Kahui rere – nga moemoea o nga tipuna o te roopu Patea. Patea Maori Club release Raukura album.

Tu Tangata, Issue 36, 1 June 1987, Page 10

Kahui rere - nga moemoea o nga tipuna o te roopu Patea. Patea Maori Club release Raukura album.

na Troy wano

PAKI WAITARA

Dalvanius Prime boils over with enthusiasm in his comfortable Hawera home as we talk about his latest work and future plans a man with a desire to communicate. Surrounded by a horde of canine followers, his pet chihuahuas, engulfed in platinum discs Prime has become a contemporary Maori figure, promoting te reo Maori from a platform of modern music. Few people could have guessed at what pop music and the Maori language had in common, though Prime appears to have contrived an agreeable

marriage if not created an artform. Three years on from the New Zealand chart hit Poi-E, Prime and the Patea Maori Club are back again brighter than ever with a new cross-cultural message to tell. “Raukura” will be the club’s first full album, and as one may expect from Prime, sounds completely catchy, modern and slightly epic. From the record he plans a comic strip, musical and an animated movie. A second album with the english songs from the musical “Raukura” is due for release next year.

Once again Prime’s major influences are given generous air time working in with his own street-wise sensibility. Understandably the record pays considerable tribute to Ngoi Pewhairangi, who Prime collaborated with through most of the Patea Maori Club’s success. He speaks of the pair’s initial intention with the club. “Together we wanted this 100% contrived campaign to market the Maori language.” The music itself, although far removed from tradition, was intended to generate an interest among the youth of today, “all we did was remove the

Pakeha images our kids were relating to and replace them with Maori images.”

Prime speaks specifically of heroes and the importance they have to our younger generation. Urban figures and city style are equally prominent.

“Raukura” reflects this a young Maori boy caught between a Pakeha world he can’t handle and a Maori world he doesn’t understand.

“It’s a message album mana Maori, mana motuhake. Turn your head to taha Maori.” He insists its not purely a Dalvanius album.

I WENT INTO THE CITY FOR SECURITY,

THE PAKEHA MAN SAYS YOU GOT SCHOOL C,

I SAID NO NO AIN’T HAD MUCH EDUCATION,

FAR TOO BUSY DOING TIME AND PROBATION.

MY PAPA TOLD ME ABOUT MAORI TANGA,

I SEE NO SENSE IN WHO AND WHAT WE ARE.

(From “Down at the Pa.”)

“Anyway the hero dies, he succumbs to the pakeha lifestyle.”

The music, and the slightly hallucinogenic cover design by South Island artist Hohepa Wylie, leans heavily towards the abstract.“ The purists aren’t going to like it again.”

It features domesticated moa and flying people, both referred to in waiata moteatea of Te Ati Awa and nga Rauru. When the hero of Raukura dopes himself to escape the Pakeha world, this is what he dreams of.

The album is a culmination of three years hard work “it’s been a labour of love, a labour of frustration, anger and anguish.”

These words suggest the last year alone has been a period of self-analysis.

With the loss of a great friend in Ngoi Pewhairangi and also Taranaki elder Ruka Broughton, Prime faced personal setbacks.

“When Ngoi died I was left with the problem of trying to write songs without her. Her influence on me was great.”

Prime talks of the prolific Maori songwriter with sincere reverance, realising the impact she has had in shaping his career, and the many others she came in contact with.

“I was not the only one fortunate enough to work with Ngoi but you knew she had this intense relationship with everybody.”

Half way through the latest album Ngoi Pewhairangi died. “I had to have a reappraisal of the project at that stage.

“When she passed away I just couldn’t

go back to the studio. I had to will myself to work with other people to see if I could write again.”

He said he has forced himself away from the initial grief though he often finds himself dreaming about her.

The couple’s last effort ‘Te Kohanga Reo Rap’ was a strange little rap song which still remains vivid in Prime’s mind. “Plus there are a number of her lyrics which I haven’t worked on yet.”

Prime talks of a perfect formula Ngoi Pewhairangi would come up with time and time again. Her absence left him with an artistic challenge he had not bargained on, yet he felt himself slowly responding.

He reacted by taking on a number of projects, two of which have been arranged, produced and are now out for release.

Tu Tangata readers already have seen the anti-alcohol and drug campaign “Kua Makona” of which Prime was able to put his musical talents to good use. And the warding off of a contemporary social evil in the Maori community is something he appears well suited for.

The campaign also gave Prime the opportunity to work with Auckland singer-lawyer Moana ManiapotoJackson.

Then there was the soundtrack to “Ngati”, which although not finding release in New Zealand yet has already won international acclaim.

Both the music score and movie have made New Zealand feature film history by putting themselves up for major

awards at the prestigous Cannes Film Festival and making the top seven of ‘Critics Choice.’

