Māori music
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Māori music is music composed or performed by Māori, the native people of New Zealand, and includes a wide variety of folk music styles, often integrated with poetry and dance, as well as modern rock and roll, soul, reggae and hip hop.
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[edit] History
Pre-European Māori music was predominantly sung, but researchers Hiriri Melbourne and Richard Nunns have unearthed a rich tradition of blown, struck and whirled instruments. Songs (waiata) were sung solo, in unison or at the octave. Types of song included lullabies (oriori), love songs (waitata aroha) and laments (waiata tangi). It was traditional to end a speech with a song, but none are reported to have been composed especially for this setting or confined to it. Some of the smaller wind instruments were also sung into, and the sound of the poi (raupo ball swung on the end of a flax cord) provided a rhythmic accompaniment to waiata poi.
Captain Cook reported that the Māori sang in "semitones" and others reported that the Māori had no singing/vocal music at all or sang discordantly, but this is incorrect. Europeans could not hear the microtones the Māori were singing. A pre-European song could have a range of as little as a minor third but with several more than the four notes of European music within that range. A song would repeat a single melodic line, generally centred on one note, falling away at the end of the last line. It was a bad omen for a song to be interrupted, so singers in groups would cover for each other while individuals took breath. It was missionary influence that led to the harmonisation of modern Māori music. Through the 19th and 20th centuries the compass of new songs in traditional style gradually increased, so that it is possible to date a song approximately by its range.
An important collection of traditional song lyrics is Ngā Mōteatea by Sir Apirana Ngata but it was Mervyn McLean, in "Traditional Songs of the Maori", who first notated the microtones of a significant number of them.
As part of a deliberate campaign to revive Māori music and culture in the early 20th century, Ngata virtually invented the "action song" (waiata-a-ringa) in which stylised body movements, many with standardised meanings, synchronise with the singing. He, Tuini Ngawai and the tourist concert parties of Rotorua developed the familiar performance of today, with sung entrance, poi, haka ("war dance"), stick game, hymn, ancient song and/or action song, and sung exit. The group that performs it is known as a kapa haka, and in the last few decades, competitions within iwi (tribes) and religious denominations (notably the Kotahitanga sect), regionally and nationally, have raised their performances to a high standard.
While the guitar has become an almost universal instrument to accompany performances today, this only dates from the mid 20th century. Earlier performers used the piano or violin. Some modern artists have revived the use of traditional instruments.
Ngata and Tuini Ngawai composed many songs using European tunes, to encourage Māori pride and, from 1939, to raise morale among Māori at home and at the war. Many, such as "Hoki mai e tama mā" and "E te Hokowhiti-a-Tū" (to the tune of "In the Mood") are still sung today. More recently, other styles originating overseas, including jazz, swing and rock have been incorporated. In the 1980s and 1990s, Hirini Melbourne composed prolifically in an adapted form of traditional style (His Tīhore mai te rangi seldom ranges outside a major third, and Ngā iwi e outside a fourth) and groups like Herbs created a Māori style of reggae.
In 1964, the Aotearoa Traditional Māori Performing Arts Festival was founded, though the board did not actually schedule its first concert until 1972, with the express purpose of encouraging the development of Māori music.
[edit] Traditional musical instruments
[edit] Flutes
A small flute, ductless and notchless, four to eight inches long, open at both ends and having from three to six fingerholes placed along the pipe. Kōauau resemble flutes the world over both in tone quality and in the range of sounds that can be produced by directing the breath across the sharp edge of the upper aperture. Māori kōauau players were renowned for the power it gave them over the affections of women (notably illustrated by the story of Tūtānekai, who, by playing his kōauau, convinced Hinemoa to swim to him across Lake Rotorua). Kōauau are made of wood or bone. Formerly the bone was of bird bone such as albatross or moa; some instruments were also of human bone and were associated with chiefly status and with the precolonial practice of utu.
A small wooden, stone or bone flute shaped like a whale's tooth and sometimes made from an actual tooth. It is from 2 to 6 inches in length, wide at the blowing end and tapering to the lower where it is slightly turned up. It has two or three fingerholes and an extra hole bored on the underside, near the curved end, through which a cord could be passed so that it could hang round the owner's neck. It is played in the same way as a koauau and produces a similar pure flute-like sound. The nguru is sometimes classified as a nose flute perhaps because the word “nguru” means to sigh, moan, or snore. This is unlikely because the large end is too wide for a nostril and, if the curved end were placed in that same position, the flute would lie at an impossible angle for the player to manipulate the fingerholes.
- Rehu
- Pumotomoto
[edit] Trumpet/Flute
Some of the following instruments can be blown as a trumpet as well as a flute, as you would play a kōauau.
- Pūtorino
The pūtorino is known for its wide range of voices; for instance, The male voice (trumpet) and female voice (flute). The putorino varies in length from 9 to 20 inches and has an uneven bore, swelling out to the centre and diminishing evenly towards the lower end, where the pipe is narrow, and has either a very small opening or none at all. The outer shape is carved from a solid piece of wood, split in half lengthwise, hollowed out like two small waka and then lashed together again with flax cord or similar subtitute for binding. At the widest part of the pipe there is an opening shaped like a grotesque mouth. The finest specimens are decorated at both ends with carved figures, and the open mouth is part of a head which is outlined on the flat surface of the pipe. It can be played with bugle technique, with closed lips which are set in vibration by the rapid withdrawal of the tongue. Small variations of pitch can be produced by moving the forefinger over the centre opening.
- Pōrutu
Basically a long version of the kōauau, usually mesuring in length from 380mm to 570mm long. The playing qualities can differ depending on what materials. Native Hardwoods such as Manuka, matai, or black maire are suitable for a clean resonating effects. Like the pūtorino, it has 2 voices, the male (trumpet) and female (flute). The female voice can have up to 5 harmonics depending on the bore. 25 is prefurable with me, but 18 seems to be the prefured. The way they are made can be is to split the wood and ingrave, or simply use an orga drill piece.
[edit] Trumpets
- Pūkaea
- Pūtātara
[edit] Other musical instruments
- Struck
- Pahu(Drum
- Whirled
- Pūrerehua(Bullroar
- Poi Pū
[edit] See also
- List of folk music genres including the Māori styles: Haka, Oro, Patere, Waiata.
- Kapa haka
- Music of New Zealand
[edit] External links
- MĀORI MUSIC - Musical Instruments - 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand
- Research in New Zealand Performing Arts - a free online research journal that discusses Maori music and related performing arts.
- [1]
- [2]
- Maori musical instruments
- waiata.maori.org
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