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Songbooks about our Kiwi way of life

Some of the songs in these books are ballads crafted and sung by workers, others have been written by educated city people in imitation of these folk ballads, and many started out as commercial entertainment on dance floors, radio and TV.

1959
1967
1971
1972
1981
1981
1987
1991
1991
1992
1992
1996
1997
1997
1998
2001
2004
2008
2008
Les Cleveland
Rona Bailey
Tararua Tramping Club
Neil Colquhoun
NZ Folk Foundation
Joe Charles
Kiwi Pacific
Les Cleveland
Paul Metsers
Mike Harding
Bill & Kath Worsfold
Phil Garland
Gordon Spittle
Judith Binney
Heather Nicholson
Roger Steele
Max Cryer
Phil Garland

Neil Colquhoun

The Songs We Sang
Shanties By The Way
Tararua Song Book
Song of a Young Country
Scrub and Blackberry
Black Billy Tea
A Homestead in New Zealand
The Great New Zealand Songbook
The Metsers Songbook
When The Pakeha Sings of Home
Colonial Heritage Songs
The Singing Kiwi
Counting the Beat
Redemption Songs (pp 535-545)
The Loving Stitch (knitting)
An Ordinary Joker - Peter Cape
Hear our Voices We Entreat
Faces in the Firelight
Songs of a Young Country - extended edition

Maori Songbooks

I'm a Pakeha, and most familiar with the 20th century Maori action songs that are performed almost every day in concerts, using Western tunes. For 90 years the most popular of these songs have been published in books and on recordings. When we compare versions of the same song from different decades, we can see the folk-process of composition, selection and modification transforming the songs in response to the social changes that have occurred over the decades, eg Po Atarau, Hoea Ra, He Puru Taitama, Matangi.

1914
1919
1930
1936
1960
1964
1967
1972
1975
1985
1987
1991
1992
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004

 

Apirana Ngata
Ngata & Tomoana
Hemi Piripata
Ernest McKinley
Ngata & Anderson
Alan Armstrong
Sam Freedman
Koro Dewes
Inia Te Wiata
Ngoi Pewhairangi
Aunty Dovey
Kare Laethem
Toby Rikihana
Ngāmoni Huata
Blossom Taewa
Keith Southern
Keith Southern
Karyn Paringatai

  Songs, Haka & Riri
A Noble Sacrifice
Ten Maori Songs
Maori Songs
Maori Action Songs
Maori games and hakas
Maori songs of New Zealand
Nga waiata haka a Henare Waitoa
Inia Te Wiata's Maori Songbook
Tuini; Her Life and Her Songs
Nau Mai Ra E Poi
Waiata Mai : 35 Maori Songs
Waiata Māori : wāhanga tuatahi
The rhythm and life of poi
He Koha: a gift of Māori music
A Century of Maori Song
Maisey Rika's Maori Songbook
Poia Mai Taku Poi Download PDF

And here are some books about traditional Maori song, although my knowledge of Maori language and literature is not good enough for me to study of the folk process in them, except to observe the origin of some Rugby haka, eg Ruaumoko => Ko Niu Tireni => Kapa o Pango.

1853
1880
1975
1996
1997
2004

 

Sir George Grey
Ngata & Te Hurinui
Alan Armstrong
Mervyn McLean
Judith Binney
McLean & Orbell

  Ko Nga Moteatea
Moteatea / The Songs
Maori Games and Hakas
Maori Music
Redemption Songs (pp 535-545)
Traditional songs of the Maori

My suggestions for beginners to buy

Kiwi songs of the twentieth century - Spittle's Counting the Beat
Folk ballads of New Zealand life from the 1930s to the 60s - The Life & Songs of Peter Cape
Old
songs about the work of colonial Pakeha men - Worsfolds' Colonial Heritage Songs
Women's songs, sung in Maori but familiar to Pakeha - Taewa's He Koha.

Counting the Beat,
A History of New Zealand Song

Gordon Spittle

GP Publications 1997

This book started out as a collection of local songs to be used as a guitar tutor, so it has the lyrics and guitar chords of fifty popular New Zealand songs, from the ancient but enduring Maori stick game chant E Papa and the old rugby anthem On The Ball, through Opo the Dolphin and Cheryl Moana Marie, to the Finn brothers' Always Take the Weather with You and the Muttonbirds' Dominion Road.

