"It's a call to action for us to be us, for our people to be our people."
Māori soul artist Rob Ruha on creating the song "35," for New Zealand’s Indigenous people ... and how it was embraced by the rest of the world.
Māori soul artist Rob Ruha on creating the song "35," for New Zealand’s Indigenous people ... and how it was embraced by the rest of the world.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00I'm really warmed actually by the respectful nature in which people have received the song
00:17and interpreting and performing the dance.
00:34My name's Rob Ruha, I'm from the tribal territories of the indigenous people here in Aotearoa,
00:41of the Whānau-a-Apanui people.
00:57I live here on Highway 35 at the moment, so all of the people in the choir, we all come
01:04from this area, and the different indigenous tribal groupings, we all affiliate to on Stable
01:11Highway 35.
01:12The lyrics of the song stop off at different points along State Highway 35, talk about
01:19the different indigenous groups on State Highway 35, phrases in our language and in our culture
01:25that are important to us.
01:27It's really important for young people of our indigenous culture, the Māori people,
01:35to be able to use music to celebrate cultural identity, cultural distinction, our history,
01:43our culture, our practices, our customs, and our language.
01:53Harapa ana te ngāti ki te riu o waiapu means we're on our horses galloping through the
02:00valley, and it's just a call to action for us to be us, for our people to be our people.
02:12The word tuake, tuake means to stand strong, stand firm, and te whakatohea is the name
02:20of the people.
02:25The youth in the kahao choir, that's their world, TikTok is their world, and they fully
02:30went into the song and creating the video in a way that appealed to their demographic,
02:38that appealed to their people.
02:40I love that such a diverse range of people are performing haka and giving pūkana, because
02:50it's not an easy thing.
02:51I guess for people who aren't of our culture, it's maybe probably not even a normal thing.
02:57For our people, it's completely normal.
03:00Pūkana is expression, facial expression and grimacing that actually speaks from a deep
03:08spiritual rapture that's happening inside of your body, and you just want to release
03:13it in a spontaneous way.
03:19And haka is one word that explains such a diverse expression of our dance, there's hundreds
03:28of different dances, but it just means to dance and to entertain.
03:33There's hundreds of different groupings of our people and we're all uniquely different,
03:51we're not the same homogenous people, our languages are all different.
03:57A lot of language that we use in the song 35 is from our area, our tribal dialect, and
04:04we specifically use words like harapa that are from here, they're not necessarily used
04:10anywhere else in the country.
04:21The markings mean different things into different tribal groupings, there are different reasons,
04:27why you get moko, depending where you're from, but really it's the outward expression
04:35of what we feel inside.
04:37It's a symbol of achievement, contribution to your people, contribution to your community,
04:44and a celebration of who you are, your genealogy, your family tree, and who you aspire to be
04:51in your life.
04:52That's about 99.9% of what moko is, and about 0.1% of moko is the ink.