Music of the Maori

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 892, 8 February 1930, Page 8

Music of the Maori

CAN IT BE PRESERVED?

FOLLOWING the publication on Saturday last of an article entitled, “ Plea for Maori Music,” important and highly interesting opinions on this subject have been forwarded to The Sun by two of New Zealand’s foremost authorities, Mr. Johannes C. Andersen, of the Turnbull Library,,and Mr. Elsdon Best, director of the National Museum, Wellington.

The Sun’s article was the result of an interview with Mr. Alfred Hill, of the New South Wales Conservatorium, who, on returning' on a holiday visit to the Dominion, expressed his disappointment at the rapid degeneration of Maori music.

J AM afraid it is even too late now

to rescue more than the merest fraction of the fine old Maori music. Modern influences are too strong; modern music is too attractive and all-pervading,” writes Mr. Andersen. "Practically all that is published as Maori music nowadays is not Maori at all; it has no suggestion whatever of Maori music, whatever it may have of Maori rhythm. The best of it, such as Te Rangi-pai’s lullaby ‘Hine e Hine,’ is transitional; it shows the Maori adapting European melody to Maori words; and when the words are beautiful, as in tbis song, and the melody good, it is good music. Much of that being produced is not good from either point of view. “The first great difficulty in the way of preserving Maori music, even of recording it, is that the Maori has not yet evolved a scale. Alfred Hill thinks he had a ‘mode,’ as the Greeks had, but I doubt it. Many old melodies have been recorded on dictaphones or recording phonographs; but it is impossible to transcribe them. It bas been tried. It is no use using the nearest note in our own notation; that alters the melody completely.

“The Maori ear was as keen for tone as it was for rhytl i; and whereas most of us are only able to appreciate tones and semi-tones, the Maori was able to appreciate far smaller fractions of a tone; in one of our tones he could introduce as much variety as we can in an octave. He had a name for the first harmonic, ‘te reoirirangi,’ and he could hear it; few of us detect it. “His songs were sung more to speech tunes than to melodies. His singing was more in the state that our own folk-singing was before the introduction of harmony; and as harmony with its definite intervals made our own folk-songs diatonieally melodic it is doing the same for the Maori; and as our old enharmonic folk-songs have completely gone, so the Maori must go. HOW TO PRESERVE THEM “There is only one way in which the songs can ever be preserved; and that is for a European with fine ear to go among the old Maori people and learn the songs until he can sing them to satisfy the old people; that is to get the exact intonation, the exact speech-tune; then he will be able to write what he has learnt, or write about it. But no man with diatonic training can go and copy down what he hears the old Maori sing; he has no symbols with which to represent it; it is quite indefinite. Even a man with a good ear will recognise that. "I have heard two sit practising a song. ‘No,’ one would say, ‘that’s not quite right.’ They would go over the phrase again, laying stress on the part of the melody that was not quite

right. ‘That’s right/ he would say when the correct tone was got—but I was unable to detect any difference at

“It is the same with Hawaiian and other Polynesian music; that which now goes by the name of Hawaiian is not Hawaiian at all; it is simply European with Hawaiian colour, and much diluted colour at that.

“If my remarks seem pessimistic, the pessimism has been induced by my experience. I have been with more than one ethnological expedition among the Maori, and while many of their songs have been secured, transcription is so baffling that I must say that not one has been transcribed successfully. Transcribed songs have been tried on the violin afterward, and the result has proved quite unsatisfactory, and the conclusion that I have come to is that above stated —that the songs must be actually learned by heart before an analysis can be attempted.

“It may be that the young Maori may be persuaded to do this for his race, but it looks as if his music will be like his language; unless his white brother takes its preservation in hand it will be lost. Some say there will be no harm done if it is lost, but I have listened to much of their old singing, and Yv hile at first it has little appeal, once you begin to be familiar with it you find it has an appeal quite as powerful and very much akin to our own emotional music, and because it is so much more subdivided in its intervals, it has more potentiality.'* MUSIC DETERIORATING Mr. Elsdon Best writes as follows: “This subject interests me, for I noted the change taking place as far back as the ’9o’s—changes for the worse in native songs, posture dances, and also in artifacts. In these activities we observe the same deterioration that is evidenced in the Maori language and in his decorative art. It would, however, .probably be difficult to induce the Maori folk to return to the ways of their forbears, although something is being done with regard to the native art of wood-carving, thanks to th 9 controllers of the Maori Arts and Crafts Board, and the Board of Maori Ethnological Research. It would be well to obtain the opinion of those gentlemen as to the possibility of doing something to stay the deterioration so evident in modern Maori songs, etc.

“A few of the leading members of the native race have of late years done most praiseworthy work in placing old-time Maori lore on record. Can they help in this matter, or will their descendants mournfully quote a saying of their ancstors: Ka riro lie au heke e kare e lioki ki tona matapuria ano. (A flowing stream will return to its source)?