Solomon Islands' culture: sixty languages joined by Pijin, kastom and the churches

Which language Solomon Islanders share

The count depends on who is counting. The Australian foreign ministry and Tourism Solomons give 63 distinct languages, Britannica more than 60 languages and dialects, and Ethnologue, as cited on Wikipedia, lists 74, of which 70 are living and four extinct. Most belong to the Oceanic branch of Austronesian. A handful of Central Solomon languages, among them Bilua, Lavukaleve, Savosavo and Touo, form a separate family thought to descend from the islands' earliest settlers. Polynesian languages are spoken on Rennell and Bellona, on Tikopia, Anuta and Fatutaka, on Sikaiana and on Ontong Java, and the families resettled from the Gilbert Islands between 1955 and 1971 speak Gilbertese.

English is the official language, used in politics, foreign affairs, some schools and some workplaces. Pijin is what people from different islands use with one another. The 2019 census asked whether people aged five and over could read and write a simple sentence in a language, which measures literacy as well as speech:

The 2019 census report describes Pijin as increasingly the first language of many people, especially in towns. Wikipedia's main article says only 1 to 2% of people communicate fluently in English; the census measures the ability to write a simple sentence, a lower bar than fluency. Literacy in any language stood at 85.5% of people aged 15 and over at the census, 88.5% for men and 82.5% for women.

Where Pijin came from

Pijin grew out of Beach-la-Mar, an English jargon of the whaling, sandalwood and sea cucumber trades of the early 19th century. Between 1863 and 1906 labour recruiters took islanders to the sugar plantations of Queensland, Samoa, Fiji and New Caledonia, and around 13,000 Solomon Islanders went to Queensland alone. The pidgin of the plantations was the language between Melanesian workers and their overseers, and the labourers brought it home at the end of their contracts or when they were forcibly repatriated as the trade ended in 1904. Up to 1911 about 30,000 Solomon Islanders had worked as indentured labourers abroad.

Missions, plantations at home, Maasina Rule, the Second World War and the growth of Honiara spread it further. Pijin is closely related to Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea and to Bislama in Vanuatu, and the three are sometimes counted as dialects of one Melanesian Pidgin. The government has made little effort to standardise it, but there has been a partial dictionary since 1978, a full one since 2002, a grammar since 2009 and a Bible translation.

Its grammar is Melanesian. Pronouns distinguish one, two, three and more people, and an inclusive first person plural from an exclusive one: iumitufala covers the speaker and the listener, while mitufala covers the speaker and one other person, leaving the listener out. Transitive verbs take a suffix, so love becomes lavem, and English consonant clusters gain vowels, so work becomes waka. The phrase for many thanks is tanggio tumas.

What kastom and wantok mean in a village

Kastom, from the English custom, stands for traditional ways of doing things, and with the wantok system it is central to village life, Tourism Solomons explains. Wantok means one talk: people who speak the same language are kin, owe one another support and can expect it. Wikipedia's culture article describes kastom as the core of the assertion of traditional values in a modern setting, and gives the example of the Kastom Gaden Association, which promotes growing and eating local foods over imported ones.

Authority in a village rests on custom as much as on office, and it differs from island to island. Among the 'Are'are, Zemp recorded, the south had hereditary chiefs, while in the north "big men" rose by their own actions, gathering friends and relatives and building prestige by giving funeral feasts at which food, shell money and music changed hands; both were called aaraha. Tourism Solomons notes that ancestral ceremonies and rituals such as shark calling are still practised in parts of Malaita, and that skull shrines remain in the Western Province, where Roviana built its shrines from the 13th century.

The national statistics office records that land ownership and use are organised largely along tribal lines and that people stay strongly attached to their islands of origin. The constitution's preamble commits the state to cherish and promote the different cultural traditions within Solomon Islands. The country includes seven Polynesian outliers, Anuta, Bellona, Ontong Java, Rennell, Sikaiana, Tikopia and Vaeakau-Taumako, culturally Polynesian societies outside the Polynesian Triangle.

Houses are mostly built from local timber, and many stand on stilts to stay cool in the humid months, according to Tourism Solomons; in Kia on Isabel a whole village is built on stilts. In the Langa Langa Lagoon of Malaita families live on artificial islands. The standards of dress and behaviour are conservative, and Australia's travel advice warns visitors against swearing and public displays of affection.

Which churches Solomon Islanders belong to

Christianity arrived with missions from the 1840s and became the religion of almost everyone. When the ethnomusicologist Hugo Zemp first worked among the 'Are'are in 1969 and 1970, at least 90% of the 'Are'are were already Christian. The 2019 census counted church membership:

The Church of Melanesia had 32.2% of the population in 2019. Smaller groups include Jehovah's Witnesses, with 14,624 members, and the Bahá'í Faith, with 3,104; only 1,227 people reported no religion. Education is not compulsory, and the churches run schools alongside the national and provincial governments; the University of the South Pacific has a campus in Honiara, and some students go abroad, especially to Fiji and Papua New Guinea. The churches have also shaped what is sung. Zemp found that in the 1970s the South Sea Evangelical Church condemned all traditional music as devil music, while Catholic and Anglican congregations kept performing it and played panpipes at the opening of churches and schools.

