Review Summary: Invisible Witness
In Rotorua, 1842, the competing Catholic and Protestant proselytization was reaching a level of critical intensity, the visceral nature of it suggesting that they perhaps genuinely believed souls were at stake. Competing places of worship were built close to the nearby Marae, within a stone’s throw of each other, and in their eagerness to convert the heathen indigenous several melees broke out, which are still discussed today in a litany of early ecclesiastical skirmishes. The iwi, born diplomats, expedited the process of competing for souls to save by lining up in two sides of equal length on the marae, decided upon by drawing a coloured stone from a ceremonial pouch. The ones on the right were, they said, particularly touched by the protestant arguments and were willing to convert, provided a few blankets and perhaps a musket or two were thrown in, post-haste. Those on the left said that Catholicism’s rigour and intellectual had them sold, powerful and riveting stuff, and if they could be rewarded by joining the church of ceremony and pomp with fitting remunerative benefits then that would be great, kapai. The competing factions, thus mollified, ended their warfare and a truce was called.
It is doubtful this generation of Maori were true believers rather than those who converted for the sake of expedience. The cultural discrepancies were too great. How were Maori to respect a God without conviction, who did not intervene in the lives of mortals but sat timidly, cowed, on the side-line? How were Maori to respect a Queen who did not lead her charges in battle, who had no mana, the most critical quality expected of any leader? The effete generals, the libertine royals, the distanced military commanders -- how could this align with tikanga, for whom a willingness to put one’s money where one’s mouth was, an ability to lead and willingness to suffer as his troops and subjects did, where wisdom was paramount and judicious decisions forced to be by their makers direct involvement, how could this possibly appeal? It is true the British colonialists fudged the books a little, presenting their Queen Victoria as a brave warrior who “led” their side, so it wasn’t a lie but a wee act of truth corroborated by metaphysics, so when the first Maori went to meet her, expecting a fierce warrior and finding a short, squat, in truth rather plain woman instead, they were disgruntled and confused. How they must have pitied the British! The British, in turn, thought the Maori fool-hardy and uncritical, unable to see beyond the rudimentary, poor strategists (which would come back to haunt them in the Maori Wars), beholden to not one but a polyphony of fickle and undeserving Gods.
But gradually as the guise of acculturation revealed itself to be imperialism with begrudging respect thrown in, non-believers became believers. Maori christians became fervent. Somewhere down the line, the trickery was lost, with full-throated belief in the one true God, the holy trinity, salvation through our lord Jesus Christ hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come forever and ever amen, came true. If the missionaries could see them now!
Ana Hato was born to descendents of those who congregated on the Right side of the Marae. Born either on 30 December 1907, or on the eve of 1908, in either Hinemutu or Rotorua, accounts of her childhood differ depending on which family member you ask, which records you consult. Some have it she was a lively child, as was common among Maori youth who grew up, as she did, in Whakarewarewa, surrounded by loving whanau and tupuna. Others contest, according to oral recollection, Hato was an uncommonly grave child, serious even when diving for pennies thrown by tourists, a common past-time in the tourist town. Her devotion to Catholicism, from a young age, essentially as soon as and indeed before she became cognisant, is one the facts not in dispute. Her music teacher identified quickly her innate, uncommon ability for pitch and harmony. Her kaumatua responded to her mastery of the hotu, an untranslatable word which connotes a sobbing vocal inflection laden with poignance and strength, and waiata, which manifested itself in a way that is commonly confused with operatic stylings, though this style of music either preconfigured or grew independent of opera in the antipodes.
A quick note on Rotorua: the city has a history of being a tourist town, as it is where many Maori congregated and continue to this day. It is famed for it’s unusual hot sulphurous pools, which permeates the entire city with a smell like eggs -- many a pregnant woman has become ill at entering the cities limits, the joke among locals goes. It’s legacy as a tourist town has endured, earning it the ironical moniker “RotoVegas”, partly because of its touristic reputation and partly because, upon entering, one is blinded by a row of fluorescent lights advertising motels, hotels, bedsits, fast-food restaurants, chain restaurants, and massages.
