Siva Pacifica

Copping's interest in the South Pacific stems back to a childhood obsession with New Guinea, reading about New Guinean tribes and dreamt of travelling through the jungle. In the late 1980s, Copping travelled to Fiji for a holiday and on a ferry trip to an outer island, Copping encountered a Fijian rugby team. "They had a guitar and started singing these songs and I couldn't believe how these massive, strapping, guys sang lullabies and produced these beautiful harmonies.". He returned to Suva, looking for Fijian-made records and found none. He searched Sydney and realised that there was simply no South Pacific music available. "It was apparently an area of non-interest as far as music was concerned and that was my first twinkling of Siva."[2]

In 1992, Copping produced some music for a West Papuan band, the Black Brothers. Over the next four years, Copping travelled and saved a collection of recordings and in 1997, the first Siva Pacifica album was released, selling over 100 000 copies.[2] Robyn Loau, formerly of Australian band Girlfriend with whom Copping had worked, was face and voice of the project.[3]

Copping said "We really did something that no one had done before which was taking music from the South Pacific and releasing it very widely in Europe. For a non-English-speaking album it was an extraordinary event really. The French and Germans find that whole South Pacific area to be very unique and exotic."[2]

In 2003, a 90-minute documentary directed by Steve Best and produced by Richard Campbell and Anthony Copping was released under the title Siva Pacifica: Lost Voices from Heaven. The documentary explores the more contemporary music of areas such as the Solomon Islands and West Papua to illustrate how the musical culture has developed.[4] The concept for a documentary came after Copping had shot around fifty hours of Hi-8 footage while recording the album.[2]

National Geographic called it "the most dangerous expedition in the history of music."[1] The series aired in Australia on Foxtel in 2004 and was nominated for 'Most Outstanding Documentary Series' at the Logie Awards of 2005.[5]