Vaughan Rapatahana
Ngā Mōteatea: He Kupu Arataki (An Introduction), by Jane McRae (Māori translation by Hēni Jacob) (Auckland University Press, 2011), 158 pp., $34.99.
Kia mau koe ki ngā kupu o ou tupuna
Hold fast to the words of your ancestors
‘Ngā Mōteatea … is unique in the corpus of New Zealand literature, and, as a classical work in translation, it merits international readers’ (McRae and Jacob, 2011)
This is an excellent and apposite introduction to the light-years-ahead-of-all-other compilations, that massive four volume Ngā Mōteatea which was initiated by Sir Āpirana Ngata (Ngāti Porou) in the mid to late 1920s, and ably augmented over time by Sir Pei Te Hurinui Jones (Ngāti Maniapoto), Tamati Reedy (Ngāti Porou) and Hirini Moko Mead (Ngāti Awa). It never oversteps its avowed gambit as delineated by Jane McRae: ‘Ngā Mōteatea makes a very handsome collection, but it can seem rather formidable …. This book fulfills [Ngata’s] aim of reproducing a sample of songs which can be understood more easily, and it also aims to draw readers to the collection as a whole’. I concur that this Introduction succeeds in so doing. It is unpretentious, uncontroversial, stimulating. Ka nui te pai tēnei pukapuka.
And it’s in te reo Māori. This aspect is particularly pleasing, given the fact that it is still manifestly difficult to have publishers in Aotearoa agree to distributing texts entirely in te reo — and actually this Introduction is also in English on each facing page. One day soon however it would be great to see books with Hēni Jacob listed as author and Jane McRae as translator.
So what do we receive from this little taonga? A bit of history of the entire scheme as fostered by Ngata, and brought into final fruition between 2004–7 by the Polynesian Society and AUP. A bit of biography about Ngata, his contemporaneous and future wishes for his collections and his urge to publish these songs, song-poems, recitals, chants (he delineated four ‘basic categories’ back in 1929, and I will refer to further later categorisation of ngā mōteatea below). Suffice to say that Ngata originally had two purposes: ‘The first was to ascertain the correct texts in Māori … The second was to “make accessible to Māori youth … the songs of the people, and so inspire them’”. This was no easy task, because ‘the song texts and material to explain them were not to be found in easily accessible single works but scattered throughout many books and articles on the Māori. Ngata also went to unpublished records’. But the initial four volumes by no means cover all mōteatea, many of which still had to be situated, analysed, collated: something Ngata himself was well aware of. He saw this process as ongoing, lifelong, vital, for ‘his greatest desire had been to revive Māori culture “as a living force in the community rather than as a dead exhibit in a museum’”(Ramsden, 1948).
There are lots of useful ‘specifics’ in the McRae-Jacob work as regards what make up ngā mōteatea, with micro-examinations of individual pieces throughout the text, and a more detailed analysis of ten more examples at the back of the book. To itemize these ‘specifics’: First, the orality of Māori culture. ‘It was the Māori oral tradition that gave [the songs] their form and nature. In an oral tradition, memory and voice are the primary means of storing and communicating knowledge … the only way to ensure the preservation of information was by constant recitation and memorising’.
Second, tribal as opposed to a ‘general’ Māori ownership. Even George Grey, one of the original Pakeha collators, from whom Ngata revised and annotated about one hundred songs, stressed this iwi divergence and the difference in mōteatea lyrics and allusions between tribes, while McRae here amplifies: ‘these songs are clearly tribal in origin and sentiment … the songs belonged to tribes – they capture the experiences of tribal members in relation to their community’. So the allusions and specific references to genealogy and geography in these waiata me mōteatea were often only familiar to their immediate audience
Third, the existential importance of these to nga iwi Māori in their daily life, even today in Aotearoa. Ngā mōteatea have become a symbol of Māoritanga: the cultural symbols and values embedded in them, such as allegiance to whenua, iwi, tipuna, not only link present day Māori to their past, they also serve to demonstrate the inherent difference of Māori as a people in their own land.In the ‘oral past’as McRae notes: ‘Songs were used in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances … the use of songs and chants … was far more frequent, more public, and more practical and purposeful’. And ultimately ‘these are not the songs of popular singing, they are more serious in their purpose and content.
