Athena DemosCEO/Co-Founder/Producer, Big Rock Creative (BRCvr) · CEO/Co-Founder/Producer @ Big Rock Creative | Award-Winning XR Production Studio | Executive

Alena shares a little of her Polynesia culture through music

1 Feb 2022 · 2 min

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1:42

In this brief spoken‑and‑sung segment, Alena (Speaker A) explains a core Polynesian concept called mana, which she calls Lalud in her language. She describes Lalud as a spiritual life force that defines a person’s purpose and determines community leadership. To acquire Lalud, especially for women, one must excel at rice planting and harvesting, and possess deep knowledge of beads—each bead having its own name. Alena then shares her Calabian name, Lipang, meaning “rice husk,” a name inherited from her grandmother, illustrating how personal identity is tied to cultural heritage. The segment ends with Speaker B delivering a repetitive chant (“Leleng…”) that serves as a musical, cultural response rather than a dialogue.

Chapters

In Polynesia, there's a thing called mana, and your life purpose is to achieve or to gain mana. It's like a spiritual life force. It makes you a good person, and whoever has the most Mana is the leader of the community. In my language, we call it Lalud. And for a woman to gain Lalud, you have to be very good at planting and harvesting rice so that you can share it with the rest of the community. And you need to own beads and know the knowledge of beads and beading. Every bead has its own name. So my name is— my Calabian name is Lipang. It means rice husk. And that was my grandmother's name.
Leleng, leleng, we are alone. Leleng. Leleng. Leleng.