Tribal chanting in the bionicle music

[Naota Takizawa]

We all know the bionicle theme from the power pack, that one song that got used in the MNOG and it became the theme song for the toy line, but there's one thing that's been on my mind. Is the chanting at the beginning of the chant simple nonsense or was a real language used for it?

[Tahu3.0]

Well Bionicle in the first years was inspired by a culture for example Tahu means fire in that culture so maybe the chanting could mean something.

Edited June 24, 2015 by Tahu3.0

[Naota Takizawa]

Now that I think about it, Bionicle did use a lot of words from the Maori culture, perhaps the chanting was done in their language? If so, we would need someone to be able to translate it.

[Sumiki]

I was always under the impression that the chanting was untranslatable nonsense created basically to sound cool, with any similarity between it and any actual language merely coincidental.
 
I've never heard that officially, however, so it's entirely possible that it means something.

[Bfahome]

It's also possible that it's just a stock chanting loop. "The BIONICLE Music" already used some stock sounds, and I do know that the music in Zaktan's levels in BIONICLE Heroes use stock chants.

[The 1st Shadow]

My mom once heard that track, and she thought it was from the Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom soundtrack. Watching the movie again, there was a very similar track with some similar chanting at one point. I've since assumed it was basically just nonsense meant to sound like that particular piece.

[Infrared]

This isn't an official translation by any means, but Tolkien has developed his own version of the Matoran language, and as part of that project that he translated the chant (see here). There's more of that sort of thing on his blog.

 

But as other people have said, it's unclear what the chant means in real life.

Edited June 24, 2015 by Infrared

[Xabla]

They are singing a generic song… generic song… I doubt it's an actually language .

[Bionicle Guru]

Listening to it over the years, the sound of it does suggest some pattern that conforms to actual words. Perhaps they are just some random sentence spoken by one of the engineers and modulated to sound deep and un-English. Repeated enough, and it sounds like a chant. My sister studied sound recording engineering, and it is likely such a tactic was used. So it likely means nothing of significance in BIONICLE, but that shouldn't stop us from imagining it could.