\u201cThe story really was about my journey from what I refer to as \u2018back in my walking days\u2019, up until my fall in 2005 and then becoming disabled,\u201d he explains. Just don\u2019t call it a biography; this is billed as a music portrait, one that sees his life story delivered with humour, grace and live music. \u201cI\u2019m just really hoping that people will enjoy it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a story worth telling. Now 67 and living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, Umaga was the boy from Wainuiomata who had a number-one single with Wellington band Holidaymakers in 1988, went on to chaperone Nelson Mandela during his 1995 appearance at Auckland Domain, ran the record label Pacific Nation Records and helped establish the Whitireia Community Polytechnic contemporary music programme. Then, while living in Auckland in 2005, he became a wheelchair user after slipping on a shower mat and breaking his neck. In 2012, he received the Queen\u2019s Service Medal for services to the Pacific community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMusic has been a big journey for myself and my family,\u201d he explains. His grandfather composed a well-known Samoan song about Black Saturday<\/a>, when 11 people marching for Samoan independence<\/a> were shot dead by New Zealand military police. Umaga and his brothers followed tradition when their father made them quit sports to focus on music. \u201c[It] put me on my journey to music and I\u2019ve used it as a way to bring people together.\u201d<\/p>\n His aim for the new show\u2019s music was \u201cto add to the dialogue about the times of the past\u201d. The show traverses the era of the Dawn Raids, the Springbok Tour and anti-nuclear protests, the women\u2019s movement and the renaissance of te ao M\u0101ori. \u201cThey were times of revolution.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The show could be called revolutionary too. Just don\u2019t call Umaga an inspiration. It\u2019s a common frustration in the disability community, he explains. \u201cI\u2019m not wanting to inspire people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, he hopes it will challenge how disabled people are portrayed and viewed, breaking down the barriers, stereotypes and stigma that are \u201cprevalent within an ableist society\u201d.<\/p>\n He\u2019s witnessed distinct prejudices within Samoan culture. \u201cThere\u2019s always been this thing of seeing disability as a curse on you and your family. Your family had done some wrong, and so that\u2019s the reason why you\u2019re disabled.\u201d<\/p>\n Conditions like tetraplegia and paraplegia are more than just misunderstood, he explains \u2013 the labels often fail to represent people\u2019s lived experience. \u201cWe\u2019re all different in our own disabilities and how we handle [it]. Sometimes with the labels, it\u2019s like a blanket description for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n Umaga was diagnosed with tetraplegia (also known as quadriplegia), which is defined as neck-down paralysis. However, after retaining movement in his hands \u2013 which he credits to remaining active and refusing to accept \u201ctop-down\u201d paralysis \u2013 he\u2019s now categorised as paraplegic, paralysed in the lower half of his body.<\/p>\n The effects of a spinal cord injury can vary, as do support networks and resources. While in the spinal unit in the early days following his injury, he was shocked at the discrepancies among some patients. \u201cI had to ask my occupational therapist, how come those people have got secondhand equipment and we\u2019re burning around in all the latest kind of technology?\u201d She explained that because it was caused by an accident, his injury was covered by ACC, so funding was different to those being treated under the Ministry of Health. \u201cIt just blew my mind and I thought, \u2018that is so wrong\u2019.\u201d (Whaikaha, the Ministry of Disabled People, acknowledges the \u201cconsiderable disparities<\/a>\u201d in support between ACC and the Ministry of Health, alongside \u201cproblematic\u201d disability policies.)<\/p>\n The 20 years since his accident have been a \u201crollercoaster ride\u201d, says Umaga. At first he felt like he could change the world. \u201cIn the spinal unit you have access to all these services: a button that you could push 24 hours a day, a gymnasium where you can go and get supervised to do all your physical rehab, you\u2019ve got a kitchen built for a wheelchair.\u201d It helped him feel independent.<\/p>\n \u201cThen you come back to your home after six months, you\u2019ve got no button, you\u2019ve got nobody on call, and suddenly your house isn\u2019t really made for you to be able to access the oven or do any kind of basics, and so you\u2019re relying on your caregivers to come in and do all that for you. That\u2019s when it really hits you.\u201d<\/p>\n He went through some \u201creally dark\u201d years. \u201cThere was addiction, a lot of reckless thinking and behaviour, depression\u2026 wanting to lock yourself away from the world and just not give a damn,\u201d Umaga explains. