Tag Archives: Belonging

Kia Mau Ki Tō Ūkaipō – Don’t forget your roots, my friend…

Posted on by daber111
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Calling all Kiwis and music lovers! And no, I am not talking about the fruit, but rather about Aoteoroa/ New Zealand, since this blog entry focuses on the music of this country’s biggest reggae rock fusion band Six60. 

The single “Don’t Forget Your Roots“ of the five-member band from Dunedin was released in 2011 and reached number 2 on the New Zealand Singles Charts. In the past decade, this song has become somewhat of a ‘Kiwi anthem’.

The 2011 release, however, is not where the evolution and importance of the song ends. In September 2019, Six60 released a new Māori version: “Kia Mau Ki Tō Ūkaipō / Don’t Forget Your Roots“ in the collection Waiata / Anthems of re-recorded New Zealand pop songs to promote Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week).

In the chorus of this song, Six60 reminds the listener of how important it is to remember our own roots, since they include our family and friends, but also our inner self – what we truly are: “the ones who made us – brought us here”. It deals with the idea of Indigenous heritage and identity and why you should be thankful and proud of it. Neglecting these roots easily leads to them being lost.

To further highlight the importance of what is said in the chorus, Six60 introduces a man (Johnny) and a woman (Jesse), who both are detached from their roots in Aotearoa after leaving their home which “armed them with power”. This results in them being lost in two ways: 1. They lack Māori values and morals and 2. the connection to their roots and their whānau (family), who are the only people that truly matter, becomes tenuous. Overall, both experience a disconnection from their origin. They are displaced and have lost their sense of belonging by leaving their homeland. The concept of loss applies to the man and woman as individuals, but also to their community – “He/She lost the faith of all those who mattered so…” Additionally, Six60 conveys a combination of nostalgia and homesickness with the simple words: “Don’t forget your roots…”

But only if no return is intended.

Representing Māori culture through music and language

Even though the band members all have Māori roots, they did not grow up with the language or culture, yet feel deeply connected to it. Their intention of releasing the song in Māori was to learn more about their culture and understand their origin – their roots. They wanted to provide a song of familiar lyrics that communicates their culture using Te Reo.

But why is music so important to remember your roots?

Well, wherever you are, in New Zealand or overseas, the distinctive sounds used in songs such as “Kia Mau Ki Tō Ūkaipō“ can conjure up images of home. Translating popular songs from English to Māori can deepen empathy and provides a solution for the absence of communication between Māori and non-Māori by encouraging discourse. Embracing Māori culture, the waka, the whānau – community and music can convey heritage and is a start to help non-Māori engage with the language and culture. At the same time, it is dangerous to base one’s understanding of a foreign culture solely on one song, since Maori offer a diverse culture with many traditions and also contradictions.

My personal connection to the song goes back almost to its initial release. I first visited a Six60 concert in 2012 in German. When the band sang “Don’t Forget Your Roots”, those who were Māori in the audience, all far away from home, started a haka. It first got me thinking about the connection between music and culture. Whenever I listen to the song now, it also reminds me of my time spent abroad and the people I met. 

And as the Covid-19 pandemic continues, friends and family remain apart from one another as we understand the importance of connecting, which includes doing it through Te Reo Māori.

At a concert in 2020, Six60 further combined the song’s new version with a performance of the haka, making the concert uniquely New Zealand by giving the crowd a taste of the country’s distinct Indigenous culture. Now they do it at every single concert worldwide on tour to reconnect with their homeland. Additionally, singing the song is a reminder for them that even if they are on the other side of the world, when they return to Aoteoroa the following quote:

 i haere Māori atu, i hoki Māori mai

I left as a Māori, and I have returned as a Māori

applies to them.

To me this performance combined with the haka is filled with a celebration of the Māori culture since the Māori performers get the opportunity to proudly present their traditions and language on a big stage – it cuts through that fear of not being able to express and give Māori back their sovereignty by pushing the unspoken tension between Māori and non-Māori to the side and saying: here is a place for all to gather, unite and sing. Including Te Reo Māori and the haka, therefore, can enrich New Zealand’s music scene and empower national athletes, but some songs also engage worldwide audiences. Embracing the language should be as simple as not forgetting one’s roots … or family.

In an interview, the front singer of Six60 Matiu Walters stated that he noticed more understanding of the culture and an acceptance of songs in Māori especially in New Zealand, which has been a good thing to see. He further suggests that it is something the band helped push by redoing their song in Māori. The translation followed the dream to make Māori music in future not only usable for a political purpose or for social currency but also for the daily and ordinary life.

This is exactly what the band is doing with their new song “Pepeha“, which deals with their personal experience of learning about their actual pepeha – the way of introducing yourself in Māori. It tells people who you are by sharing your connections with the people and places that are important to you. By writing the song, the band was able to acknowledge and further explore their heritage. It helped them connect to their whakapapa and whenua. A pepeha shows their connection to the physical and spiritual place they call home. This anthemic waiata links significant things – prestige, love, and family – with their environment and to their ancestors.

