Bougainville: a leafy vine that blooms profusely in a variety of striking colours. Some types are thorny, others are not. What you would think are its flowers are actually just the bracing leaves around the actual flower, which is very small, fragile and white, and grows in clusters of three. Bougainville adorns many a garden and street all around the Mediterranean and right across Africa and Asia and South America, in effect all around the world.
The plant was discovered in Brazil by a French admiral and explorer by the name of… Bougainville, of course. This 18th century gentleman fought over Quebec in Canada, went crisscrossing through the Carribean Sea and down the Brazillian coastline, and became the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe. And he was the second European to stop off in Tahiti along the way. His account of the islands formed the basis of that iconic image of earthly paradise that was later captured on canvas by his compatriot Paul Gauguin.
Bougainville also explored the Indonesian archipelago, where one of the Solomon Islands, off the coast of Papua New Guinea, bears his name till today. This island has been in the news recently for introducing coconut oil as an alternative to diesel. One wonders how the exhaust fumes smell.
So Bougainville is Old World by name yet New World in spirit, both cultured and natural, virile yet tender, colourful but modest at the same time – and that just sort of describes the kind of music that we like to make...
Create your own visitor map!
