The Aotearoa Songbook - a digital book featuring many classic waiata of te ao Māori - has been launched.
A group of singers and te reo exponents partnered with APRA AMCOS NZ to bring the songs to life and distribute it freely to schools around the country.
Project lead Hana Mereraiha said the idea came from a need to support teachers and whānau who were passing on the waiata to the next generation.
The songbook was about bringing the waiata back to life and ensuring what was being taught was in fact correct, she said.
“This is in no way a definitive resource, it will continue to emerge and expand and grow as we discover more about these beautiful waiata and about our rich heritage and legacy of waiata Māori.”
Music director Pere Wihongi said the songbook would help ensure that future generations knew the correct composers and the correct lyrics to match the songs.
“Gone are the days where we are singing ‘kia patapatahi’, now the days are here where we know the correct phrasing ‘kia tapatahi,’ so let us be tapatahi, let us be united.”
The songs
The songbook contains 22 songs, including well-known waiata such as Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi, Pā Mai and Whakarongo.
Wihongi said it was a showcase from a particular era of history, with the majority of the compositions coming from the time when Māori soldiers were returning from World War II.
“Now these songs have become something of nostalgia, we know them, we’ve grown up with these songs our whole lives. No matter where you are at a kaupapa Māori or a Māori occasion you’ll hear these songs,” she said.
Among the original composers were many household names in te ao Māori, including Ngoi Pēwhairangi, Kōhine Pōnika and Paraire Tomoana.
“So it’s important for us that we are archiving these taonga, essentially these compositions that do speak to a time, they speak to our history, they speak to our narrative even as Māori.”
Mereraiha said the songs were so well-known they were sung at marae, and in country halls and sheds all across the country.
“A lot of these waiata I actually did not learn at kura in a songbook or anything like that, I learned by osmosis in our communities, in our homes, in our marae, at 21st birthdays etc.”
Autonomy over taonga tuku iho
Mereraiha said making the waiata freely available in the digital world came with risks, but the book was an important tool to make waiata Māori easily accessible all across the world.
“In order to preserve our waiata we need to be able to put them into in those spaces but in a way that keeps them safe.”
It was important that Māori had a sense of agency in the preservation of the waiata, she said.
“So it’s really important for us to have autonomy over our taonga tuku iho, and to make sure what we project out to the world when it is reflected back kei te tika ngā kupu, kei te tika ngā ringa [that the words and actions are correct], and all the kōrero that goes with our taonga is also correct.”
There was a risk of cultural appropriation, but the world had a lot of love for Māori culture, she said.
“Just recently we had the haka world record, took it back off France. The fact that France had it in the first place shows to me how much the world... [loves] our culture.”
All the songs and resources, including lyrics and music sheets, are available here.