A master composer of Fijian meke from Navunilevu Village in Bua has been spotlighted again, with newly emphasised details about how his rare gift arrived and how he protects and passes it on. Meli Bulimaitoga — widely known in his community as Dau ni Vucu — first came into the art at 23 after what he describes as a vision of an old Fijian man who offered him vakalolo and told him he had “come to give you a gift.” That moment, recounted in a resurfaced profile of his life, marks the start of a decades-long role composing vucu and full meke with accompanying actions for communities across Fiji.
Bulimaitoga says the words and movements of a meke “form” in his mind while he is doing ordinary tasks — fishing at sea, working the plantations or drinking kava — and the material appears to him naturally rather than as a product of study or written instruction. He follows a strict creative rule: he must not write the lines down immediately. “If I do, the words will automatically disappear,” he told the reporter. Only after about a week, when chorus and choreography have matured in his memory, does he commit a new composition to paper.
That process ties directly into how Bulimaitoga teaches. He travels widely through Fijian villages to share his knowledge and chooses pupils by an instinctive sense of who is serious about learning and who is there for amusement. While he visits many communities at their invitation, he refuses to charge a fee for his teaching — he asks only for travel, accommodation and food to be covered. “I don’t want to be paid. I believe if I start to charge fees, I might lose my gift,” he said, underscoring a belief widely held among keepers of intangible cultural practices that commodification can undermine spiritual or ancestral sources of knowledge.
Even with offers from elsewhere, Bulimaitoga remains grounded in Navunilevu Village, where he tends his farm when not composing or instructing. That rootedness, combined with his itinerant teaching, has helped keep traditional meke alive at a time when other once-common village gifts — from bone and burn healers to other specialist artisans — have become rarities. The profile, first published in The Fiji Times on October 4, 1999 and now circulating again, frames Bulimaitoga’s story as an instance of continuity amid cultural loss.
Cultural advocates and village elders say practitioners like Bulimaitoga play an outsized role in transmitting oral and performative heritage across generations. His insistence on selective instruction and on preserving the integrity of the gift itself offers a model for safeguarding meke that is both conservative — guarding against dilution — and communal, because he refuses direct payment for the art. That combination has seen him inspire communities across Fiji, ensuring that the rhythm, story and movement embedded in traditional meke continue to be practised and celebrated.
The renewed attention to Bulimaitoga’s life and methods comes as conversations intensify nationally about preserving intangible cultural heritage. As Fiji negotiates modern pressures on village life and younger generations’ changing aspirations, the survival of forms such as meke may increasingly depend on figures who balance stewardship, selective teaching and deep ties to place — qualities Bulimaitoga exemplifies in Navunilevu.
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