Many years ago on the Island of Rapa Nui (that’s Easter Island to you and me) there was a tribe of people who carved giant statues called Moai.  These are the famous Giant Heads that everyone knows so well.  This is all very interesting, but we hear you ask, stuff the history lesson! What about the legend of the Giant Head Collective?

 

Well let’s begin..

 

Hundreds of years ago the Island of Rapa Nui was covered in a beautiful green forest that the Moai used to sit amongst. The thing is once a Moai was carved and set in the ground they took on a magical spirit. As more and more Moai were erected they took on different personalities, some loved to look at the sky and watch the stars, some were happy to just stare out at the sea, watching the waves crash on the shore and then there were a special few that loved music.  They used to stand tall over the villages listening to the people playing music and dancing around their fires.  Some say that the giant Moai were the inspiration for so many songs, but then again this is just a legend.

 

Remember us telling you that Rapa Nui was covered in a beautiful forest that the Maoi loved to sit in?  Well to start with the people of Rapa Nui cut down the trees to use as rollers to transport the giant Moai to their resting place. After hundreds of years of carving Moai the people of Rapa Nui used up all the tree’s. You see they were so focused on creating more and more Moai they did not see the wood from the trees and never thought of replacing or reusing the ones they had cut down (hmm.. is there something in here for modern man to learn from?)

 

OK, greenie.. hurry up and get to the legend!  OK!

 

After the very last tree was cut down and no more Moai could be carved, most of the people left the island. The people who were left were not the most musical and some of the Moai were just not happy, there was something missing inside them. The other Moai were happy, because they could still look at the stars or watch the Sun and Moon rise over the South Pacific. But for the few Moai who loved to hear and inspire music it was not the same.  These Moai all decided that they will leave the Island and go in search of the musicians that kept them happy for all these years.  So they did, they were transported by boat to the continent of South America and from there they went about their quest looking for the musicians that they loved listening to all those years ago.  Now being timeless Moai seeking mere mortal musicians at first they did not realise that in the 100 years that passed since they started their quest all the island musicians had since passed on.  Pretty soon they realised that their musicians were no longer, but they did realise that there was still great music around but you had to seek it out.  So the Moai came together and collectively turned themselves into humans with the whole aim of finding new music and telling the world about it.  We are not talking about mass produced music for people who like to chop down a tree, use it and then move quickly onto the next, but rather music that the listener connects with. Music that can fill the soul of a Moai and... a human.  They made a pact that they will search the world seeking out the great music and when they got together they would play it for the world to hear.  So they travelled from South America to North America and once there they listened to all the great styles of music. There was Rock music which, originally being made of rock the Moai really quite liked, but it was always the music of the people that caught their ears and had a special pathway into their soul. They spent a lot of time wandering around the South East, states like Tennessee and Georgia where they found mountain music that made them feel like they were back on Rapa Nui all those hundreds of years ago. In the mountains they talked to the locals who told them that a lot of the music they heard could be traced back hundreds of years to Scotland.  The Moai quickly decided that they should visit this small island in the North Atlantic where Scotland was. It could not be further from the warm tropical island of Rapa Nui but maybe musically, there was a connection that they could not ignore, they had to check it out. 

 

After arriving in Scotland and wandering the country for years taking in all the styles of Folk music that had travelled to the Americas and inspired so much in musicians over there. The Giant Heads decided that it was finally time to take all the styles of music that they had absorbed and make their own.  Now what should they call their band?  What else other than the Giant Head Collective!  And now the Giant Head Collective are a band and are producing music with all the inspiration that they have absorbed over the years.  If you want to hear music that can fill the soul of a Moai then you need to check out the Giant Head Collective.