. Tongan music from the pre-European times was not really music in the current sense but rather a non tonic recital (like the 'pater noster'), a style still known nowadays as the tau fakaniua. Therefore, when the missionaries started to teach singing, they had also to start with music from scratch. They found the doh-ray-mi-fah-sol-la-si-doh scale sufficient for their needs, avoiding the very complex and difficult