Prime worked on a relatively short budget ($13,000) and produced and arranged the soundtrack.

The movie was shot on location at Tokomaru and Waipiro Bay and tells the story of an Australian’s visit to an East Coast rural town during the 1940’5. The score features two original traditional waiata, made into modern arrangements by Prime.

One of the soundtrack’s singles “Haeremai” was released earlier this year and enabled Prime to fulfill a promise he made with Ngoi Pewhairangi. Prime chose her niece Kara Pewhairangi to perform the song.

both “Kua Makona” and “Ngati” were a welcome departure for Prime, helping him secure a spot near the top of the country’s music talent.

“I really wanted to do something outside the Patea Maori Club. I didn’t like the idea of being known just for my work with the club.” Prime still cites the group as a major part of his life and although he has taken a rather large step away from it in the past year he still feels a strong obligation towards it.

The Patea Maori Club, as the general record-buying public know it, came into existence during the small South Taranaki town’s greatest disaster.

Prime says with little guilt and a dash of irony, the Patea Freezing Works closure was the start of good times.

It was during the town’s depression that his days spent in Sydney came to focus on the club. The Patea Maori Club soon began to fill a large gap in the New Zealand music industry.

The potential of the group was quickly realised by all of the country’s media and a ready-made stage was laid out. Its music sauntered slowly up the charts before it made a deafening approach to the top.

Success was their’s, but as Prime suggests, success did not come in the form it was promised.

“Economically it was doomed to failure. We are really only a media success.

“I guess a lot of people think we’d be making a fortune, but we’re not. There are probably 20 groups around who sing better than us and it’s really difficult to sell Maori to Maori people.”

Prime soon learnt the club’s chances of true financial fame were limited. This realisation was one he didn’t like.

“The sad thing that this whole business has taught me is I know I’m better paid when I sing in English

the award rate. “When I choose to sing in Maori the fee is negotiable.” Prime says his brief solo excursions to prime-time family television, easily prove more lucrative than the Patea Maori Club’s videos. He is still comfortable in the music business along with his many white brothers, and it’s his acute understanding of the system which keeps the club going. And in turn the club keeps him going, providing him with a powerful mouthpiece with which to make the point. “I wanted to give the whole thing some longevity. We may have been away for a couple of years but, if looked after, we have the potential to be around for another twenty years.” Prime says the club now is strictly a weekend-only group. “It doesn’t have to be that way but because of everybody’s situation, it is.” The club retains a number of original members from its early beginnings almost a decade and a half ago, though many have gone on to have families and moved away. Prime says things have changed and some members are beginning to split off into smaller groups though still retaining their Patea Maori Club roots. Hiw own roots have developed during his period with the club while personal convictions remain intact. “The Maori language had no status. I consider a people without its mana, a

culture without its language, has no culture really. An inherent philosophy he says he adopted from Ngoi Pewhairangi and Tuini Ngawai. “I only want for our language to survive, we have to create a medium where it can be perpetuated.” Prime believes he has found the medium and intends to uphold it for as long as he can. YESTERDAY I WENT TO KOHANGA REO THE CHILDREN THERE THEY SAID YOU KNOW DAM ALL, WE DON’T SPEAK NO ENGLISH HERE NO MORE, KORERO MAORI KORERO ANO. JUST TO SATISFY MY CURIOSITY, THIS KOHANGA REO I HAD TO SEE, MUCH TO MY SURPRISE THEY WERE BOOGIEING DOWN, TO THE MAORI LANGUAGE AND THE RAKAU SOUND. (From Kohanga Reo) Prime remains an outspoken individual in both his capacity as a musician and as a detached social worker in Patea in which he works closely with Maori youth. Rastafarianism is a pet subject we discuss. Does he think the Patea Maori Club can replace the music the Ruatoria rastas have chosen? Quite simply the answer is no. “They have been conditioned to the

music. My main fear for them is that they are only replacing the Pakeha culture with another foreign culture. Prime sees a similar problem with Maori involvement in Libya. He compares the rasta movement with that of the straight-jacket lifestyle of Moslems. In both instances Maori people have turned their heads to a radically different way of life that is not their own. “For those guys in Ruatoria to say they are true rastas is wrong. They just can’t face up to their problems. They can’t relate to their Maori-ness.” It does not worry him greatly his music does not reach all young Maori and there are no plans to compromise his sound for this reason. For now the club’s next few years are already mapped out. Another world tour, appearing in the musical then another rest from the scene before the next album is released. Prime also sees a little further into the future, when both he and the club become record and television nostalgia. “In time a song like Poi-E will be a classic. The club is not the main thing it won’t got on forever. “The only thing that will survive is the language.” Lyrics from the musical “Raukura” printed with permission from Maui Music/Ngoi Pewhairangi Trust.