WAHINE KAITUHI

Tu Tangata, Issue 28, 1 February 1986, Page 32

WAHINE KAITUHI

Women Writers of Aotearoa

Wahine Kaituhi

Women Writers of Aotearoa. Spiral.

A catalogue of women writers with particular emphasis on Maori women. The three women of Spiral who put this catalogue together have done great work in gathering together some wellknown and unknown writers. Some work in oral or visual presentation, and this catalogue is your introduction to them.

Each women was asked to supply some information about themselves. My pick would be Bub Bridger, Ngati Kahungunu.

“I’m 61 on the outside and about 25 on the inside. I’ve been married but I didn’t like it. I have four children and I love them because I’m their mother.”

At the end of the catalogue is an essay on Maori women’s writing by Spiral’s Miriama Evans. It’s a tightly written summary of the blossoming of maori literature and the unique position of Maori women in it.

Hey Hey Hey

Barry Mitcalf. Coromandel Press. $12.50.

Barry Mitcalfe has long written about Maori people in fiction and non-fiction. With Hey Hey Hey he once again steps

into the racial twilight with a novel about Sefulu, a Samoan boy who’s come to New Zealand to receive an educapalagi style. And here he meets up with the half-caste cousin, Winston who acts like the bad egg in the family. The palagi, David also becomes his friend, but only after Winston screws things up.

It’s a story grown out of the Auckland experience of many Polynesians, while the little insights into how Maori people are viewed by their pacific cousins. It’s a world sometimes overlooked by the tangata whenua of the land, and Hey Hey Hey may provide some light on how it feels to be adrift in a foreign land. It’s aimed at teenagers and I feel, a worthwhile look at the multi-racial side of our country.

Aotearoa

People were ecstatic jumping around the dance floor, arms raised above their heads, all focussed on one group Aotearoa.

It’s not drugs or booze that made the audience behave like this, it was the music.

The nine-piece band, basically university students, related to this crowd through their reggae/soul sounds.

They performed this three night gig just after launching their new LP, Tihei Mauri Ora.

It’s a predictable, but appropriate name for the group’s first LP. Suspiciously radical and very proMaori. The seven tracked album is totally original. Only two of the tracks have english lyrics.

It features their single, ‘Maranga Ake Ai’ and flip-side ‘Haruru Mai’.

The title track, Tihei Mauri Ora, lends flavour to the whole record. If you

don’t get the message in this song, then it’s likely you won’t understand the whole record.

It’s awakening, refreshing, soothing, then bang! You’re jolted back to the present with a tirade of politics. It's not as unpleasant as it seems, but I wish I had known what was coming up next so I could turn the volume down a bit.

But it seemed the audience did know what was going to happen next and they loved it. And off the record, I didn’t mind it too much either. But then, I was prepared this time.

The audience reflected the mood of the group’s message. They were young and very politically aware it seemed, of what is happening. In a sense, the whole performance was a celebration.

The group and the audience have indirectly supported each other through the struggles of 1985. Starting from speaking rights on the marae, the Springbok tour protest, to the final straw of justifying why Maori should be made an official language. All this, combined with the National Youth Council hui and the re-election of Maori Vice-Presidents to the New Zealand University Student’s Association contributed to the buzzing scene of the performance.

Besides singing their latest tracks off the record, Aotearoa paid tribute to a couple of Herbs and Dread, Beat and Blood songs. That dimmed some of the political atmosphere but not much, because their next song was a salute to the Kanak people in their struggle with the French in Noumea.

The audience was really receptive to all of this, and Aotearoa fed them more. By the end of the night, everyone was satiated with good sounds and the message that all will be right in this world one day.