In the first week of September each year, Samoa holds its Teuila Festival.
It's a time for cultural celebration that's grown to become a bridge between tradition and today.

Tania Nugent: The Teuila Festival was created to preserve Samoan tradition.

Tourism Minister, Misa Telefoni: It's very easy to commercialise one's culture.
We were starting to go a little bit down that road. So we decided we needed to check ourselves and come back. Come back to traditional dancing come back to traditional singing.

We venerate our dance, our music. Religion has become a very important part of our culture so we open with a hymn night.

Tania Nugent: They come from Hawaii, New Zealand and American Samoa to compete in the festival's international fireknife dancing championship.

Tourism Minister, Misa Telefoni: Of all the different dances around the Pacific the one we claim as ours and only ours is the knife dance. And of course now it's been made a fire knife dance.

If you listen to Samoan music, it's very much the rowing beat. If you listen to a Samoan song, the beat comes from the rowing rhythm, which means that probably our people were rowing when they first composed the music, when they first sang the music. They would row in the rhythm of the song.

Tania Nugent: The rowing tradition is deep. The fautasi races are a festival highlight, with local crews competing against rivals, American Samoa.

Tourism Minister, Misa Telefoni: They now only use the Olympic spoon oars. The traditional Samoan oar is flat. So we came up with a concept whereby we have two races. We've allowed the flat oars to row in the spoon oars race but we don't allow the spoon oars to come down. It's a kind of a way of balancing the modern and the traditional.

Tania Nugent: The festival also attracts overseas born Samoans.

Tourism Minister, Misa Telefoni: They enjoy coming back during Teuila and they enjoy participating and you know finding their roots.