Details

Latitude

-4.2487

Longitude

152.1045

Start Date

1993-04-01

End Date

1993-04-01

Tape#1: Musical Journey and Experiences of Samuel ToBata Side A&B: Samuel ToBata was born in 1961 and founder of Yellow Top Stringband of Totovel in the north west of Gazelle Peninsula. Samuel was a self taught and talented guitarist and song composer for his stringband. The name of his stringband came about from his father's practice if painting the roof yellow of his purchased vehicles in the village. In 1969, at the age 8 he was already composing songs then with his stringband he was composer, lead vocals, lead guitar and his other brothers and relatives were together in his group. His father initially discouraged him but due his his musical talents he was accepted to continue his art. In early 1970s' aged 10 to 12 he started to be competitive with performances at the Tolai Warwagira events and and became finalists or evenually winning in the stringband category with his Yellow Top stringband. One of his memorable events is playing steel guitar instrument which came about to enter final stages and since he did not have one, he improvised with his guitar by inserting timber pieces under the strings to sound like a steel guitar. When he became the finalist within a week he ordered a steel guitar from Lae for his finals performance. Samuel was also part of the power band, Squad 5 of Totovel which in the later 1960s performed on another musical festival called "Battle of the Sounds". At that time, these was only a handful of power bands from Tolai villages such as Skylight of Nanganganga, Eagle Voice of Matupit and town band Winterwood with Greg Seeto and other mixed race members. He left Squad 5 band and continued with Yellow Top during 1970s to early 1990s'. In 1992, he began seeing visions about fire and hell like situations when he goes to sleep and happened regularly so he consulted with the church minister "talatala" about this. He was convicted that it was to do with his lifestyle and a change for the better and become more spiritually orientated. He became a fully committed christian to follow Jesus Christ and became active in Church ministry work. Using his musical talents and experience, he formed Gospel group called "Emmanuel Gospel Singers". He has completed composing 13 songs ready for studio recording. The songs are about his own spiritual experiences, testimonies, witnessing, bible "Buk Tabu" scriptures and Kuanua hymn book "Buk na Kakailai". He has been approached Pacific Gold Studios (PGS) and Chin H Meen (CHM). Samuel shares his experiences about living a new christian life away from old worldly ways and evil doing which he was recklessly engaged with as a musician. He also was not a church goer and more concentrated in parties and performances and a rowdy lifestyle despite being encouraged by his parents go to their local church congregation on Sudnays. Samuel became an so changed his life to praising and worshiping God through music was an effective way of living out hos christian faith. Other musicians like David Kepas, a guitarist musician from Rasterman Vibrations and Barike also changed his life from worldly and sinful ways to became a christian and now in the the Rabaul Memorial Church (RMC) Gospel Band. Samuel was also encouraged by Andrew Midian, a church minister and musician as guitarist and choral conductor, composer and he took motivation of musicians becoming christians in better way of life and Godly living. (Steven Gagau, January 2020)

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