Taonga pūoro revivalist follows ancestor’s footsteps 100 years later

Jerome Kavanagh Poutama started Oro Atua, a wānanga focused on healing hearts and minds through the power of taonga pūoro.

Taonga pūoro are traditional Māori music instruments and a mode of Māori medicine included in the Taonga Suppression Act of 1907, which forced practitioners underground until 1962. Revivalist Jerome Kavanagh Poutama tells Aleyna Martinez about his mission to make the Māori tradition more accessible – including through workshops at schools and organisations in Rotorua – and his mission abroad to follow his ancestor’s footsteps 100 years after the Rātana Māori World Tour.

Jerome Kavanagh Poutama’s mission to revive the traditions of taonga pūoro – traditional Māori musical instruments – has taken him all over New Zealand, to the Grammys, and now to Japan.

Poutama will perform at a community temple in Beppu – one of Rotorua’s sister cities – this month, to tautoko the history and stories of his tupuna (ancestor), Huia Whenuaroa.

Poutama, who lives at a papakāinga in Halcombe, near Whanganui, said his great-grandfather Whenuaroa was on the Rātana Māori World Tour in 1924, where church founder Tahupotiki Wiremu Rātana and his followers shared Treaty of Waitangi grievances with international audiences.

Whenuaroa married one of Rātana’s daughters in a joint wedding on the tour’s stop in Beppu, Poutama said.

“Māori wore Japanese costume and they were married by another faith healer called Juji Nakada.”

Fostering indigenous connections between cultures, people and places was a big part of Poutama’s revival work today, he said.

Past collaborations include the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Moana and the Tribe, Daniel Bedingfield and Hayley Westenra. He also contributed a song composed using taonga pūoro, Kia hora te marino, to composer Christopher Tin’s Grammy-winning classical album Calling all Dawns.

In 2013, he was permitted to play and record the voices of the taonga pūoro collection held at the British Museum, which he said had been “acquired since the 1800s from our tūpuna”.

Beginning his Asian world tour to promote his new EP, Te Taoroa, on November 1, Poutama said there had been an uprising in indigenous knowledge worldwide.

He would perform at a cultural festival at the National Taiwan History Museum Park on November 16 and 17.

“Our people don’t forget the history and celebrate it in real time. They had such a big impact for such a small group of people,” Poutama said.

The koauau (Māori cross blown flute) was the first instrument taonga pūoro artist Jerome Kavanagh Poutama recalls learning to play when he was 8 years old.

Performance and music were one part of Poutama’s healing and revival work and his Oro Atua wānanga, now run with his partner, Ruhia Turner, was another. Poutama said they had treated “more than 2000 whānau” over the last 20 years with a focus on grief and generational trauma.

Rotorua data sovereignty trailblazers Kerri-Anne Hancock and Kirikowhai Mikaere invited them to bless their new Te Kāhui Raraunga space this year, and share his collection of instruments.

“He opened our hearts and minds through his ability to bring forth the voices of our tupuna rakau [ancestral trees] and taiao [environment] – it gave us a way to connect intimately to our ancestors,” Hancock said.

“While my colleagues were much more successful than I was in bringing forth the sound within the taonga, the experience was still so rewarding.”

The Oro Atua wānanga with Te Kāhui Raraunga staff at Te Pākira Marae in Rotorua was run by taonga pūoro artist Jerome Kavanagh Poutama.

Discovering Taonga pūoro after falling into depression in his late 20s, Poutama was diagnosed with bipolar in the early 2000s. Working as a teacher in Taihape at the time, it was then his whānau took him into the bush to treat his mental health. There he discovered the power of sound healing and taonga pūoro.

A family-owned koauau (Māori cross-blown flute) was the first instrument he recalled learning to play.

Now 47, Poutama’s work was still about improving accessibility to Māori healing traditions.

Practising hauora or health, he and Turner live in a papakāinga in Halcombe, near Whanganui.

“Our ancestors used these instruments in days gone by as tools to heal and promote a healthy body, mind and spirit,” Poutama said.

“When played, this vibration resonates within us and helps us to reconnect to the intelligence and power of nature.”

“My grandmother said our people hid their instruments during the time of oppression, for a safe time for them to come back out.

“That’s the time we’re in now,” Poutama said.

During workshops, Poutama showed attendees how to make a clay taonga pūoro and shared his familial collection, which included a koauau toroa (albatross wing bone flute), nguru (whale’s tooth nose flute), pūtōrin (raukatauri flute), hue (gourd), purerehua (wind caller), ponga ihu (gourd nose flute) and a koauau (tōtara flute).

He said he had noticed an “uptake in indigenous knowledge and wisdom” through his work during recent years.

Aleyna Martinez is a multimedia journalist based in the Bay of Plenty. She moved to the region in 2024 and has previously reported in Wairarapa and at Pacific Media Network.