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to do anything. I didn\u2019t want to go out. I didn\u2019t want to see people or [play] music, because my hands were still struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n It took a visit from his friend Pos Mavaega, of the arts collective Pacific Underground, while he was in the Christchurch spinal unit to reignite Umaga\u2019s love of music. Mavaega had brought a bass guitar with him and left it in the corner, just in case. \u201cAfter a day I picked it up and I just started playing. I felt so good.\u201d<\/p>\n Umaga describes the moment as a personal crossroads, and he made the decision to harness music and his background in community work.<\/p>\n He also had to confront prejudices of his own.<\/p>\n Well before his own injury, Umaga had crossed paths with an old school friend, now in his 30s and in a wheelchair. \u201cAs soon as I saw him, I just didn\u2019t know how to approach him. I felt almost embarrassed, so I just turned around and walked the other way,\u201d he recalls. \u201cAfter my accident he comes to my house, knocks on the door and he comes and he starts supporting me.\u201d<\/p>\n Umaga\u2019s attitude changed. Society has too, with awareness and compassion becoming more common. \u201cI\u2019ve seen it through my own culture, and Pacific peoples, that there is a lot more understanding now.\u201d<\/p>\n Disabled people became entitled<\/a> to equal employment rights in 2007, New Zealand ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2008, and Whaikaha, the Ministry of Disabled People, was established<\/a> in 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been improvements, but not as much as we\u2019d like.\u201d Whaikaha was downsized<\/a> in 2024 and disability support services were reassigned to the Ministry of Social Development. And there are \u201calways changes\u201d being made to the New Zealand Disability Strategy, which proves challenging too. \u201cIt just keeps changing, and so it becomes harder to access those services.\u201d<\/p>\n He thinks the onus should be placed more on wider society than disabled people, who according to the 2023 Stats NZ Household Disability Survey accounted for 17%<\/a> of New Zealanders \u2013 a number expected to increase as the population ages. Disabled people report worse health and more financial insecurity, with 53%<\/a> struggling to meet basic needs. The average income of people with disabilities living in emergency housing is $22,519 a year, according to new research<\/a>.<\/p>\n Umaga says advocates have to \u201crock up and bang at the table\u201d to have their voices heard \u2013 especially at governance and strategic levels \u2013 for issues like social housing, urban design and community access.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere are lots of frustrations. In the end, you have to level that frustration for yourself and say \u2018that\u2019s just the way life is\u2019,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut you know that there\u2019s a place for you to continue being a disruptor, involved in activism and change.\u201d<\/p>\n He sees that in the next generation. \u201cWhat drives me is being able to hand over the mantle to the young leaders that we\u2019ve been working with to lead their own change and build their leadership capacity,\u201d he says. \u201cI always say to them, I look forward to the day when you can come up to me and say \u2018thanks Pati, we can take over from here, move over.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Music Portrait of a Humble Disabled Samoan is on at Q Theatre from March 5-8 as part of Te Ahurei Toi o T\u0101maki Auckland Arts Festival<\/a> before moving to Wellington for a March 12-14 run at Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts<\/a>. There are a variety of accessible stagings, including an audio-described performance for blind and low-vision audiences, and a New Zealand Sign Language-supported show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With his genre-bending new show debuting at Auckland Arts Festival in March, artist and advocate Fonot\u012b Pati Umaga…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[166080,492,1054,156,157,111,139,69,13572,1066,7069],"class_list":["post-302935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-auckland-arts-festival","tag-comments-enabled","tag-disability","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pacific","tag-pop-culture","tag-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Umaga with Holidaymakers in Parnell in 1988; a publicity shot photographed by Sal Criscillo the same year (Source: Murray Cammick, Audioculture)<\/p>\n
Umaga with his support worker Oti Pomale, who is featured in the show; in Paris in 2014. (Photos: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Oscar Kightley, Sasha Gibb, Neil Ieremia, Maiava Nathaniel Lees and Pati Umaga, the team behind Music Portrait of a Humble Disabled Samoan (Photo: Lou Hatton)<\/p>\n
Young Umaga. He\u2019s the one wearing the red beanie up Mt Holdsworth in the Wairarapa (Photos: Supplied)<\/p>\n