Maori songs - Kiwi songs - Home

A lively Rangitane song welcoming expatriates back home.

Ka pīoioi1 e Tohu aroha haukāinga E hoki mai rā Kia kite atu i tō iwi e. E rotarota2 ana E katakata ana mai rā. Pūkana3 whētero4 mai I te ihi5 ā ō mātua.6 Kia kite atu ano I tō ataahua ai kanapa7 Pupuhi ai e te hau8 Kapohia āku roimata. Ka pīoioi he tohu aroha haukāinga.9

This swaying dance shows the love of your home-town people. You've come back home, to see your people. There is gesturing and laughing with joy at your return, Eyes popping and tongues thrusting from the energy of those performing. I see again your beauty gleaming there caressed by the wind, and my tears are snatched away. This fluttering dance shows your home-town people's love.

1 Pīoioi emulates the flutterering flight of the fantail. This insect-catching bird is small and delicate, yet fearless and sociable. 2 Rotarota is the making of hand signals. They can be agressive, as in a haka, or welcoming, as in a waiata aroha. 3 Pūkana is explained in two forms. In men it is described as a wild-eyed glare, emulating that of Koukou the owl, a signal of aggression to deter enemies. And in women it is usually a sign of sexual attractiveness. Makeriti writes "At about fourteen to eighteen, girls were taught to pukana (roll the eyes), and walk with a parepare movement of the hips." (The Old Time Maori, 1938) 4 Whētero, the thrusting out of the tongue by men, is an act of defiance. Tamehana Te Rauparaha explained how it conveyed a message to enemies that you had slain their whanau in a previous battle. "Ka haeremai ki konei whetero kau ai te arero, ka mea. 'Naku i patu a mea, naku i patu a mea'." (Te Wi, 1945, JPS). Notice the pronunciation of whetero. Several recordings of this song can be heard on the internet, and in most of them whetero is pronounced as [wetero], not [fetero], a tribute to the West Coast location of its composer. 5 Ihi is the energy that arouses a positive psychic and emotional response from the audience. Pakeha New Zealanders may have experienced this while playing or watching a local rugby match in the game's pre-commercial days. As Greg McGee put it in Foreskin's Lament, "The team is the town and the town is the team." 6 Mātua are members of the main body of army, or here a kapa kaka group. Mātua should be distinguished from matua, parents. In Western countries, important visitors are welcomed by a parade of military strength that symbolise the host country's support for their interests and makes them feel united to their host country. A warlike haka, performed mostly by men, with its display of rotarota, pukana and whetero, has the same function. A performance of a waiata a ringa, performed mostly by women, can also include more graceful versions of these haka actions. 7 "I tō ataahua ai kanapa" is also sung as "Tō ataahua ai kanapa rā." 8 Hau, the wind, is a metaphor for the vital spark, the breath of life, or the Spirit of God. This line could be read as "I see again your beautiful spirit gleaming there, as though touched by God." The mid-19th century Pai Marie Maori religious movement was known as Hau Hau for this reason. 9 Haukāinga, from hau (the breath of life) and kāinga (in a village), is the home, true home, local people of a marae, home people. Notice it is one word, not hau kaianga. Kereopa Ratapu Kereopa Ratapu (from Rongomaiwahine on the East Coast, and now with Ngati Kuia at Nelson) wrote this song while he was training at Palmerston North Teachers College in 1990, to express his feeling about coming back home to his family after serving with the NZ Army in Singapore in the 1980s. When he first composed it, the first line was "E hoki mai ra." This told the audience what the song about - in this case, a homecoming - and he created a tune that caught the energy and excitement of a homecoming. But the best songs make the audience experience the event, and years later Charlie Nicholson in the Wairarapa achieved this by beginning the song with the highly evocative "Ka Pioioi" line that Kereopa had finished the song with. APRA now lists Charles Tamai Nicholson as the composer of the song, a claim hotly contested by Ratapu family members who remember their dad composing the song after returning from his time in the army. A unifying ritual A typical Westerner thinks with left-brain logic, as an individual isolated from the rest of the world. His purpose in life is to control others and gain possession of as much of the world's treasures as he can, for his own use. But in older cultures, such as Maori, the power of the individual's intuitive instinctive right brain is also utilized to enable him to become one with others, and one with the whole living world. Members of a nuclear family, hapu, iwi, waka or nation are bound together by love, and can be referred to as "He muka o te taura whiri," strands of a woven rope. Communal singing and chanting with symbolic action (kapa haka) is a means of achieving this bonding. When study, work or war takes some members to the big city or overseas, the bonds of love between these absentees and the "hau-kainga" homebodies can weaken, and the strands binding them together begin to unravel. I was the cameraman at the 21st birthday party of a young woman who came back from Auckland to Moawhango. Near the beginning of my video here, you can see "Ka Pioioi" being sung for her and the other relatives who came to the marae that weekend. Watching a performance of "Ka Pioioi" lets us share how a returning wanderer is bonded back into the group. I'm sorry, I can't explain this logically my left-brain readers; you can only experience it. Maori songs - Kiwi songs - Home Webpage put onto folksong.org.nz website April 2012. More grave accents added 2018.