How shell money is made and spent

Shell money is made in the Langa Langa Lagoon on the west coast of Malaita, and today mainly in Laulasi, Margaret Teobasi Tadokata explains in a Museums Victoria recording. The discs are cut from four shells: the red-lipped rock oyster, called romu; a white shell, ke'e; the black horse mussel, kurila; and a thick white disc from the mangroves, kakadu. Local shells have run out, so makers buy them from Nggela and the Western Province. The finished strings are drilled, polished and threaded, and the standard unit, the tafuliae, is ten strings, made in lengths of six to nine feet.

It is used to pay compensation set by a village chief when someone commits an offence, to exchange for food, and above all for bride price, to build the relationship between the families of bride and groom. In Santa Cruz red-feather money plays a similar role, Britannica notes. Bride price has its critics. Wikipedia's account of gender inequality cites a World Health Organization report of 2013 that found 64% of women aged 15 to 49 who had had a partner had experienced violence from that partner, and describes bride price as treated like a property title, which women said kept them from leaving. The Family Protection Act 2014 created protection orders, and a clinic for victims of family and sexual violence, Seif Ples, opened in Honiara in July 2014.

What panpipes and bamboo bands sound like

The 'Are'are of southern Malaita, between 8,000 and 9,000 people in the 1970s, distinguished their own music, the music of the land, from "the music of the whites", Zemp recorded. Their music for bamboo, called 'au, includes four kinds of panpipe ensemble, one of them played only in the north. Panpipes are made either as a raft or as a bundle of pipes bound in a circle, and in Malaita the largest pipes reach about three feet, Tourism Solomons notes. Ensembles on Malaita and Guadalcanal use up to ten players with differently tuned instruments, and at rituals as many as forty people play and dance together. A conch shell, with its tip removed or a hole in its side, calls people together.

Bamboo bands are newer. Players strike open-ended bamboo tubes of different sizes, first with coconut husks and, by the early 1960s, with the rubber sandals American soldiers had brought; the style gained a following in the 1920s and spread to Papua New Guinea. In the 1950s Edwin Nanau Sitori wrote "Walkabout long Chinatown", which the government has called the country's unofficial national song. Popular music now runs to rock, reggae and island music for guitar and ukulele.

One recording went round the world without its singer. In 1969 or 1970 Zemp recorded a lullaby, "Rorogwela", sung by Afunakwa of northern Malaita, and released it in 1973 in a UNESCO series. The French duo Deep Forest sampled it in "Sweet Lullaby" in 1992 and had a hit. The duo said it had asked permission; it was later found that Afunakwa had never been consulted. Radio in 1969 gave traditional music a quarter of an hour a week, Zemp noted.

Dance goes with the music. Britannica records that dances are performed regularly, and Tourism Solomons singles out a dance performed by women on Isabel and the songs and dances of the Polynesian islanders of Bellona. A Wantok Music Festival brings performers together under the name of the language bond.

What carvers and weavers make

Crafts are made from wood, shell, bark, vine, bone and stone, and the best known are inlaid with shell. Canoe prow figures called nguzunguzu, painted black with shell inlay copying warriors' face paint, rode on war canoes to ward off danger. Small elliptical war shields of woven wicker were decorated with squares of nautilus shell, and round chest ornaments called kap-kaps were cut from turtle shell and giant clam. Coloured pandanus bags come from the Polynesian islands. In the Reef and Santa Cruz Islands, Polynesian communities built ocean-going outrigger canoes, tepukei; the German anthropologist Gerd Koch filmed them in 1966 and took the last complete one to the Ethnological Museum in Berlin.

The Solomon Islands National Museum, established in Honiara in 1969, promotes crafts and dance, Britannica records, and modern paintings hang in the National Art Gallery. A literature in English, mostly published in Solomon Islands, grew up in the late 20th century; its writers include the novelists John Saunana and Rexford Orotaloa and the poet Jully Makini.

What people eat and play

Daily food is fish, chicken, pork, coconut, sweet potato and taro, and the Honiara Central Market sells fish and produce brought in from the outer islands alongside crafts and shell money. Radio carries further than print or television because of the number of languages, low literacy in places and poor television reception; the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation runs the national stations, and the Solomon Star is the one daily newspaper.

Sport draws large followings. The national rugby union team has played internationals since 1969, and the futsal team, the Kurukuru, won the Oceania Futsal Championship in 2008 and 2009 and played at the 2008 FIFA Futsal World Cup in Brazil. Honiara hosted the Pacific Games in November 2023.