But beyond that Gordon discusses the when and why of the songs and their composers. It is an eclectic collection of revealing biographies and interviews.

You get to meet people like Maewa Kaihua (Po Atarau, Now Is the Hour), Tex Morton, Ruru Karatiana (Blue Smoke), Johnny Devlin, Willow Macky, Howard Morrison, Peter Cape, Ray Columbus, Dave Jordan, Dave McArtney (Hello Sailor), Sharon O'Neill, Dave Dobbin, Patsy Riggir and Davanius Prime. You can buy it online HERE

It has no music scores in it, and no CD, so if you are not a New Zealander who grew up with these songs, then you may have problems.


An Ordinary Joker
The Life & Songs of Peter Cape

compiled by Roger Steele

108 pages, plus enclosed CD

Steele Roberts 2001

I'm an ordinary joker, growin' old before my time
For m' heart's in Ta'm'ranui, on the Main Trunk Line...

Peter Cape spent his 1930s childhood in the valleys between Taumarunui and Whangarei, constantly travelling with his Yorkshire immigrant parents selling farmhouse necessities from a small van.

In 1950s Wellington, he wanted to become a poet, but the rural Kiwi voices in his ballads caught the attention of a former English colony looking for its own national identity.

As well as the iconic Cape songs that we have been singing for decades -- Taumarunui, Down the Hall, She'll be Right, Stable Lad, Okaihau Express, Black Matai, Rainbird in the Tea-tree, -- there are some gems more rarely sung -- Nativity, Taumata..., Talking Dog, Charlies' Bash, Spell-Oh, You Can't Win, Inter-island Steamer Express, Coffee Bar Blues -- and some that are quite new to me -- Monde Marie, Gumdigger, Old Joe Becher, Scotty the Roadman, Mary the Drover's Daughter, Tramcar, She's a Great Little Town and The A & P Show.

Arthur Toms has transcribed the tunes of these songs in their original format, artist Barbara Hefford has drawn wry illustrations for her former husband's songs, Roger Steele has written a thorough study of Cape's fragmented life -- backblocks kid, university arts student, poet, minister, journalist, arts editor, small farmer -- and Cape's family have provided a host of photographs.

This is a cultural treat for all New Zealanders, whether singers, CD enthusiasts, poetry readers, or those searching for their cultural and spiritual identity.

This book is a collective work of love; for a way of life now past, and for the man himself.


Colonial Heritage Songs

Bill & Kath Worsfold

Gumdiggers Press, 1999

For five years Bill and Kath travelled aound New Zealand schools re-creating our colonial past with these songs. Some of the songs are about whaling, goldmining and shearing and have been culled from other colonial song collections emphasizing South Island experiences.

But Bill & Kath live in Northland - Bill's ancestry includes a Portuguese whaler who married a local Nga Puhi girl - and there are also songs they have collected with a Northern flavour, about gum-digging, timber-milling and coastal shipping, like Gumdiggers in 1899, Timber I want to go and The Ancient Mariner.

This little booklet has the words, chords, music and background details of 18 songs. It will fit happily into your guitar case, and a CD comes with it.

Some, especially South Islanders, may prefer to buy Phil Garland's larger book, The Singing Kiwi.


He Koha

Blossom Taewa

Raupo Publishing 2001

A scrupulously edited book of ten longtime popular singalong Maori songs, each with an English translation, guitar chords and a simplified music score, plus some background information.

Most older Pakeha women will know these songs, and will respond to the emotions expressed in them: Pokarekare Ana, Tomo Mai (Hoki Mai), Pa Mai, Me He Manu Rere, He Putiputi Koe, Hoea Hoea Ra, Hoki Hoki Tonu Mai and Putiputi Kaneihana.

Pianists and choirmasters might prefer the full piano scores of the similar Inia Te Wiata's Maori Songbook, with singable English lyrics (though not accurate translations).