Fourth, the categorisation of the contents (rather arbitrarily, for the classification here is borrowed from Mervyn McLean) into ‘the sung songs, or waiata … having terse, poetic language and conventional patterns … sung publicly as a way of describing or relieving feelings, and of appealing to the emotions or help of others’ and into ‘recited songs or chants … [which] are poetic and highly allusive … [differing] from the sung category on the basis of the music, purposes of composition and performance’. There are, though, a plenitude of types of waiata me mōteatea (these two kupu, or words, actually designate different genres: the former allude to songs, the latter to laments, given both tended to involve complaints) not all easily categorisable. Indeed different authors, Māori and Pakeha, have delineated different categories over time (Oppenheim for example, back in 1960, found space for reo tao, which were chants giving power to a spear.) Moreover, there were, and still are, different names for the same ‘types’ due to iwi traditions.
Sixth, the vital role of women. As regards the types nominated as pātere, kaiorarora, oriori, waiata tangi and waiata aroha, and especially waiata whakautu — or replies to accusations, well: ‘the majority of the composers are women’ (Ngata, 1961).The pātere in particular were marked by abusive language, a rapid tempo, and eye-rolling, hand-quivering and swaying. Women were really fighting back against idle gossip, jealousies, the denigrating innuendo about them among te iwi. Although something of simplification, this is a very significant point, I believe. Māori women had historically a major role in not only the composition of Māori poetry, but also its performance; they composed because they were the most affected by battle-loss and the anxious awaiting of the return of the warrior. They knew love, loss and the desertion of the man, (death and betrayal); curses and insults from other women.
Seventh, the significant musical attributes of ngā mōteatea: which are also ‘a collection of songs to sing…or where the tunes are unknown, to put to music’. For me, the key point is that whether, sung, chanted or a mixture of the two, it is musical as opposed to linguistic devices that distinguish Māori song-poetry. Reading the early writings of Pakeha collectors like Macmillan-Brown and Cowan, one notes their cogent remarks as to how these songs were developed from a musical genesis. Another significant point as made by Hirini Mead (1969) is that the words and the tune are inseparable. Therefore, music is essential not only to the genesis of ngā mōteatea Māori per se, but also to their holistic performance. Thus the significance of the CDs which accompany the ‘modern version’ of Ngata’s work — and he had himself endeavoured to record as many works as he could. “But it was … [the work of the Pakeha ethnomusicologist] McLean [which] would do more to fulfill Ngata’s wish for the notation of Māori music and the recording of songs and chants’. McRae summarises this point: ‘neither song texts nor music can be fully understood without the other.
Eighth, Ngā mōteatea as poetry. Make no mistake: Maori song is poetry. Michael King in 1975 echoed his mentor, Koro Dewes, when he wrote ‘I am in no doubt that Māori oral literature is in no sense less complex and less susceptible to subtle analysis [than English and European literature.]’ McRae continues this kaupapa in this book, when she writes “Māori poets used well-known figures of speech: similes, metaphors, symbols and personification”.
Ninth, the template model of these works — in other words their derivation and development was formulaic, but gave considerable room for spontaneity and adaptability: ‘composers worked to some sort of model, that is to say, the composer had in mind some particular structure which was followed’ (Mead, 1969). Each ‘category’ of poem, then, had a distinctive structure, quality, pattern for Māori, as McRae augments here: ‘composers of each tribe followed the same practice, characteristic of all oral traditions … all followed distinct patterns in composing … there was a common technique for each group of songs…language and semantic structure … were highly conventionalized … the poetic devices they used were similarly conventional … Such figures of speech are often stylized or formulaic’. Māori adapted their earlier versions as time rolled on, their work changing in subtle ways. ‘Adaption was the essence of the work’, notes McRae, as slightly different versions were implemented by varying iwi.
Tenth, the importance ofrepetition: ‘It is remarkable … to discover the repetition
in them, in vocabulary, phrasing and form … in an oral tradition, repetition is material to meaning, essential for memorizing, useful for poetic effect, and, as it turns out, effective and satisfying’. Similarly, most, but by no means all, mōteatea and waiata were ‘composed, memorized and then sung’ and are replete with borrowings from otheriwi renditions.
