The Maori Return

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 347, 15 February 1946, Page 8

The Maori Return

HE broadcast of the welcome to the | Maori Battalion should not be discussed by a commentator on radio entertainment unless he bears firmly in mind that this was primarilf intended not as entertainment at all, but as ceremonial. In the oratory as well as the musical items, an intensely formalised and ritual manner and spirit made itself evident; in the former, even the pause

to clear the throat seemed deliberately recognised and allowed for as part of the speech. Some of the traditional chants (notably one by a N gati-tuwharetoa choir) can, I imagine, have been seldom broadcast before —

the announcer told us that the words of these were of so archaic and ritual a character as to defy translation-and on the whole it was these, out of the entire ceremony, which most made the listener aware of the existence of the Maori as a historic nation whose history and culture might be conceived as present on this unique occasion. Unfortunately there were also one or two features of that other side of present-day Maori art, whose existence is seems useless to deny or ignore; the marriage of Western sentimentality with Maori willingness to become a spectacle for tourists, producing songs inescapably hollow and hybrid. These have the further bad effect of making one doubt the genuine nature of more authentic art, wondering just how much it means to the singer. On such an occasion as this welcome it would be in questionable taste to over-emphasise this by-product of the adjustment of two cultures, but it may be not unfitting to point to its existence and plead that it should be kept in check.