Si fe’e

Marina Davis, Punialavaa, Traditional | 3 comments

This fun song comes from a fable about the poor octopus and a mischievous mouse. (Check out Pata’s explanation of the story in the comments below.) The second verse, though, is about a game catching land crabs.

Si fe’e, si fe’e
fau lau fausa
fau lau fausa
fau ia tele
x2

Si fe’ē, si fe’ē
Tago ia i lou ulu
Po’o a ea, na mea o iai
A o si fe’e, ua tilotilo mai
Ua le malie lona loto
I le mea ua fai

{ CHORUS }
Fai fai lemu
Ina ne’i, te’i ane ua e pa’ū
Fai fai malie
E ui ina timu
Ae i’u lava ina laofie

Tolotolo uga
Se’i e matea ea
Po’o se ugāmea
Po’o se ugātea
A o a’u, ma si a’u uō
E ma te tafafao i le vao

{ CHORUS }
Fai fai lemu
Ina ne’i, te’i ane ua e pa’ū
Fai fai malie
E ui ina timu
Ae i’u lava ina laofie

Most of the lyrics on this site were submitted by fans of Samoan music, so the words might not be entirely correct… and we may not know who originally composed the song.

Please help us to learn.

Please share any corrections or knowledge about this song in a comment below. Whatever we can verify, we will update in this post.

Ma le fa’aaloalo lava.

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screamingtree

awesome!!! thanks for the little explanation too! well done!

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Pata

The story behind this is song is actually quite funny, one day the mouse wanted to go somewhere but the problem was there was a like river type thing there so then he called his friend the fe’e (octopus) and ask if he could sit on his head while he swims accross so the fe’e agrees so as they are going across the mouse poops on the fe’e ‘s head but the fe’e still took him across not knowing what happened until the mouse got off his head,

thats why when samoans go out tu catch octopus they get a small rock and decorate it with string and leaves to make it look like a mouse, and the funny thing is it actually works..ahahaha

anyways dats it…lolss

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April M Manttari-See

I have a CD from a dance group I was in, and it has an upbeat song that starts with the first verse of ‘Pei oa Uma…”, which says it’s a deeply romantic song,
then after the first verse, it switches to this song!
Now I’m thinking the group that made the song (I don’t know the name) is highly disrespectful to the Somoan culture.
Do you know anything about it?

Then, there’s this:
(https://samoan-lyrics.comtraditional/pei-o-auma-e-le-fiu-i-fafati/#comment-4126)
the video has it spelled one way, but the lyrics are spelled differently, which makes it not make sense.
Does anyone know who is spelling out the lyrics? Is it legit, or is someone being disrespectful?

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