Bali Ha'i

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"Bali Ha'i", also spelled "Bali Hai", is a show tune from the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific.

In South Pacific

In the musical, Bali Ha’i is a volcanic island within sight of the island on which most of the action takes place. The troops think of Bali Ha’i as an exotic paradise, but it is off-limits – except to officers. The matriarch of Bali Ha’i, Bloody Mary, does a lot of business with the troops, and she meets Lt. Joseph Cable right after he arrives. She sings her mysterious song that has a haunting choral accompaniment Bali Ha’i to him because she wants to entice him into visiting her island. She doesn’t tell him that she wants him to meet, and fall in love with, her young daughter, Liat.

In 1949, Perry Como recorded the song as a single. Sergio Franchi included this song on his 1965 RCA Victor tribute to The Songs of Richard Rodgers.^[1]

Connections to Aoba/Ambae, Tioman, Kauaʻi, and Treasury Islands

Bali Ha'i was based on the real island of Ambae (formerly Aoba Island). Ambae is located in Vanuatu (known as New Hebrides at the time the song was written).^{[citation needed]}

Ambae is visible on the horizon from Espiritu Santo island, where James A. Michener was stationed in World War II. Michener is the author of Tales of the South Pacific which is the basis for the musical South Pacific. The author used the tranquil, hazy image of the smoothly sloping island on the horizon to represent a not-so-distant but always unattainable place of innocence and happiness. Hence the longing nature of the song.^{[citation needed]} In his 1992 memoir, The World Is My Home, Michener writes of his time in the Treasury Islands: "On a rude signboard attached to a tree, someone had affixed a cardboard giving the settlement's name, and it was so completely different from ordinary names, so musical to my ear that I borrowed a pencil and in a soggy notebook jotted the name against the day when I might want to use if for some purpose I could not then envisage: Bali-ha'i."

Rodgers and Hammerstein were inspired by the way that James Michener described the island, so they wanted to include a song about it when they began work on the musical. When Richard Rodgers first read Oscar Hammerstein II's lyrics to this song over lunch with Joshua Logan, he "could hear the music to go with the words".^[2] He knew that this song should evoke a mystical, languorous, Oriental quality that the story called for. This can be seen in the many chromatic notes in the melody.^{[citation needed]}

The song inspired an extra touch in the scenic designs of Jo Mielziner, who drenched the top of his design for the island with water to evoke mist.^[3] This in turn prompted Hammerstein to write an extra lyric for the interlude in the song, about the "low-flying cloud" that covers the island.^{[citation needed]}

In the 1958 film version, Bali Ha'i is portrayed by the real-life island of Tioman in Malaysia. However, the scene^{[clarification needed]} was filmed on the north shore of Kauaʻi and Mount Makana was used as Bali Hai which is still known as Bali Hai today. Tunnel's Beach is often referred to as "Nurses' Beach" and the scene where Bloody Mary sings of Bali Ha'i takes place on Hanalei Bay.

Subsequent uses of name Bali Hai

Several products have adopted the name.

• Bali Hai is a brand of lager beer sold in Indonesia, as well as a brand of clove cigarettes or kretek produced by Djarum.
• There is also a limited edition diving watch named the BaliHa’i produced by the Tiki Trading Company LLC. On the island of Bali – a province of Indonesia – there is a boating excursion firm called Bali Hai.
• Steampunk musician Doctor Steel uses it as a euphemism for his fictional island laboratory in his song, "The Dr. Steel Show."
• Bali Hai is the name of a cocktail.^[4]
• Bali Hai was the name of an American Italian Swiss Colony unfortified carbonated fruit flavoured beverage (with pineapple, guava and passionfruit juices) that came out in 1964.^[5]
• Bali Hai Consultancy Ltd is an IT consultancy registered in the Suffolk village of Market Weston.^[6]
• Samuel Jackson sings Bali Ha'i in the shower after waking from a coma in the film "Sphere".
• Bali Hai is played in the background of the first dinner scene of the film American Beauty (1999).
• Bali Hai is the name of a Polynesian dance academy in Mexico City. Directed by Clara Snell, they won five 1st places in the Tahiti Fête of Hilo, Hawaii in 2006.^[7]
• Bali Hai is a famous seafood restaurant located in Penang, Malaysia.

References