War dance over haka

By PETER CALDER

The haka has probably been chanted in more exotic places, but the sight was surreal. The rooftop in Ho Chi Minh City - which all the expatriates still call Saigon - was crowded with English and New Zealand fans counting down to the rugby test at Old Trafford in November 1997.

The Vietnamese staffing the catered barbecue were coping quite well, all things considered, with what must have been a massive case of culture shock.

The proprietors of one of Asia's freshest and most fragrant cuisines, they managed to hide the puzzlement and distaste they must have felt as they charred snarlers and spooned out coleslaw. They suppressed the mirth, horror even, that must surely have been prompted by the sight of young entrepreneur capitalists kitted out as Morris dancers (did they bring those leg bells and funny hats with them or source them in the backstreets of Cholon?).

Suddenly, as the All Blacks settled into the crouch at for their pre-match haka, the Morris dancers staged a pre-emptive strike, forming a gaily jingling crowd in front of the big-screen image beamed in by satellite. Among the New Zealanders, nostrils flared and hackles rose at the monstrous affront. Nobody led, but everyone followed as plates were tossed aside, chairs were kicked back and the interlopers were flattened by the wave of chanting.

The "Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!" filled the night air and the dancers quailed, as their countrymen soon would quail on the wrong end of a 28-5 scoreline. The white-uniformed staff gazed on, certain now that we were all mad, and it was tempting to wonder what the rickshaw drivers and fruit sellers in the streets below thought of a sound that must have recalled a sky thick with B-52s.

The performance was less than polished - the purists, I know, would certainly have cringed at my inept eye-rolling and tongue-poking and most of us started to fudge it after "tenei te tangata" - but it made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in authenticity. And it was a sublime moment for the New Zealanders - all, as I remember, Pakeha - united by a chant which echoed in these islands before any European foot trod here.

The haka has come under more serious assault this month than those Morris dancers could muster.

First, rugby legend Colin Meads poured scorn on the modern players' rendition, saying he often cringed at a routine which had become "a bit of a joke" and he fancied it hampered rather than helped their play.

Then a British production company shot a Scotch whisky commercial for Belgian television in Wellington's WestpacTrust Stadium (you may ask why they didn't drive to Scotland rather than fly around the world) in which a bunch of rugby players flipped up their kilts and "flashed" their opponents after performing an on-field haka.

The conceptual clutter of the advertisement might make us wonder if those who thought it up had been drinking something stronger than Scotch. But it's not hard to imagine that the ad caused some measure of outrage among Pakeha and Maori from Tuatapere to Te Kao.

For, regardless of its provenance, Ka mate!, so well known that it is called "the haka" as if there were no other, has become a sort of cultural artefact as uniquely of this land as the tuatara, the bush singlet and the Buzzy Bee.

And it's not performed only on rugby fields. Sir Howard Morrison led a rousing haka in an Auckland theatre when his kinsman Temuera won a best actor gong at the film awards a few years back. Soldiers saluted Private Leonard Manning, murdered in East Timor, with a deafening haka. And patched gang members raised the roof at the funeral of Sir Robert Muldoon with a memorable display.

Even the crew of the abandoned launch Ruamano, rescued by a Korean log carrier at New Year and forced to take a reluctant trip across the Pacific, stripped to the waist and entertained their rescuers with a haka.

An Englishman of my acquaintance who fancies that New Zealanders abroad will break into the dance "at the drop of a beer bottle top" may be overstating the case - an e-mail poll of this organisation found that barely 25 out of 750 knew all or nearly all the words and most of them were pretty vague about the actions. But he was right in surmising that its appeal crossed ethnic and age barriers and had roots running deep into the national psyche.

Much of the reason for that is the haka's now indissoluble association with the All Blacks. Rugby football has roots running deep - some say far too deep - into the national psyche and the haka has long been a distinctive emblem of the team.

The first New Zealand football side to tour the British Isles was the 1888 "Native New Zealanders" (including four Pakeha who must, presumably, have been made honorary Maori for the occasion). Most of the players were native Maori speakers and, as veteran rugby writer Sir Terry McLean remarks, "the Land Wars had only been over for 15 or 20 years and so they would have put a bit into it."

By the time of the 1905 All Blacks - the so-called Originals - the haka seems to have been installed as a team signature. Lloyd Jones, the Wellington writer whose rhapsodic novel The Book of Fame refracts that team's tour of Britain through a poetic prism, says the haka was "a party piece which they were often requested to do whenever they went to the theatre - which they did a great deal."

