Yuku free message boards

I've been reading all your comments on this board about the music and had to chime in. To all of you who don't speak the 'language' it may sound like mumble jumble and the same as Gabon, Fiji, Tocatins and every other survivor theme song, but they are real Samoan lyrics that mean something and it isn't just a bunch of savages grunting and nashing their teeth as most 'white' people hear it as.
Kudos to Russ for including the Katinas, though I thought he would have included some musicians from Upolu where the series is being filmed. :) (Katinas are a Christian group from American Samoa but live in Nashville). As noted before, the song starts with a "Talofa Samoa" or Greetings Samoa. Then in the background, that 'yelling' is actually a "Choo Hoo" followed by a "Mua - Muao" which are both elements of traditional Samoan chants. Then the singing starts with the front vocals singing an ancient Samoan chant, "E a togi e, e a togi a togi e", while the background vocals are not Samoan but your leftovers from a previous survivor season Russ decided to incorporate to keep a continuity with previous theme songs, ...I guess. Then there's a mishmash of vocals with some more Samoan lyrics, "A, E, I, O...." pronounced "Ah, Eh, E, Oh".....that's the first four letters of the Samoan alphabet! ha. Then the rest of the song is just more of all those lyrics sampled with more doses of "Samoaaaaaaa" added.
Being a fan of Survivor and also part Samoan, I'm glad to now know that Russ does include REAL traditional elements in the theme song and it's not just 'Canned' stuff from some Hollywood library of 'ancient voices'. Love the personal Samoan touch to the song. It makes it very Samoan to those of us who understand the lyrics and proud of Mr Landau's attention to detail.

PS - The pronunciation of the Galu and Aiga tribe names is herendous. Aiga is pronounced "A-E-Gah".

The very first words in the song are "Talofa Samoa" which literally means "Greetings or Hello Samoa". Kinda like when rock stars open their concerts yelling "Hello Detroit". Same vibe. Is that what you're referring to? The second set of lyrics is "Mua o, Mua o" (pronounced "Moo-A-O"). It's just one word pronounced twice. The lead vocalist is just pronouncing the first "Mua o" faster while dragging the second pronunciation which is how it's presented when used. That is just a rallying cry used today in Samoa mostly at the start of a song or dance. The leader of the group would normally yell it out twice and the rest of the group or singers would reply back with just a "Muo" as they do in the Survivor theme song. It has it's roots in the way the king of samoa or high chiefs meeting would be called to order alerting the rest of the village by the 'Salelesi' or official .....uh, yeller. (We didn't have Twitter back in those days) No real interpretation for the word other than it's very authentic of Russ and the Katinas to use it in the theme song as they did.

oops..."Sauia" more correctly interpreted as "Come On"!