***
New Zealand music is rarely epitomised by Te Puoro Maori, despite it existing for exactly as long as New Zealand as a settled entity. Instead we get barbeque rock/reggae that i’d rather prolapse my own asshole than listen to of my volition; a series of bands, in the 1970’s, who did their best to emulate the kind of pop rock from across the Tasman (so successful were they in their venture that many believe Crowded House and Split Enz, two of the biggest “exponents” (extremely niche pun alert) of the movement, are mistaken,or claimed for Australian bands. Those with more refined taste point to the jangle of Dunedin Sound, a genre which recalls the place it emanated from in the same way Detroit Techno captured the mechanisms and discord of that city, or the Christchurch punk movement, or the “Terrace Rock”, consisting largely of demos, borne out of Wellington. Te Puoro Maori records languish in bargain bins, token record offerings at book fairs.
In short: I am ashamed of my country. Despite its natural beauty I sometimes wish for its annihilation. Because we have failed our Maori. Promises of integration of tikanga have never eventuated; integration of Maori cultural output into New Zealand’s cultural output never happened. I asked the proprietor of Slowboat Records if he thought people had heard of Ana Hato. “I think everyone’s heard of her” he lied. A proprietor of a record store in North Dunedin was more blunt: “I wish… no-one gives a *** about the Maori section except for tourists. We get more people looking for field recordings of, i don’t know know, ***in-” Trains? “Yeah, that sort of ***.”
Listening to music from other cultures, commonly designated under the “world” (ugh) label, is fraught for the conscientious listener. Many of these early recordings were taken from remote, isolated places where the concept of recording and dissemination would have been hard to transmit, and thus hard to consent to; stories abound of tribes being paid in bottles of whiskey. Many record labels capturing non-Western forms of music today do not pay royalties or remunerate those who they take from; some recordings are of sacred rituals, not meant to be privy to outsider’s ears.
Yet as New Zealander’s we are afforded a unique opportunity in that listening to Maori music is not only sanctionable but, to an extent, a necessity. We live alongside these people; our existence was made possible by these people; New Zealand is, like it or not, Aotearoa to many.
Hato first experienced national acclaim during a tour of the Duchess and Duke of York, who visited Rotorua amongst their itinerary. Hato performed solo, with a chorus, and with her cousin, Deane Waretini, with whom she would become a frequent collaborator. An envoy of Parlophone’s nascent “sounds of the world” chapter was in attendance, with the Duchess and Duke -- enraptured, he arranged for some recordings to take back with him to Australia, where he believed they would be successful. The recordings were epochal: the first time Maori music had ever been recorded, and one of the first examples of recording music in New Zealand (the first, as far as I can ascertain, is one of Madame Butterfly, weirdly enough, in 1908).
Successful they were, and in 1929 Ana Hato and her cousin went to Australia to record further albums -- only the second Maori group to be granted the honour, the first being “The Tahiwis”, whose approach to Te Puoro Maori was more libidinal, wry and humourous, though whether this was an innate quality or one borne as a necessary reaction to subjugation and backgrounding is impossible to ascertain, a chicken and egg head-scratcher. The recordings were hugely successful in Australia and New Zealand. I interviewed, in the course of researching the topic, an octogenarian who had spent his life in Rotorua, who claimed that one couldn’t listen to the local radio station for an hour without an Ana Hato song being played in the 30’s and 40’s.
Hato never achieved the same success, though she continued to sing, record, put on concerts to raise funds for troops. Though childless in the rather myopic Western conception of the world, she whangai adopted (a Maori tradition) a child named Ria, who would later marry a pakeha man, Douglas Robertson, who would have children of their own. Because New Zealand law doesn’t recognise whangai adoption as legitimate, none of them are entitled to royalties.
She passed away in 1953. Every year, to commemorate her inimitable voice, mana and talent, The Rotorua Daily Post posted a memorium: “The melody is ended but the voice lingers on”. The Post was brought out by an international conglomerate in the 80s. The memorium is no longer published.