Backing musicians who want a compact little booklet with the first verse, melody lines and guitar chords for fifty or so of the most popular Maori songs, might prefer Keith Southern's Century of Maori Song.li

New visitors to marae will find Kare Leathem's Waiata Mai: 35 Maori Songs most useful.

All four of these songbooks have companion CDs to help you learn the songs.

Full details of all available Maori Action Song books are HERE

2009 - Coming Soon

'The Phil Garland Songbook'
this will bring all Phil's work up to date....mostly his original songs.
- to be published by Kiwi Pacific Records in the very near future.


Neil Colquhoun has updated 'Songs of a Young Country'
and he has added a further 23 songs
- this will be published sometime this year by Steele Roberts.


Faces in the Firelight

Phil Garland

Steele Roberts Publishing Ltd, Wellington, NZ 2009

An in-depth look at Kiwi history through�a swag of songs about sealers, whalers, pioneers, goldminers, drifters, rogues and scoundrels, shearers, stockmen, gumdiggers,�hard drinkers�and moonshiners�in company with�a colourful collection of tall stories, bush verse, yarns, toasts and ditties.


Hear Our Voices, We Entreat

Max Cryer

Exisle Publishing Ltd, Titirangi, Auckland, 2001

Max correctly describes his book as "the extraordinary story of New Zealand's national anthems," (plural). And it is an extraordinary journey through the mindset of 19th century New Zealand colonists as they competed to find anthems and symbols of their identity.

As well as the story of Bracken's "God Defend New Zealand," which you can read in part on this website HERE there is the history of other competing lyrics and sheet music covers dedicated to Maoriland, Zealandia, Dominion of Beauty and Sons of Motherland.

Kiri Te Kanawa's comment in the foreward is perceptive: she notes how when she was young, it was played as a mournful brass band tune. But gradually it came to be sung by New Zealanders with pride. "The song has identity - and the identity is ours."


The Singing Kiwi

Phil Garland

Willie Wag Productions 1996

Printed in Australia by a desktop publisher, with a useful spiral binding, it rounds off the collections of Neil Colquhoun and Les Cleveland with 120 more on-the-edge-of-New Zealand songs.

About 60 of these are either written by Phil himself, or are other people's rhymes Phil has put a tune to. It is solid evidence of Phil's lifetime of effort collecting, singing, writing and recording folksongs. In most of these songs you hear the voices of sailors, gold-miners, swaggers and high-country shepherds, isolated men on the edge of their world.

These songs are best experienced at a bush-band dance, while you are stomping around a back-country hall and singing along to lively bush-dance songs like Wool Away Jack, and The Wool Commandeer. Then, while you are slumped exhausted on the plank-seating, a massive, bearded singer with a 12 string guitar regales you with a stirring rendition of The Stable Lad, Farewell to Geraldine, or Smoko! Spello!.


The Great New Zealand Songbook

Les Cleveland

Godwit Press 1991

Very nicely produced in the style of Song of a Young Country and contains several songs from that earlier songbook. Lyrics, melody, guitar chords, lots of documentary photographs and scholarly notes.

Les Cleveland (bushman, soldier, balladeer, photographer, university lecturer) has special knowledge of World War II army songs, and post-war tramping songs: I love his inclusion of the poignant Rolling Wheels and Dear Mr Fraser, and the boisterous No Boots, and No More Double-Bunking.

But can a book that omits the Chesdale Cheese Song really claim to be the great New Zealand songbook?

Read more about Cleveland and his work with folksong and other popular NZ artforms in " Les Cleveland: Six Decades" (Victoria University Press 1998)


The Metsers Songbook

Paul Metsers

Publisher unknown 1987

Paul brought out this book after leaving NZ and working as a professional folk singer in the UK for several years. The book, complete with melodies, lyrics, chords, illustrations and photographs, contains about 50 of his songs, including the NZ folk standards Farewell To The Gold, The Seal Children and The Swag and the Shiner.

For those who revel in such guitar tunings as DADGAD or CGCGCD, or finely crafted songs with ecological spirituality, this should be a goldmine.

