From March 26 to April 1, Pascack Valley High School’s Choir took a trip to Hawaii and had the opportunity to sing with other choirs from across the country.
From the beaches of Waikiki, to attending a Polynesian dance with blazing fire knives, this group of students got to immerse themselves in, for some, a brand new culture while participating in music exchange and competition.
The PV Choir competed in a singing competition with schools from across the country in a cultural exchange of music. All of the schools knew the same songs because they had all been practicing them at their own schools.
Seniors Anna Stern and Jordan Pieszchata went on the trip with the PV Choir. Stern and Pieszchata reminisced on some of their favorite experiences from the five-day trip.
“We got [to the competition] and just wanted to practice one of our songs. And so we started singing it, and other choirs from Wisconsin, California, [and other places] not close to us knew the song and joined in with us. And we all came together to sing the same song,” Jordan Pieszchata said.
“It was so fun. So powerful,” Stern reminisced.
The choir got to sing in several places, from music festivals to churches made entirely from coral to Pearl Harbor. They visited the Pearl Harbor National Memorial and saw the remaining outline of the USS Arizona as well as the memorial for the fallen soldiers.
“What I learned was that many of the surviving survivors, after they passed, chose to have their remains put back on the ship, so they could be with their fellow crewmates. So there’s a separate plaque that’s dedicated to the survivors that chose here to be their final resting place because of the survivors’ guilt they felt having lived through Pearl Harbor,” Stern said.
One of the things the students received was a lei at the beginning of their trip. Many students chose to drop flowers from their leis into the open center of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial, as it was tradition to scatter the remains of the leis back into the earth from which they came.
“…walking on the streets, there’s leis everywhere, in the trees, on statues, in the water,” Stern recalled.
Stern explained how Hawaiian culture is all about giving back to the Earth, which is why the students were not able to take anything native to the island off the island.
The choir students also immersed themselves in the culture by learning four pieces in the Hawaiian language from native Hawaiian speakers during a workshop, as well as “local tricks” to make the students sound “more native,” which Stern thought was “really fun”.
However, Stern and Pieszchata recalled their favorite part of the trip being visiting the Polynesian Cultural Center, which features seven of the Polynesian islands: Samoa, New Zealand (Aotearoa), Fiji, Hawaii, Tahiti, Marquesas, and Tonga. The center also highlights the dignity of the Polynesian people and their unique ethnicity.
“It [the Polynesian Cultural Center] is like Epcot, like an amusement park with no rides. But [instead of featuring “around the world” like Epcot, it was] about Hawaii and the Polynesian Islands. At each little island area, there was a game, activity, and food,” Stern said.
“We learned so much. It was just so beautiful everywhere you looked.”
