Māori music

Traditional Māori music, or Te Pūoro Māori is composed or performed by Māori, the native people of New Zealand, and includes a wide variety of folk music styles, often integrated with poetry and dance.

In addition to these traditions and musical heritage, since the 19th-century European colonisation of New Zealand Māori musicians and performers have adopted and interpreted many of the imported Western musical styles. Contemporary rock and roll, soul, reggae and hip hop all feature a variety of notable Māori performers.

History

Songs (waiata) were sung solo, in unison or at the octave. Types of song included lullabies (oriori), love songs (waitata aroha) and laments (waiata tangi). Traditionally all speeches usually follow with a song and the group of supporters would usually join in. Some of the smaller wind instruments were also sung into, and the sound of the poi (raupo ball swung on the end of a flax cord) provided a rhythmic accompaniment to waiata poi.

Captain Cook reported that the Māori sang a song in "semitones" and others reported that the Māori had no singing/vocal music at all or sang discordantly, but this is incorrect. Many Europeans at that time may not have been able to distinguish, or appreciate as musical the microtones the Māori were singing. A pre-European song could have a range of as little as a minor third but with several more than the four notes of European music within that range. A song would repeat a single melodic line, generally centred on one note, falling away at the end of the last line. It was a bad omen for a song to be interrupted, so singers in groups would cover for each other while individuals took breaths.