A ‘Treat Equal to Wagner': Grainger's Interactions with the Music and Culture of Polynesia 1

Grainger’s lifelong passionate enthusiasm for the peoples and cultures of the Pacific, especially their arts, crafts and languages, formed part of his characteristic universalist impulses and it was his attraction to ‘primitive’ music in particular that marked him, in his words, as a ‘hyper-modern’. ² Apart from an interest in the music and singing of the Pacific, he was drawn to other cultural forms – dance, beadwork, clothing, language and ritual – seeking them out whenever opportunity arose and treating them with the seriousness of a scholar and the passion of a collector. ³