Herald Maori affairs reporter Yvonne Tahana on the at times frustrating job of covering national kapa haka festival Te Matatini o te Ra.
I am not a kapa haka fiend. In fact, I'd rate my relationship with it as A for awkward.
The closest I've ever come to it was when I did the immersion thing a couple of years ago at Waikato University.
We'd do it in the mornings and it
was a lovely way to start the day, even for a rhythmically challenged dork such as myself who has trouble remembering the words to any song. (The only tune I can claim to know the whole words too being Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby - sad but true.)
I'd hide behind taller people so one of the cute tutors who took us sometimes wouldn't be able to see my crimes.
But at Te Matatini o te Ra this week, the national kapa haka competition which is fiercely contested every two years, the crème of the crop made up of 2000 performers from 42 teams has been putting on a spectacle.
At Waiohika Estate on the outskirts of Gisborne, roopu perform in a natural amphitheatre. There's been times this week where voice has cut out through the air, crystal clean and clear and it's stopped me in my tracks.
Which is why it's annoying that there's been difficulties for mainstream media covering it.
Don't get me wrong, the Tairawhiti hosts have done an amazing job organising a pretty warm event.
The powhiri on Wednesday where horses thundered out as part of the challenge was pure theatre, and the hosts have generally been gracious.
But I reckon they've got some things wrong.
First off for newspapers. I was told that apart from the powhiri, which was open to photographers, the New Zealand Herald wouldn't be able to take pictures of the groups on stage. We could download pictures but that was that.
That's crazy. This is a picture-driven event where often the image coupled with what people are performing is your story.
Plus we've got some of the best snappers in the country - why wouldn't you want to have them covering your event?
So if it's seemed like weird coverage of the event this week, my apologies, the restrictions have hampered our efforts.
We were the only major mainstream daily (not including the Gisborne Herald who are locals and put out an excellent insert) to come to the event and because of some cock-up either on our part or the organisers, our photographer didn't have a media pass.
When he asked if he'd be allowed in, he was told he'd have to pay the day fee.
Veteran Maori journalist Tini Molyneux also experienced problems for TVNZ - she couldn't film here, she couldn't film there, and couldn't use more than two minutes worth of a team's performance in her news items.
She was so incensed she asked Prime Minister John Key if an event that received public funding - $1.2 million - should be free-er with the media. Mr Key said he'd have a word with organisers.
It wasn't the farce Waitangi was this year but parts of it were hoha.
As a sidebar, the audience were repeatedly asked not to take pictures of the groups while they were on stage themselves, on the basis that what they were seeing is the intellectual property of the teams. Good luck enforcing that one with the nannies who have come from all over the country and Australia.
Maori Television has exclusive rights to broadcast and I don't begrudge them that - they'll do a fantastic job.
But organisers should have made more room for the rest of us.
I love Maori stuff - the bigger the better. Te Matatini expects tens of thousands of spectators to have attended by the time finals end on Sunday.
But I feel like those who couldn't come have been robbed of better coverage, when it's something we should celebrate and share.
It makes me think that if mainstream papers have stayed away because of the rules, and not pure laziness (although, I think there's a bit of that) then you can't half blame them.