By Ben Wheeler
“I think I have a very special story,” says Eni Kumar, as we settle down to chat. “When I look back to how it all started, I think it would be a great story to tell, something to leave behind, for the performers in Fiji, for
my children, and for those who would love to know about singers and how they got started.”
Indeed, hers is a rollercoaster of a tale, spanning six decades of performing to audiences across Viti Levu – and a spell in Australia – bearing witness to so many social, cultural and political changes, and leading her own personal adventures.
Eni was born in Suva in 1960 to a musical family. Her mother was a hip dancer in the popular
Hawaiian and Tahitian styles, and Eni herself started as both a hula and go-go dancer at local
hotels in the early seventies, taxiing between venues and dancing across the city for tourists when the cruise ships came in.
“I’d go to school in the day, and by the nights I was dancing with a group where I was the only young one. Suva was one place to be back then, wow! The music!” she exclaims. “Those days, it was very safe. There was nothing to fear.
People loved to be entertained so when they hear there’s a floor show; everybody would just sit and wait for it.” When she was just 12 years old, Eni was invited to be a guest in the final of the Suva JC’s Singing Competition. Realising her talents extended beyond dancing, Eni fully committed to a career as a vocalist, supported by her mother, who everyone knew as ‘Marama’.
Some years later she would win the same competition with a rendition of Natalie Cole’s ‘Mr Melody’, and with it, the opportunity to travel to Australia. After a year in Sydney, homesick and on the cusp of adulthood, Eni returned to Fiji and was quickly approached by local supergroup Ulysses to sing. The band would be home for her for many years, introducing her to a gang of incredibly talented and close-knit friends.
The group captured the spirit of Fiji’s harmonious melting pot that Eni remembered from her youth.
“It wasn’t just Fijian boys – there were Indian boys, Rotuman boys, Chinese boys, all great musicians,” she tells me, emphasising the word great, rolling the R heavily for effect.
Still… quite the Boys Club, I note, to which she laughs. “At that time there was not very many female singers. In the sixties there were some, but when the modern music came it was just me and Melaia Dimuri, who’s passed now.”
“I was doing Candi Staton, Dionne Warwick, Rita Coolidge, Chaka Khan,” Eni says, clearly drawing inspiration from the American and European female artists of the time. “We worked very hard, we rehearsed a lot, and we changed our songs every week. We managed to do that because we all clicked so well.”
“This was when there was no television in Fiji, there was no phones, most of my songs I would get over the radio,” she continues excitedly, “We just had small tape recorders, record players, putting the needle back over and over, that’s how we learned our songs. And it was tough times. We worked our butts
off I tell you!”
Ulysses played across Viti Levu, from Lucky Eddie’s in Suva, to the Mocambo Hotel and Sunlover Hotels in Nadi, from Hunters Inn Lautoka to the Pacific Harbour Resort. As you might imagine, it wasn’t all work.
“Weilei, we had some crazy times!” she exclaims. “We had a party in one room at Mocambo, and we flooded the whole wing. “The stopper fell into the sink, the tap was on, and we fell asleep! “So, then the manager thought to put us out, but we were making them so much money, we were pulling the crowds from Ba, Sigatoka, Lautoka, so the hotel was always packed when the band played. Always! They couldn’t let us go because we were making money for the hotel, and I tell you; it was big money!”
The next year a new venue in Lautoka called Hunters Inn came calling. The manager approached band leader Henry Foon and asked that Ulysses sign up as house band. A quick band meeting later, the decision was made and they relocated and performed at the venue for a year.
For a time, Paul Almeida – whose cousins in the band Tavares had achieved global fame with ‘Heaven Must be Missing an Angel’ and who had himself provided backing vocals for UK superstar Lulu – joined the entourage and toured Viti Levu, singing beside Eni and pulling huge crowds.
“We played at the Fijian Hotel, the Hyatt Regency, and then we went back again to Hunters Inn. There was ten of us and we travelled in a 36-seater bus with all our equipment and everything. And I tell you that was one of the best times.”
“It’s so lovely to sing with people who come from a long way away,” Eni reminisces. “Because you get more exposed, and you benefit from the experience that they bring in. It’s so nice.”
The band also pulled big crowds in the capital’s iconic venues of the time. “We played at The [Golden] Dragon, and we played The Crystal Palace. Right next door there was another place called Rockefellers – more upmarket, you know, everything is so dim, the seatings are very low, you climb up the steps and you dance on top.”
“It was always full. When we played those days those places, the line of people to get in was down to the library! They wait, when one goes out one goes in. The music life was like that – people just go out to dance and listen to bands.” “But the coup,” she says throwing up her hands and shaking her head, “changed everything.”