There have been two collections of Ana Hato and Deane Waretini’s output -- a CD from the 1990’s, poorly recorded, which has the virtue of being more exhaustive (though it’s claim to compile every single recorded track is infelicitous -- I am fortunate enough to own some ancient acetates not featured on this album) and The Great Songs of Ana Hato and Deane Waretini, released in 1963, which despite only having 12 tracks is the superior collection in quality, in cohesion (it is structured as an album proper, this being the 1960s, when such a thing was in vogue) and in conveying Hato’s hotu. Waretini has a fine voice, but the only track to feature him singularly - “May I not Love” - pales in comparison. As Waretini conceded, without false modesty, “I am a good singer, but Ana.... Ana was a once-in-a-life-time talent. She sung in the true Maori way... she sang as Maori, not Pakeha… a special lady.”
Indeed, the rises on Home Maori Boy home, the fierce Haka “Ka Mate”, the haunting and deceptively plaintive “Te Taniwha / Matangi” and the closing track, which never fails to move me deeply, “Po Atarau”, are all evidence of a preternatural - almost supernatural - vocal talent, adroitly carried by a unobtrusive but delicately played piano. The effect is haunting and, well, beautiful. To add to the poignance, Po Atarau concludes with the entreaty “When you’re away / fondly remember me / when you return / you'll find me waiting here.” Thirteen years after the rendition was recorded, Hato’s second husband and “only love” died in a Prisoner of War camp. His body was interred there, without Maori rites. He never did return; Hato waited just the same.
An interesting thing about these recordings is they feature in both Maori and English, with verses sung in both languages, but the English sounds alien because of the afore-mentioned Maori way of singing it -- though comprehensible, it sounds like a confluence of the languages, a meeting of Maori and Pakeha were Pakeha are included, even embraced, but Maori hold the cards. This is emphasised by the choice to record Maori folkloric songs, not ones which emerged from Pakeha influence: the Maori is foregrounded.
Perhaps this is why, despite the Rotorua Post’s hopes, we do forget, we have forgotten. We do not want to acknowledge the body of Te Puoro Maori, of which “The Great Songs” is but one of many indispensable, powerful recordings, because -- it’s not in English? It’s of a non-Western musical tradition so it’s harder? Because it sounds old-timey? Or is it because it represents a hope, that our cultures could bolster and interact with one another sans systemic racism, that have been shirked by decades of the wrong side of prison stats, poverty stats, deprivation stats?
In the 1970’s a different kind of proselytization occurred in Rotorua, again with two distinct options: Maori, habitually scorned and derided, were encouraged to join a gang. Black Power wore blue; Mongrel Mob wore red; Killa Beez were not at that time extant, and their attempt to infiltrate the city was unsuccessful. It’s blue and red territory now, Rotorua, and the division is much fiercer than that between Catholics and Protestants. Mary M---, with whom I stayed during a trip to Rotorua earlier in the year, executive of a newly-implemented Health Outreach programme targeting high-need communities in the city, recalls their efforts were “brought back to zero when one of the interns, well-meaning, gave a blue blanket and bed-set to a member of the Mongrel Mob. When that happened, we slid down the snake in Snakes and Ladders. Drawing out people, all of whom are innately agency-shy, is hard bloody work and that was three steps back.”
I contacted the Hato descendents for the first time in 2015, if I recall correctly, and they were tremendously helpful in teasing out the details of Ana’s life, which has become a kind of folklore unto itself. We arranged a visit, and though brief -- enough time for me to gulp down two cups of lukewarm coffee -- i appraised the scant material that had not been sequestered by museums, pawn shops or time: a photograph of Hato with her chorus, with which she sung “Matangi”, standing before the sulphurous pools and clusters of steam the pools are famous for producing, beaming with pride; a young Maori girl stands before a priest, solemn, before a catechism; an older Hato, larger about the mouth, holds the shoulders of a young girl; Ana Hato stands with fellow Te Puoro singer Oriwa Haddon, older still, but with a girlish joy permeating her eyes and lips; a cut-out clipping, yellowed with age, of her death notice. The melody is ended but the voice lingers on. A strum of acoustic guitar from the neighbours arced it’s way into the kitchen as my fingers pored over the history with the delicacy of a man holding a stick of dynamite.
