Some New Zealand music for Anzac day

It’s Anzac Day today. A couple of weeks, I posted about going to see Voices from the Front – a World War 1 story and talked about Anzac Day.

That got me fired up to use some of those songs in my arthritis class. So I choreographed a bunch of them and had a whole new routine for my ladies yesterday.

I used a few Maori songs in the routine, and then realised that although I did a post of Kiwi classics as part of my 60 years of my favourite music, I haven’t focused on Māori music at all.

So here, in honour of Anzac Day, is some Māori music from WWI onwards.

But first, let’s start with what may be the only example of Maori culture that many of you have ever seen – the haka performed by our All Blacks rugby team. Although this performance is from 2015, the dance form known as haka is ancient. Read more here on the All Blacks website

Going back in time now to WWI, this song, Now Is The Hour, is known as the Maori farewell. According to Wikipedia (abridged, see full article here):

"Now Is the Hour" is a popular song from the early 20th century ... Māori words were added around 1915 and the tune was slightly changed. It became known as Po Atarau and was used a farewell to Māori soldiers going to the First World War. After this, some white New Zealanders "mistakenly thought [the song was] an old Maori folksong.

Another famous song from WWI is Pokarekare Ana. It’s a love song which was popularised by Māori soldiers who were training near Auckland before embarking for the war in Europe. This version has the lyrics, and shows the translation below.

One of popular singers from the 60s on was Sir Howard Morrison. He is perhaps most well known for Whakaaria Mai, a bilingual version of How Great Thou Art.

This version of a song called Poi-E, performed by the Patea Māori Club, became very popular in the 1980s. You get to see some traditional costumes and dance moves, but also some of the street dancers of the time. Watching it again, it was fun to see three of the dancers I did dance classes with around that time. You can spot them between 2:35 and 2:46.

And now for something so modern, it was only written this year and has been performed just once, at the Cuba Dupa street festival I posted about here. Although it was filmed, I can’t find it anywhere online. But our choir learnt it, to accompany them, and it was so funky, I just loved it. Here is a clip of the song writer showing the dance moves, accompanied by the draft recording they made. Crank it up and funk out, bro.

And finally, to go to the opposite end of the spectrum, Māori music doesn’t just encompass traditional and popular music. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is a world renowned opera singer and here she performs Bach’s Ave Maria.

Thanks for listening. That was just a snippet, and I hope you enjoyed the variety.

All videos from Youtube.

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