“I think I have a very special story,” says Eni Kumar, as we settle down to chat. “When I look back to how it all started, I think it would be a great story to tell, something to leave behind, for the performers in Fiji, for my children, and for those who would love to know about singers and how they got started.”
Indeed, hers is a rollercoaster of a tale, spanning six decades of performing to audiences across Viti Levu – and a spell in Australia – bearing witness to so many social, cultural and political changes, and leading her own personal adventures..
Eni was born in Suva in 1960 to a musical family. Her mother was a hip dancer in the popular Hawaiian and Tahitian styles, and Eni herself started as both a hula and go-go dancer at local hotels in the early seventies, taxiing between venues and dancing across the city for tourists when the cruise ships came in.
“I’d go to school in the day, and by the nights I was dancing with a group where I was the only young one. Suva was one place to be back then, wow! The music!” she exclaims.
“Those days, it was very safe. There was nothing to fear. People loved to be entertained so when they hear there’s a floor show, everybody would just sit and wait for it.”
When she was just 12 years old, Eni was invited to be a guest in the final of the Suva JC’s Singing Competition. Realising her talents extended beyond dancing, Eni fully committed to a career as a vocalist, supported by her mother, who everyone knew as ‘Marama’.
Some years later she would win the same competition with a rendition of Natalie Cole’s ‘Mr Melody’, and with it the opportunity to travel to Australia,
After a year in Sydney, homesick and on the cusp of adulthood, Eni returned to Fiji and was quickly approached to sing with local supergroup Ulysses. The band would be home for her for many years, introducing her to a gang of incredibly talented and close-knit friends.
The group captured the spirit of Fiji’s harmonious melting pot that Eni remembers from her youth.
“It wasn’t just Fijian boys – there were Indian boys, Rotuman boys, Chinese boys, all great musicians,” she tells me, emphasising the word great, rolling the R heavily for effect.
Still… quite the Boys Club, I note, to which she laughs.
“At that time there was not very many female singers. In the sixties there were some, but when the modern music came it was just me and Melaia Dimuri, who’s passed now.”
“I was doing Candi Staton, Dionne Warwick, Rita Coolidge, Chaka Khan,” Eni says, clearly drawing inspiration from the American and European female artists of the time. “We worked very hard, we rehearsed a lot, and we changed our songs every week. We managed to do that because we all clicked so well.”
“This was when there was no television in Fiji, there was no phones, most of my songs I would get over the radio,” she continues excitedly, “We just had small tape recorders, record players, putting the needle back over and over, that’s how we learned our songs. And it was tough times. We worked our butts off I tell you!”
Ulysses played across Viti Levu, from Lucky Eddie’s in Suva, to the Mocambo Hotel and Sunlover Hotels in Nadi, from Hunters Inn Lautoka to the Pacific Harbour Resort. As you might imagine, it wasn’t all work.
“Weilei, we had some crazy times!” she exclaims. “We had a party in one room at Mocambo, and we flooded the whole wing.
“The stopper fell into the sink, the tap was on, and we fell asleep!
“So, then the manager thought to put us out, but we were making them so much money, we were pulling the crowds from Ba, Sigatoka, Lautoka, so the hotel was always packed when the band played. Always! They couldn’t let us go because we were making money for the hotel, and I tell you, it was big money!”
The next year a new venue in Lautoka called Hunters Inn came calling. The manager approached band leader Henry Foon and asked that Ulysses sign up as house band. A quick band meeting later, the decision was made and they relocated and performed at the venue for a year.
For a time, Paul Almeida – whose cousins in the band Tavares had achieved global fame with ‘Heaven Must be Missing an Angel’ and who had himself provided backing vocals for UK superstar Lulu – joined the entourage and toured Viti Levu, singing beside Eni and pulling huge crowds.
“We played at the Fijian Hotel, the Hyatt Regency, and then we went back again to Hunters Inn. There was ten of us and we travelled in a 36-seater bus with all our equipment and everything. And I tell you that was one of the best times.”
“It’s so lovely to sing with people who come from a long way away,” Eni reminisces. “Because you get more exposed, and you benefit from the experience that they bring in. It’s so nice.”
The band also pulled big crowds in the capital’s iconic venues of the time.
“We played at The [Golden] Dragon, and we played The Crystal Palace. Right next door there was another place called Rockefellers – more upmarket, you know, everything is so dim, the seatings are very low, you climb up the steps and you dance on top.”
“It was always full. When we played those days those places, the line of people to get in was down to the library! They wait, when one goes out one goes in. The music life was like that – people just go out to dance and listen to bands.”
“But the coup,” she says throwing up her hands and shaking her head, “changed everything.”
Musical harmony, national discord
In those earlier days Eni spent so much time rehearsing and performing with Ulysses, that it is unsurprising a romantic chord struck and Eni found herself drawn to the band’s drummer, her husband-to-be and soulmate, Aneil Kumar.
