Te Vaka: Live at Apia Park

We've said it before, but this concert DVD - with extra footage - confirms it again: Te Vaka are more world famous than they are acknowledged at home.

Not entirely our fault, however. Since their formation this big, disciplined, entertaining and musically gifted pan-Pacific group have taken their vibrant, colourful stage act abroad and seldom play here.

This concert was filmed before a crowd of 20,000 in Apia last August. Big bands seldom make it to Samoa, least of all one like Te Vaka whose music combines a pop-smart guitar chime with Polynesian drums, harmonies and rhythms. Concert footage can often be tedious but here, through half a dozen cameras, excellent and colourful stage lighting, washes of smoke and an excited crowd, it conveys a memorable, historic, 90-minute performance.

For some band members this was also an emotional homecoming, but the additional footage of welcomes and gift-giving by the hosts, the band clowning about in Aggie Grey's pool and so on are more like home movies for the group and the folks in Samoa.

But the concert confirms Te Vaka's status as the premier cross-cultural band out of the South Pacific, and that they have a catalogue of uniformly excellent songs to draw on - which they are taking to Europe again in June. Those lucky northerners.

(Warm Earth DVD)