Eleventh, the generous use of allusive references and brevity, the latter, as with repetition, partly to aid memory. Notes McRae: ‘Such can be the brevity and obliqueness of the language in the songs that a wealth of meaning and information is, if not exactly hidden, then often somewhat veiled’. She quotes Jones who states that this poetry ‘worked by suggestion. It is full of contractions. The imagery and ideas that abound in the Maori language are intended to convey more than the words mean’.
Twelfth, genealogical and supernatural references: ‘The songs are full of information about Māori culture … descent … and mythology … [However] the world of songs was not simply that of humans. There are songs of the supernatural realm’.
Thirteenth, problems with translation into the English language. Ngata had attempted to translate all pieces into English, but the difficulties involved included the sheer abstruseness of many of the archaic words and allusions for there were ‘idioms without equivalence in English, and words or phrases which can only be understood with a knowledge of the setting of, or reason for, the original composition’”.
Fourteenth, the changes in subject matter as Pakeha influences and deprivations took hold. Māori poetry increasingly came to reflect what was happening to Māori as a race. Notes McRae: ‘The oral practice of composing and singing probably began to change in the early decades of the 1800s as Māori were influenced by Pakeha government, religion and customs, and as writing and print began to lessen the habit of memorizing it … its decline … concerned Ngata … Māori sang about the new after the Pakeha arrived … new words, ideas and images’.
So what do we NOT get in this little treasure-house, given that this book never aspires to be a socio-linguistic treatise on te ao Māori per se? Mention is not made of Ngata’s significant historical role in the decimation of te reoMāori and its subsequent deleterious impact on ngā mōteatea, though he subsequently reversed this attitude. Ngata initially, and for some time afterwards, espoused English as the only via media for his people.
In the Introduction there’s only a small footnote to acknowledge Ngata’s huge support for ngā waiata-ā-ringa, the obverse counter to ngā mōteatea Māori. This traditional song-poetry was never the later (from the early 1900s) popularised melodies based on Western music and hymns gleaned from gramophones. Noted McLean (1996): ‘there are two kinds of Māori music. The kind with which most people are familiar, known as action song, dates only from about the first decades of the present century. In its present form it is little more than a Māorified form of Western popular music’.
Māori language poetry in its traditional formats remains significant. Charles Royal in 2009 noted: ‘… this song tradition never completely died out … much activity has taken place to record and preserve these songs … Hence, today, one can still find these songs sung upon numerous marae … and one can hear them upon television and elsewhere’.
McRae trusts her and Jacob’s Introduction will: ‘attract general readers too, and perhaps some who are not aware of this [tradition]’. Ngata himself summed up this notion of shared value pertaining so well in his 1959 Introduction: ‘One hopes that not only Māori students of future generations, but Pakeha too, will inherit a living language which carries on in its songs the rich traditions of its poetic past.’ Ngata, though, stipulated the pre-eminence of te reo Maori: ‘The compiler, as a Maori himself, is happier and freer in his own language. It was the language of the texts he fondled. It was the language of that noble generation of singers who sang with their hearts and interpreted that which they sang with shimmering hands and eloquent eyes …’ It is for Pakeha to learnte reo Māori so as to truly appreciate these mōteatea Māori.
The real (as in bad) influences of print and translation ‘into’ English. McRae alludes to this, and she has elsewhere more emphatically dealt with these issues: ‘Editing for a reader shifts the emphasis from the ear to the eye, and the isolated reader requires an explicitness unusual to the oral texts which were typically, though comprehensively to tribal kin, oblique and elliptical. The public purpose of print pressed changes on that style’ (1997). She’s also pointed out ‘It is not exaggerated, I think, to claim that, among other causes, the book served to diminish that [essential feature of the tradition] poetry’.
More perhaps could have been written as regards the actual performances regarding the sheer physicality and the massive participation involved, as well as the sometimes impromptu aspects of them. For example there is Hirini Melbourne’s point made in 1991, that there is a hugely physical side to traditional Māori sung poetry – men and women had to learn to breathe systematically, according to the demands of delivery, and maintain breath for long periods of time, as they recited or sung or ‘chanted’. And what about the prodigious memorisation capacities Māori displayed when they performed their poetry? Tumeke!
Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei: Aim for the highest cloud so that if you miss it, you will hit a lofty mountain.
Kia ora kōrua.
VAUGHAN RAPATAHANA is a New Zealand writer, poet and teacher who currently lives in Hong Kong. His iwi affiliation is to Te Atiawa.
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