“Eni and Aneil were both young and single,” band leader Henry Foon remembers, “Aneil was an incredibly talented muso who was technically skilled in audio production and a great groove player on drums. He was also one of the male vocalists in the band and I suppose Eni noticed all these outstanding qualities that he had.”
However, in later years, the progressive professional and personal relationships that always existed in the band and in parts of the music scene, were not always reflected on the streets.
On the one hand, Eni was adored on stage and being groomed as potential Hibiscus royalty, but on the other she and Aneil faced judgement, harassment and bullying for any public display of affection.
“We couldn’t walk together like that,” she tells me, “Because when he walked with me the Fijian guys would turn around and spit on the ground.”
On top of this neither family accepted the relationship at first.
“We went through hell. But we were so much in love we didn’t care… So, we ran away together!”
Once again, the roll on the R from “ran” is as defiant as her tone, and Eni is laughing and smiling. The couple eloped to the west and spent a year playing gigs at The Regent Hotel and JP’s nightclub, staying at the Sunseekers Hotel.
“We just laid low,” she says, “I never even got in touch with my family.”
“After eight months I called my mum and told her where we were, and she said if you think that he loves you and he’ll look after you, then we’ll forget about it, and you can come back.”
I ask if both families accepted them after this.
“Not really,” she says shaking her head. “At that time, it was still just the two of us.”
Eni and Aneil found no such complaints from the boys in Ulysses who quickly heard of their return and immediately asked them to re-join the group.
“It’s crazy!” she tells me laughing. “We left Ulysses three times, but that’s how the band life works.”
In 1980, at the birth of a new decade in Fiji, the couple had their first child.
“When the families saw Oneil, when they saw what a beautiful boy he was, they all shut their mouths and came together,” Eni says grinning from ear to ear.
Enid would arrive exactly three years later.
It seems that only the birth of a child can rival the unifying power of music, healing rifts that run deep, and ending long-term arguments.
“I was the super glue!” Oneil tells me when I speak with him.
Growing up, Oneil and Enid remember a house filled with both music and musicians, colourful clothes and costume changes.
“Our house was like a truck stop!” Enid says laughing. “People in and out and in and out. My dad was that sort of a person. If anyone was going through some hard times, he would always bunk them at home, you know? Until they got back on your feet and then you’re on your way sort of thing.”
Eni reminds Enid of how she used to know all the words to the songs, even from a young age. These days, when she can be persuaded, Enid will get up and do Amy Winehouse covers at her mum’s gigs.
I ask if like most kids she used to dress up in her mother’s clothes.
“Your wardrobe was a big deal!” she says to her mother, giggling, “The shoes, the make-up, the clothes, some that mum still has today, with her habit of hoarding.”
As we talk, the family notes the passing of the years through musical genres, technological developments and changing media: soul, funk, disco, R&B – vinyl, cassette tapes and compact discs
“It’s important that people know we had our fair share of hardships along with the good times,” Enid tells me. “I guess these experiences have helped shape what we as individuals are today. I count myself fortunate to have been exposed to a plethora of artists and music genres. It’s helped me develop an ear for technique and style.”
Importantly it’s not just her own family who sings Eni’s praises – younger musicians and the wider community are also admirers.
Last year, when famous French jazz saxophonist Samy Thiébault gave a series of live performances in Suva, it was Eni who was called on not only to sing, but to help train the Suva Grammar choir to accompany him.
Musician Isireli Leleasiga Vulaca has had the pleasure of playing with Eni several times in recent years.
He laments that while other performers of the time like Georgina Ledua and Laisa Vulakoro – even earlier musicians like Sakiusa Bulicokocoko – created recordings of their covers, examples of Eni at the peak of her fame are more lo-fi and very rare, captured in the moment at live events on basic equipment.
“It is a shame that we don’t get to hear them, because some of the recordings from the nightclub days that I’ve heard are quite fantastic and you just wish that you could have captured that.”
“Fijian history and narratives are based around oral traditions,” he explains. “You hear a lot about musicians being the best, or really hitting the ball out of the park, from the older musicians and older patrons who used to go to these kinds of events.”
“I really just really want to make sure that Eni gets the flowers that she deserves because she is quite the dynamic act and because the entertainment that she provides at events that I was a part of… you could see that she was not only well recognised, but honoured as a legend.”
These days Eni is still captivating crowds with her impressive vocals, channelled and inspired by Shirley Bassey. But where Bassey’s impressive style can be a bombastic and mannered, Eni’s has a restraint and humility that expands its power.
On the weekends she can be found putting her own spin on songs like, The Boy from Ipanema, or singing Fijian favourites at Bad Dog, Damodar City in Suva.
