Maori Music

Mervyn McLean

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781775581185
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicology

This book is the best introduction available to Maori music – the instruments played, the songs and dance styles and what they were used for, performance, composition, teaching, etc. Based on 30 years of fieldwork that yielded 1300 recorded songs and hundred of pages of interviews and eyewitness accounts, this is a classic book.

BOOK 1

TRADITIONAL MUSIC AND DANCE

SECTION 1

SONG AND DANCE STYLES

CHAPTER 1

SONG AND DANCE IN HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT

THE NEW ZEALAND MAORI1

POLYNESIAN ORIGINS

The Maori people are believed to have settled New Zealand from somewhere in Eastern Polynesia about 1000 years ago. Their immediate place of origin is still not known with the Society Islands, the Marquesas Islands and the Southern Cook Islands all as candidates. The ultimate origins of the Maori, in common with other Polynesian peoples, lie with remote Austronesian-speaking2 ancestors who began their migrations between 5 and 10 millennia ago, most likely from somewhere in Southeast Asia.

ADAPTATION AND CHANGE

The shift from a tropical environment to a temperate one required numerous adjustments and adaptations. Two periods are distinguished by archaeologists. A so-called Archaic period lasted until about AD 1350 in the North Island of New Zealand and about 200 years longer in the northernmost part of the South Island. Settlements at this time seem to have been seasonally occupied and typically undefended; the economy was based on fishing, gathering and, especially in the South Island, the hunting of a large flightless bird called the moa. Although Europeans were responsible for the most thoroughgoing destruction of indigenous forest in New Zealand, there is evidence of considerable modification of the landscape by the Maori before European colonisation began. The burning of large tracts of forest in the South Island and its replacement by tussock and fern is thought to have reduced moa to the point where continued hunting exterminated them. In the North Island the same occurred after extensive firing of forests for agriculture and to increase supplies of fern-root.3 It is possible that these changes contributed to the ushering in of the next phase of Maori culture. During the fourteenth century occurred an apparently abrupt transition to the Classic Maori phase as seen by Europeans two centuries later. By then, the moa was extinct, the climate was possibly less favourable, and the population, although low by European standards, had expanded to a point where there was fierce competition for resources. During this period warfare became endemic, as did customs associated with it. Archaeologically, the Classic phase is characterised by earthwork fortifications, increased use of storage pits for kuumara (sweet potato), and a greatly expanded inventory of artefacts. Amongst the latter were a standardised form of adze, new and improved fish-hooks, a variety of weapons and ornaments, and musical instruments such as flutes and shell trumpets.4

SUBSISTENCE

Compared with the tropical homeland, New Zealand must have seemed inhospitable in many ways but offered much also by way of compensation. Covering most of the country were forests teeming with edible bird life, and the coastal fishing resources were superb. The climate was colder but there was an apparently inexhaustible supply of wood for housing and for firewood, and the indigenous harakeke or flax plant (Phormium tenax) was available as a replacement for tropical barkcloth and pandanus to make clothing such as the rain-cape, dress cloaks, kilts and belts. Of the tropical food plants, coconut, breadfruit and bananas could not be grown in New Zealand, and taro and yams did not yield well in colder conditions. Their place was taken by fern-root which had the disadvantage of requiring pounding to be edible. It was also very hard on human teeth and during the Classic phase, when fern-root became an essential element of diet, most adults as a consequence lost teeth before they were 25 years old, eventually losing all or most by the age of 40, by which time a person was old.5 The one familiar crop which remained a staple in New Zealand was the kuumara. But even this did not grow everywhere and a storage-pit technology had to be developed so that it could be kept between growing seasons without spoiling. As a treasured food, the kuumara assumed extraordinary significance in myth, legend and song, and elaborate rituals were observed during its cultivation. A famous oriori (song addressed to a child)6 tells of its coming to New Zealand. In the opening lines the crying of a child motivates his father to return to the ancestral homeland Hawaiki to fetch the precious food:

EXAMPLE 1 Oriori: Beginning of M&O 9 as sung by Turau and Marata Te Tomo

In New Zealand, although fish and forest birds were abundant, there were few other sources of protein. Pigs, a domestic animal everywhere else in Polynesia, were either not brought from the homeland or failed to survive. The moa was long gone by the time Europeans came. It must have been a bird which used its feet to defend itself, as one song (McL 832) has been recorded about a man who was kicked by a moa. The dog (kurii) and the rat (kiore) were both brought by the Maori to New Zealand and both were eaten. Additionally dog-skin was used for clothing. The introduction of the rat to New Zealand is credited in legend to the Horouta canoe, one of the ancestral canoes said to have returned to Hawaiki for the kuumara.7 A different story is told by the singer of McL 1227, a karakia (incantation) which refers in its first line to the rat. The song is said to have been composed by Ruaanui, the captain of the Maamari canoe which landed at Hokianga and, like the Horouta, is credited with bringing rats...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Maps
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• BOOK 1 : TRADITIONAL MUSIC AND DANCE
• SECTION 1 : SONG AND DANCE STYLES
• SECTION 2 : MUSIC ETHNOGRAPHY
• SECTION 3 : MUSIC STRUCTURE
• BOOK 2 : THE IMPACT OF EUROPEAN MUSIC
• APPENDIX 1
• APPENDIX 2
• APPENDIX 3
• APPENDIX 4
• NOTES
• REFERENCES
• INDEX
• Copyright