"But it probably didn't resemble the haka as we know it today," he says. "There is a photo of one in which no choreography is evident. Some hands are up, some down, and some of the players are looking over their shoulders."

These days, in keeping with the All Blacks' 21st-century image as one of the planet's most professionally presented and slickly marketed brands, the choreography of the haka is everything. Under the captaincy of Taine Randell, who expanded the preamble in which the leader issues instructions to the dancers, it is a miracle of precision and ferocity.

For generations, the haka was considered by foreigners a quaint diversion and - perhaps being unconsciously equated with the American Indian war dances in Hollywood westerns - seen as martial and aggressive. The Encyclopaedia of Rugby Football, compiled by Welshman J. R. Jones almost half a century ago, described it as "a war dance" which was "one of the most picturesque features of New Zealand rugby."

"The words," he observed wrongly (see box), "have no literal translation but its meaning is to unnerve the enemy and to invoke the support of the gods in battle."

And opposing teams have increasingly interpreted the haka as aggressive, seeking to blunt its impact by various means. English hooker Richard Cockerill showed scant respect that afternoon at Old Trafford, marching up and eyeballing his opposite Norm Hewitt. Sir Terry McLean remembers generations of All Blacks' opponents watching respectfully as the team performed, but in the modern era the slights have included Wallaby winger David Campese turning his back and the French - who have always taken the view that "foreign culture" was a contradiction in terms - did the same at the 1999 World Cup as they reprised their national anthem while the haka was in progress.

Call it cultural insensitivity or passive resistance, but we may be encouraging that response by increasingly performing the haka as an aggressive war dance. As television cameramen swoop in for close-ups and sound recordists capture every spitting, spluttering syllable, what used to be a distant spectacle becomes an explicit and explicitly intimidating rant.

In his regular Kupu Korikori slot on National Radio's Whenua last weekend, the Rev Muru Walters reminded listeners that Ka mate! was never a war chant but "a celebration of the delight of being alive" and a chance for the performers to demonstrate their grace, agility and physical prowess - all apt aims for football players, one would have thought.

"I was brought up being told not to thrust out my tongue," he says, "because we couldn't say the words. I don't like the way [the All Blacks] move forward. It's got a bit too personal. It's meant to be a demonstration of culture and nothing to do with intimidation."

The function of Ka mate! as a celebration of life is demonstrated not just by the words (the first lines mean "It is death! It is life!") but also by its origin. The details remain hotly contested, but Walters says there is no doubt it was composed by the Ngati Toa/Raukawa chief Te Rauparaha. He probably used parts of existing haka, but the words celebrated his safety after he hid in a kumara pit on which a woman sat "and directed his pursuers elsewhere."

These days its ownership is shared among all tribes, but, whatever intellectual property claims might be lodged for it, Walters says it belongs to Pakeha too.

"It belongs to all New Zealanders just as all Pakeha songs belong to me. I don't ask anyone's permission to sing them."

But, as a rugby fan might say, what about them ABs? Colin Meads, of course, was the man who lamented that the national team were protein-deprived and being denied meat - only to be red-carded by an All Black dietitian who said the players could eat meat to their heart's content but were advised to avoid it for lunch right before a big match.

But maybe Pine Tree has got a point about the haka. Looking back on recent All Black on-field performances, it's tempting to suggest that the haka displayed more energy and commitment than anything that happened between kickoff and final whistle.

"I worry about the recovery," says Lloyd Jones. "Sometimes it looks like it's taken more out of them than 20 press-ups and 60 seconds later the Wallabies have got them back under the posts."

His view would be echoed, no doubt, by one respondent to our e-mail poll.

"I used to know all the words," he wrote somewhat plaintively, "but I have forgotten them since the All Blacks started losing regularly."

* Ka Mate!, the most famous of haka, was composed by Te Rauparaha, paramount chief of Ngati Toa, about 1820. The preamble consists of instructions issued by the leader as to how the performers should comport themselves:

The words are "Ringa pakia. Uma tiraha. Turi whatia. Hope whai ake. Waewae takahia kia kino" and mean "Slap the hands against the chest. Bend the knees. Let the hips follow. Stamp the feet as hard as you can."

The haka itself says:

Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora! [twice]

Tenei te tangata puhuru huru

Nana nei I tiki mai

Whakawhiti te ra

A upa ne! Ka upa ne!

A upane kupane, whiti te ra!


The translation is:

I die! I die! I live! I live!

This is the hairy man

Who fetched the sun

And caused it to shine again

One upward step! Another upward step!

An upward step, another. The sun shines.


Source: www.haka.co.nz