Matiu Walters said they wanted to try to write a pepeha for all New Zealanders, whether you were born there, or you moved there and decided to make Aotearoa your home.

He further stated that the goal of their music is to always transcend any categories and have it all “feeling-based” since it’s what they like about music: It makes you feel a certain way and you can succumb to that feeling and forget about everything else, all the small things in life and just go along with the song.

However, there are a couple of critical voices on the band’s use of music and Te Reo as a way of public reconnection arguing that songs such as “Pepeha“ disregard the sanctity of cultural practices and do not consider the right translation nor provide the listener with the deep meaning Māori terms can carry.

Would you agree with the critics? Let me know in the comments!

Misplacement in Kelly Joseph’s “Transient”

Posted on by leheg100
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Short story: Kelly Joseph – “Transient” (Huia Short Stories 5, 2003)

Belonging and misplacement are well-known feelings, I believe. At some point in life everyone has experienced the sense of being in the right or wrong place, even if it is just at a party or a friend’s house, where you don´t feel comfortable or, on the contrary, almost like being at home. In the context of our seminar Indigenous Literature from New Zealand – Roots and Routes, we read several secondary texts and other works which discuss misplacement in Māori literature. However, one short story was especially fitting in my opinion for this seminar. “Transient”, written by Kelly Joseph, draws connections between the two main topics of roots and routes. The story specifies those concepts by pointing out that roots do not only refer to your origin but also may highlight a sense of misplacement at the same time.

Misplacement was one of the subtopics in our seminar, yet I must admit that, until we read “Transient”, I never really understood the extent of feeling lost or out of place. Kelly Joseph manages to convey the importance of belonging and roots as anchors within three short pages. She describes the journey of a young woman from Taranaki, wandering through the streets of Manhattan. On her way to the Metropolitan Museum, she encounters a homeless man and gives him some change. Inside the museum she wanders around without a map and comes across an empty waka huia. The protagonist cries for the ‘lost treasure’, which is “out of place in this foreign land” (p. 149). After the same homeless man from the beginning hands her a handkerchief, she makes the deliberate decision of booking a one-way ticket home.

When I started reading the short story, I found it quite sombre. As the first-person narrator describes the “thick humidity” and how “oppressive and disorientating” (p. 147) the setting of Manhattan seems, the reader is able to imagine what the protagonist means with the description of being crushed (cf. p. 147). However, the feeling of misplacement is especially noticeable on page 147, when the protagonist acknowledges: “Now I’m lost.” Further into the story, the protagonist emphasizes a lack of belonging or identification in the context of the “displaced objects” which appear “out of place in this foreign land” (p. 149).

As a teen, I always enjoyed trips to museums since they provided new insights to other cultures and historical periods which we did not experience ourselves. However, based on my undergraduate studies and particularly this seminar, I started to understand more and more that exhibiting objects of foreign cultures is an issue worth investigating further. I started to ponder: “Where do these objects come from?”, “Who gave the museum the right to exhibit it and not return it to its rightful place where it belongs?”. Even though these questions are not answered in the short story, it nevertheeless does provide us with enough insights to understand why we should look upon exhibited cultural objects with more care and consideration.

The perception of the protagonist is that the waka huia (like other exhibited objects) is “lost to its people” (p. 149). They belong to the culture of their people and are out of place in the foreign museum in which they are exhibited. This sense of belonging to a community is also highlighted earlier when she says: “[H]omesickness is not just a longing for a place; it’s a yearning for people” (p. 147). She herself feels like she does not belong where she is right now. As the protagonist and a human being, she has the choice of where she locates herself, even though it has taken her several years to realise the necessary actions she must take to feel at home again. The objects in the exhibition do not have the same sort of agency, which might be a reason for her tears when she grieves for the ‘lost objects’.

As I mentioned earlier, a homeless man hands her a handkerchief as she cries in front of the empty waka huia. This emptiness of the cultural object, which traditionally symbolizes relationships, can be seen as a mirror of the protagonist’s feeling of emptiness and misplacement. The homeless man is the only one who acknowledges her crying and takes action to ease her loneliness. Both characters are seen as outsiders to society, which leads to isolation and a lack of interactions with others. This isolation finds relief when the protagonist acknowledges her unwellness in the last sentence: “The following day I book a one-way ticket home.” Since it is a one-way ticket, it is clear that she does not have any intentions of straying too far from her roots any time soon again.

In the light of what I wrote earlier, more specifically the fact that I was not aware of the range which the sense of misplacement could reach, it is remarkable how thoroughly “Transient” points out and highlights the depth of feelings associated with misplacement and still offers me as the reader to interpret the short story based on my own individual experiences. Disorientating, lost, homesickness are all words that I now associate with this short story. Those words remind me that we belong somewhere, even if the process of realising takes us five years, just as the protagonist of Joseph’s story. However, just like the girl from Taranaki, we have the agency to lead our routes back to our roots. Towards the place where we feel like we belong.