For copies of the songbook, or just to send Paul cheery NZ folkie greetings, write or phone:
Mint Cottage, Gilthwaiterigg lane, Kendal, Cumbria (Lakes District)
LA9 6NT, United Kingdom. Phone 44 (0) 1538 724707
.


A Homestead in New Zealand

Kiwi Pacific, 1987

It describes itself as "The music of the settlers and pioneers from the early days to today." It is notable for including a song writen and sung by Barry Crump, "A Dog Called Blue. A useful little booklet of words, chords, and music of a dozen songs, plus tourist information, included with a cassette issued by Kiwi Pacific


NZ Folk Foundation

'Scrub and Blackberry'

Cityfolk Music Company 1981

A selection of songs from the NZFF's 1981 folk songwriting competition. Lyrics, melody and guitar chords.

A nice little paperback with songs mainly by Paul Bond (Scrub and Blackberry), Kath Tait (Song For an Old Lady), Rudy Sunde (Seasons in the Valley), John Archer (Super-man), and Val Neimann (Flop yer Belly).


Black Billy Tea,
New Zealand Ballads

Joe Charles

Whitcoulls 1981

Joe Charles was a South Island farmer who wrote bush ballads, lively ones, telling stories which create vivid pictures in your head. This is is happy book to read, and to hum along to. It is beautifully produced, with lots of illustrations, and notes about the origin of his songs.

And a challenge to musicians! You must put your own tunes to most of the lyrics. There are no melody lines or chord sequences, and few recordings available. (McKenzie and his dog, Around the Coleridge run, The phosphate flyers, Black billy tea on Les Cleveland's 1950s 45 record - Wool away Jack on Phil Garland's 1975 LP - Wool away Jack, Billy on the boil on Graeme Wilson's 1982 LP - Billy on the Boil on Cats Been Spayed's 1993 CD - Black billy blues on Phil Garland's 2001 CD)

But no worries; each song has its own unique rhyme and rhythm, perfectly suited to the content of the ballad. The tunes practically jump out at you as you read the words.

 


Song of a Young Country,
New Zealand Folksongs

Neil Colquhoun

AH & AW Reed Ltd 1972

Beautifully produced. Lyrics, melody, guitar chords, and notes for 50 songs, mostly old 19th century ballads.

It sings of whalers and sealers (including the much-recorded Davy Lowston ), settlers, gumdiggers, gold prospectors and rogues. In the early 20th century we meet the swaggers and rural farm workers, and it concludes with union songs.

You can listen to all the songs on a companion LP, Songs of a Young Country.

Neil Colquhoun and Roger Steele are currently preparing a revised and extended version of this book.


Shanties By The Way

Rona Bailey & Herbert Roth

Whitcombe & Tombs, Christchurch 1967

A collection of 79 songs and recitations, ranging from whaling, sealing and goldmining days to contempory ballads, with some musical arrangements and brief supporting notes.

This was a ground-breaking piece of research. A most useful book, and many of the songs in it have been repeatedly recorded. From the 19th century come David Lowston, Come all you tonguers, The New Chum, Bright fine gold, The Wakamarina, The shanty by the way, The digger's farewell, Waitakauri everytime, I've traded with the Maoris, He came from Maoriland and Shearing's coming round.

And songs written closer to 1967 have also flourished: Old Billy Kirk, The magpies, Down the Hall, By the wild Cardrona., and Down on my luck.


Tararua Song Book

Tararua Tramping Club members

TTC PO Box 1008 Wellington 1971

This notebook-sized songster has the words of about 80 of the songs that were sung by young office and factory workers when they headed away for a weekend of exercise and socializing with the opposite sex in the mountains behind Wellington. The songs tell of their adventures, both alpine and sexual.

Away, away with billy and pack, a rollicking down the mountain track,
we'll all get lost and never come back, in the Tararua Ranges.

The first forty are mostly lyrics that Tony Nolan and Harold Gretton set to well-known tunes like Rio Grande, Isle of Capri and The Workers Flag (I used to be a mountaineer, but now I sit and guzzle beer) Some of them have become classics: Good Keen Man, No More Double-Bunking, No Boots at All, Anna Hooch. A selection of these lyrics, and their tunes, are HERE

The second half of the book are singalong songs, some old, some bawdy, all with good choruses: Green grow the Rushes O, Tavern in the Town, Klondyke Kate, Home on the Range, Keyhole at the Door, Oh You Can't get to Heaven.

