Guitars arrived in New Zealand with settlers, yet they have become a part of M\u0101ori culture. How?<\/p>\n
Think of any kind of M\u0101ori gathering, and a guitar will probably feature at some point. Cousins sitting round the back of a marae strumming on a summer\u2019s afternoon, or belting harmonies in a tin garage on a Saturday night. If there\u2019s kapa haka r\u014dp\u016b stepping and swaying, it\u2019s likely to the jink-a-jink of a heavy strum.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing better than just sitting among a group of people and everyone just belting at the top of their lungs,\u201d says multi-award winning musician Troy Kingi. There aren\u2019t many wh\u0101nau who don\u2019t have a guitar in a corner or cupboard. There\u2019s often a formative moment where some relative places your fingers in a C, F or G.<\/p>\n
But how did that come to be the case? How did the wooden, six-string acoustic \u2013 an instrument from somewhere else \u2013 become so central to our social and cultural fabric?<\/p>\n
\u201cI was learning how to play guitar at about five,\u201d says Maarire Brunning-Kouka, aka M\u0100, who recently won best alternative artist at the Aotearoa Music Awards. \u201cMy koro played guitar all the time, it was a constant sound we heard in the house. It was just part of the furniture.\u201d<\/p>\n
My dad used to go to kapa haka on weekends, gathering in a draughty warehouse on the edge of an army camp, the strums would reverberate through the rat-infested rafters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Maarire Brunning-Kouka, aka M\u0100. (Photo: Samuel Bernard)<\/p>\n
There are memories of the constant presence of an uncle with a gat. The shift in gear a party takes when one is magicked from somewhere. It wasn\u2019t until I was older that I realised the guitar wasn\u2019t M\u0101ori at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s buzzy, eh. We\u2019ve been able to adapt it into our culture so naturally that it is one of the most important pieces of taonga that we have,\u201d says Brunning-Kouka.<\/p>\n
Award winning musician Troy Kingi says the guitar has \u201cjust been that familiar instrument that\u2019s always been there. No one\u2019s questioned it\u201d.
\u201cYou might have an adopted cousin or something. You don\u2019t question it \u2013 they just become a part of the wh\u0101nau. The guitar\u2019s kind of like that,\u201d Kingi says.<\/p>\n
The guitar is the most popular instrument in the world, used by country crooners, gothic rockers, and Spanish tocars alike. Its origins can be traced to the plucked instruments of ancient times. Around the 10th century, round-back, oval-shaped ouds were found across the Arab world. By 1200, European writers were referencing instruments called gitere, gittern, or guitarra latina. However, it\u2019s Spain that\u2019s credited with the plump instrument we know today.<\/p>\n
Easy to carry and cheap to make, it\u2019s long been the instrument of the people. \u201cThe guitar is no more than a cowbell,\u201d the Spanish inquisitor Sebasti\u00e1n de Covarrubias complained<\/a> in 1611, \u201cso easy to play\u2026 there is not a stable lad who is not a musician.\u201d<\/p>\n Composer and researcher Te Ahukaram\u016b Charles Royal suggests the everyman nature of the guitar might be one of the reasons for its popularity with M\u0101ori. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty easy to start playing the guitar. It doesn\u2019t take much,\u201d Royal says.<\/p>\n There is no definitive record of when the guitar first arrived in New Zealand, though it was likely very early after the first P\u0101keh\u0101 arrivals. There are accounts of the instrument\u2019s presence at early whalers\u2019 stations, bush camps and goldfields. But exactly when and how guitars first crossed into the M\u0101ori world is unknown, and everyone I spoke to has their own whakaaro.<\/p>\n M\u0101ori instruments, or taonga p\u016boro, were traditionally designed and played to reflect the rhythms of nature. But there\u2019s also a long tradition of the kind of waiata we now associate with guitar jams: short songs with jovial singing, often improvised, designed to entertain.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the late-19th century<\/a>, a group from Madeira \u2013 an atoll off the north east coast of Africa \u2013 arrived in Hawai\u2019i with a small instrument they called a machete. Their fingers jumped across the strings, reminding k\u0101naka Maoli of grandmothers picking fleas from children\u2019s hair: Jumping fleas, or \u2018ukulele.