Post #420448 by bigbrotiki on Sun, Nov 23, 2008 10:53 AM

Mad Dog, a nice summation, but I don't quite see these points:

On 2008-11-23 09:14, MadDogMike wrote:
...it means carving tikis, maybe exactly based on the few surviving ancient tikis....some people are very narrow in their interpretation of what "Poly Pop" is and think a broad interpretation waters it down...

Hmm. I cannot think of one person here on TC that engages in, and promotes making exact replicas of ancient Tikis. And I don't know anyone here who is "very narrow" in their interpretation of what Polynesian pop is. That is a contradiction in terms, for Polynesian pop is a creative horn of plenty! (which still, by definition, should have something Polynesian left in it, otherwise it's just pop, no?)

Others are very broad in their interpretation and think they bring fresh life-giving blood to a stale culture.

And I wish there would be that much mindfulness and purpose behind the far-fetched examples out there, most of the time it is just lack of depth. To bring fresh life blood to a culture, you need to understand that culture first, otherwise it is a pointless exercise. Luckily a majority of the new Tiki interpreters here on TC have the love and understanding of Tiki that comes only with prolonged exposure to the subject matter.