I returned to Rotorua earlier this year, staying with Mary and Thomas M--, both of whom do outreach for high-need (euphemism, in Rotorua, for Maori) populations. I was told that the biggest problem is that many can’t afford mattresses, so sharing beds is common. Scabies have a tendency to proliferate (talk about tight-nit families), as do worse -- the landlords are patient and do their best with heating, but there’s only so many parties involving broken property one can hear about before one's sympathy dissipates.
I tried to ring the Hato descendents on the number they were last on, but it had been disconnected. This is not uncommon, in Rotorua, where the Hobson’s choice between food or energy bills is one beneficiaries frequently encounter once a month. I walked on foot to where I thought I remembered them dwelling. It was raining -- I have never been in Rotorua when it hasn’t at least been drizzling, it rains incessantly, the steam from the pools adding to the general sense and stench of constant saturation, shoes become a sodden mess within seconds -- but I found my way, after asking countless dairy owners if I was in the right vicinity, to the state house i had visited two years ago. The family I had spoken to had left. I considered pushing it but didn’t want to seem ghoulish. Disheartened, I walked about the lake.
Rotorua translates as “big lake”, named in conjunction with the nearby Rotoiti (“little lake”), and that day it lapped at its banks, flooding the walkway, an accumulation of either dense mist or horizontal drizzle aiming itself at me from the great lake. I took a path inward and came across an old Anglican church, and a beautifully kept Marae, the same Marae where local iwi had “converted”, long out of living memory. The church ran parallel, marked by a whale-bone above its cloister, from the Marae, on the shore of the lake, protected from waves by a man-made embankment, shrouded in fog. I thought the sight incredibly moving and chancing my luck decided to approach the Marae. The jovial cries of a “haeri mai” (greeting song, accompanied often by poi) enveloped me as I grew closer. It was a rehearsal for some politician whose flight had been delayed by the inclement weather. I asked the kaumatua [Maori elder or leader] if I could stay and listen and he indulged my request, and, dripping from head to toe in water, a take-away coffee that tasted odiously like cardamom in my hand, I lost myself in the magic, if only for a while.
I returned to the house in which I was staying, and Mary asked me if I got what I was looking for.
I said I had.
***
It can be heard in garages, at the end of the night, where an acoustic guitar is brought out and the guests, no matter how smashed, sing along in usion. It glimmers through the fog on the streets of Rotorua, as street performers recite to lackadaisical crowds. It is extant in formal ceremonies, though to many it manifests itself as white noise. It exists in the beating hearts and breasts of communities where they sleep two to a bed, where black mould grows on the walls and ceilings, where the floors are not dirty but dirt itself. It exists around us, lingering, a phantasm, howling for release from the Bardo. Maori music isn’t recorded any more -- maori songs are, but only sung in the Pakeha operatic style, an extremely different approach to even an untrained ear. But still, it exists, in spite of it.
It says, if you listen closely, “this is how it was before the evil came, or perhaps the evil has always been here, always flourished in the land of Aotearoa itself, a doomed country before we even laid eyes on it, an evil place where nothing grows but everything stagnates but for the conditions required for this stagnation to exist, and this is our response.” It says “*** you, we’re still here”. It mourns those lost and cherishes those still here. It is there when you get out of prison, or the psychiatric ward, or when you finally come home after a period of exile. It will envelop and embrace and scorn and rage and howl through rafters and cracks in the window and in between a pipe being lit and snuffed out. It is love and hate and everything but indifference.
In Auckland, recently, I heard a Maori busker playing the unmistakable guitar chords of E Pa To Hau, singing along raggedly, beautifully. A crowd congregated around him. When he finished the song silence descended among the crowd. “Youse can applaud now,” the busker said.
No-one did.