<\/p>\n The instrument took off \u2013 its breezy pitch, portability and ease lent itself to Hawaiian music \u2013 and from there it leapt to other Pacific islands. Polynesian groups were soon touring the world, spawning the Hawaiian craze of the 1920s. Many of these bands came to Aotearoa, where they met M\u0101ori concert parties. These parties were immensely popular, including one led by Makereti Papakura that toured Australia and Britain to critical acclaim<\/a>. There was also Princess Te Puia\u2019s Te Pou o Mangat\u0101whiri, which fused the contemporary with the traditional as they filled town halls fundraising to build T\u016brangawaewae marae. These bands combined the ukulele with the banjo, mandolin and acoustic guitar, which was yet to achieve its monopoly.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think it has a lot to do with the M\u0101ori Battalion,\u201d says Brunning-Kouka.\u00a0 \u201cWhen our men went overseas and spent a lot of time with the locals there, they spent a lot of their down time playing music with the locals and with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n You don\u2019t have to dig far to find images of the battalion carrying rifles and a gat. In his book on the M\u0101ori battalion, Wira Gardiner wrote that its concert parties were \u201cfamous\u201d. At one held around a bonfire in the Italian city of Taranto \u2013 ahead of the brutal battle for Monte Cassino \u2013 a distinct jing-a-jik carries through the crackly recording. \u201cIt was a bit of a whakapiki wairua situation,\u201d Brunning-Kouka says. \u201cIt was a way to make them human again.\u201d<\/p>\n The Howard Morrison Quartet \u2013 with crisp suits, slicked hair, and guitars strapped across chests \u2013 was arguably the biggest of the M\u0101ori showbands that took the country by storm during the post-war period. Its lead guitarist was Gerry Merito, who Dalvanius Prime called the most influential New Zealand guitarist of all<\/a>.<\/p>\n This was a time of Elvis and Chuck Berry, technology and rebellion. These isolated islands weren\u2019t immune to the tidal wave of rock\u2019n\u2019roll that crashed ashore as thousands of M\u0101ori were forced into the cities for work.<\/p>\n In 1947, a khaki corrugated iron building on the edge of Victoria Park was repurposed as the Auckland M\u0101ori Community Centre. It held waiata groups and dances for a new generation of rangatahi. Its weekend concerts became legendary, fronted by bands who mimicked songs from abroad and added their own distinctive flair \u2013 often a heavy acoustic guitar.<\/p>\n The M\u0101ori Hi-Five, the Quin Tikis or the M\u0101ori Volcanics (fronted by Prince Tui Teka and Billy T James) would play to hundreds, backed by a heavy jink-a-jink. Guitar sales rose by 300% between 1956 and 1963, leading commentators to label<\/a> \u201cthe guitar as much a feature of the modern Maori musical scene as the koauau was of the old\u201d.<\/p>\n There were characters like Johnny Cooper \u2013 the M\u0101ori Cowboy \u2013 who would quip<\/a>: \u201cPlay it in M\u0101ori, boy\u201d. Toko Pompey, considered New Zealand\u2019s Sammy Davis Jr, would say<\/a>: \u201cWe could only play like M\u0101oris\u2026 we had our own style.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In rural areas, composers like Tuini Ng\u0101wai and Ngoi Pewhairangi were contemporising waiata M\u0101ori. Ng\u0101wai, who wrote \u201c500-odd\u201d songs in her lifetime, composed action songs for shearing gangs. Apirana Ngata called her a \u201cgenius\u201d. Many of her waiata, like \u2018Hoki Mai E Tama M\u0101\u2019 and \u2018E Te Hokowhitu-a-T\u016b\u2019 are still bread and butter staples, bound together by the guitar\u2019s rhythmic strum. \u201cSome of our people cannot speak M\u0101ori and they only speak it when they\u2019re learning action songs,\u201d she said in a 1960 interview<\/a>. \u201cThey enjoy their singing.\u201d<\/p>\nMusicians from Hawai\u2019i popularised the ukulele and guitar during the roaring 1920s. (Photo: Hawai\u2018i State Archives & Kealakai Center for Pacific Strings)<\/p>\n
M\u0101ori show bands were a staple feature of dance halls and socials around the country for decades. (Photo: National Library New Zealand)<\/p>\n