"Kai
Tangata - eat men." Maori warriors ate their enemies' bodies
to destroy the mana of the enemy tribe, and to elevate their
own tribe's mana. Alien Weaponry are battling to elevate
the mana of their spirited Maori language and culture against
the materialistic English language that is devouring it.
He taua,
He taua!
1. Waewae tapu
takahi te ara taua
Ka hopungia e maha nga upoko
Ka hopungia e maha taurekareka
E mahi nga mahi a Tūmatauenga
Chorus
Anei rā
Te uhi o Mataora
Pai tuarā
Te kokongapere
Nga rape
Te kitemaimairu
Tatua taua
Nga tā moko puhoro
Anei nga tohu a Tūmatauenga
2. He pakanga nunui
mo te whakautu
Tae mai nga tūpuna mo te whakaāwhina
Kia mau nga Tohunga mo te whakakarakia
E mahi nga mahi a Tūmatauenga
Chorus
Refrain
A Tū-mata-u-enga 4x
Mahi nga mahi a Tūmatauenga 4x
3 Whakatangi o nga pū,
whakapatu nga taiaha
Te kikokiko rekareka ō aku hoariri
Nga umu whakakīa tātau kōpū ki te utu
E mahi nga mahi a Tūmatauenga
Chorus
Refrain
Waewae tapu takahi te ara taua x4
A
war party, a war party!
Footsteps pound the war path
Many heads are sought
Many slaves are sought
The deeds of the war god will be done.
Behold
The chisel of Mataora
The strong back
The base of the spine
The buttock spirals
The thigh
The war belt
The tattooed bodies of warriors
These are the omens of the war god
A mighty battle to avenge us
Our ancestors gather to assist us
Our priests prepare the incantations The
deeds of the war god will be done.
Of the one Standing
with Staunch Eye
The deeds of Tūmatauenga are done.
The sound of the guns,
the blows of the many taiaha
The sweet flesh of our enemies
The ovens fill our bellies with revenge The
deeds of the war god will be done
Footsteps pound the warpath.
Kai Tangata
"Eat men." This symbolic act of cannibalism was done to
debase the mana of the defeated enemy, making them no better
than animals eaten as food.
Taua
A war party. It usually involved toa (warriors), rangatira
(leaders) and a tohunga (ritual expert). A war party would
often travel to battle in a waka taua (a war party craft). The
sizes of taua varied from small groups up to a few hundred
people. A taua was sometimes described as a hoko-whitu,
seven-twenties, but this number was approximate.
Tūmatauenga
Warfare is woven into the Māori creation story. The primal
parent spirits Ranginui (sky father) and Papatūānuku (earth
mother) were locked in an endless embrace. Their children were
trapped between them in the darkness. Tū-mata-u-enga (Standing
with-eye-fixed on-danger), the spirit of war, wanted
to kill the parents, but the others wanted to separate them.
Tāne, the spirit of forests, separated the parents by pushing
them apart.
Tāwhirimātea, the spirit of weather, was angry at the
separation and fought his brothers, introducing the idea of
‘utu' or revenge. Tūmatauenga fought Tāwhirimātea, but neither
could defeat the other.
Tūmatauenga was angry at his other brothers for not helping
him defeat Tāwhirimatea, so he fought them and defeated them.
He made tools and canoes out of Tāne (trees), he fished up
Tangaroa (fish), and dug up Rongo (kūmara). This explains
cannibalism among Māori tribes after battle, as a debasement
of a defeated enemy.
Moko
The radiating lines of the moko beautifully express the
inner energy radiating from a warrior.
The legend of Mataora explains how
moko or deeply cut tattoo designs were used by Maori instead
of the shallow needle pricks of earlier Pacific Island
Polynesians.
In actual fact, early forms of deeply cut tattooing evolved
during the period of mourning for deceased relatives, where
women would lacerate themselves using obsidian or shells and
place soot in the wounds. This was a common expression of
grief, and adding pigment to the wounds served as a reminder
of the death of a loved one. The term moko traditionally
applied to male facial tattooing, while kauae referred to
tattoo on the chins of women. Eventually ‘moko’ came to be
used for Māori tattooing in general.
The word ‘moko’ is thought by some to refer to Rūaumoko, who
is associated with earthquakes and volcanic activity that has
scared this country's landscape.
Alien Weaponry
A three-piece thrash metal band from Waipu, New Zealand,
formed in 2010 by brothers Henry and Lewis de Jong, who
named the band Alien Weaponry after watching the film District
9. The band consists of Lewis de Jong (b. 2002,
guitar and vocals), Henry de Jong (b. 2000, drums), and
since August 2020, bass guitar player Tūranga
Morgan-Edmonds, who repaced Ethan Trembath (b. 2003). The
great great great grandfather of Henry and Lewis, Te Ahoaho,
lost his life in the battle of Pukehinahina. Maori is
songwriter Lewis's first language and both he and Henry
attended Kura Kaupapa Maori. The band has been performing in
Te Reo since 2015.
Turanga, Lewis, Henry
In 2016, the band won the national finals of Smokefree
Rockquest, and toured Europe and North America for the first
time in the latter half of 2018. At a Slovenian festival
“A huge crowd showed up and they were all singing the
lyrics in Māori. They hardly even knew English, yet they
knew the words to our songs."
The boys were managed by the de Jong boys' father Niel, an
experienced rock musician and audio engineer. Their mother
Jette acted as tour manager and publicist.
Songwriting
Lewis "I'll come up with a riff and
Henry'll start playing the drums and Ethan will follow along
with bass. If we hear something that clicks, we'll usually
press 'record' on a little recorder we have. We have a
massive list of stuff we've come up with jamming. Organising
the structure's one of the hardest parts; it can be quite
tedious working out four bars of this, eight bars of that.
After we work out the structure, I usually dig through some
lyrics I already have, or I write them. We listened to all
sorts of music when we were younger, but we were drawn to
thrash metal because it’s quite complex music, and it is a
great vehicle for expressing real stories and emotions.”
Henry “Thrash metal also works with Te Reo
Māori. Both the musical style and the
messages have a lot of similarities with haka, which is
often brutal, angry and about stories of great courage or
loss. Our song Rautapu
is about how the colonial government stole millions of acres
of land by inventing a law in 1963 that allowed them to do
so. Whoever they deemed to be 'rebels,' they could take land
from. It's quite an angry, outspoken song."