Others big tramping clubs in the same era produced similar songsters.

 


The Songs We Sang

Les Cleveland

Editorial Services Limited: Wellington 1959

Les Cleveland served with the 25th Battalion in Italy, and collected songs Kiwi soldiers were singing there. In this collection he also includes songs from North Africa collected by Jim Henderson.

Mafeesh hasheesh, I have no hubbly bubbly,
I'd love to do what all good Kiwis do,
I'd like to take you by the river, in my V8 army flivver,
My little Gyppo bint, you're kwise kateer.

Some have been borrowed from the British Army - O'Reilly's Daughter, I Don't Want to be a Soldier, My A25 etc - while others use tunes of hymns and popular songs to express the Kiwis' feelings: frustration in Trentham and Waiouru, coping with the sand and flies and German shell fire in North Africa, nostalgia in Italy, Dear Mister Fraser, won't you take us home? And songs of bitterness in Fiji, being poorly equipped there, and away from the real fighting.

Though they had no ammunition, they were chock full of ambition,
As they waited in their camps beside the sea.

Les took the best of these songs and made a couple of LPs in wartime bar-room style. Sample MP3s from these are now on a university folklore website.
The Songs we Sang LP
- More Songs We Sang LP

 


Boomerang Songsters
When I was a boy at Mangamahu in the 1940s and 50s, we did a lot of singing, mostly of the songs we had learnt from the hit parade on the radio. The words of the latest of these songs were in the latest Boomerang Songster, published every six months by Albert's in Australia.


Children Song of Maoriland
Beside my Aunty May's piano was an Irish songbook and the sheet music of Now is the Hour, Sons of the Anzacs, Come oh Maidens and Blue Smoke, and my aunt taught me Dulcie and the Moa that she had learnt from the Children Song of Maoriland. But there was no book of New Zealand men's working songs. The rough pub songs of working men were kept at a distance from women's prim parlour songs.


Songsheets for special occasions
At anniverary and farewell dinners the hostess distributed cyclostyed songsheets of verses praising the honoured guests, set to tunes everyone knew. "It's a long way to Whakatane, and we're sad to see you go..." But these verses were not published: the women composed them fresh for every new occasion.
 

Reference Books

When The Pakeha Sings of Home,
A Source Guide to the Folk & Popular Songs of New Zealand

Mike Harding

Godwit Press 1992

Mike spent several years in libraries and the Radio New Zealand record archives researching NZ songs. This book contains marvellous lists of locally made songs:- colonial songs, around-the-piano songs, wartime songs, tramping songs, and all those songs we heard on the hit parades and at parties and thought we had forgotten.

He also has them cross-indexed to other lists of all the records and songbooks where you can still find the songs. Or you can hear Mike himself; he now travels the country singing the best of these songs live.

And for the academically inclined, he also has an exhaustive bibliography of books. articles and songbooks.

Maori Music

Mervyn McLean

Auckland University Press, 1996

480 pages.

This is a study of ancient Maori musical tradition and knowledge, and an exploration of the impact of European music on this tradition. It draws on diverse written and oral sources, and includes some 1300 recorded songs, interviews with singers and numerous eyewitness accounts.

McLean went all over New Zealand with a Grundig tape recorder in the 1950s and recorded over 800 tribal songs. He seems to have spent the next 40 years analysing those tapes and building on the knowledge he gained.

There are lots of interesting anecdotes as well as musicological information. It is well illustrated with many musical examples. His description of the communal folk process that was used to craft and shape a new Maori song is especially interesting.

Mervyn McLean was until recently an associate professor of Ethnomusicology and head of the Archive of Maori and Pacific Music at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.


More NZ Folk Music Books

See Harding, or the bibliographies at the back of the Spittle and Cleveland songbooks.

More Maori songbooks and the titles of the songs in them, with brief descriptions of the books, can be found here at Maori Songbook contents

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Page revised Feb 2008

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