Award-winning Aotearoa singer-songwriter TE KAAHU has offered us a warm embrace with a trio of new waiata.
TE KAAHU’s new I Roto I Te Poo, I Roto I Te Ao EP is her first release since winning Best Independent Debut at the 2023 Taite Prize for her album TE KAAHU O RANGI.
TE KAAHU has shared a fresh triptych of songs intended to be listened side-by-side, written during an artist residency at Wellington’s Massey University.
Each waiata is accompanied by whispered poetry in English and te reo Māori. The title track also means “in the darkness, in the light”.
TE KAAHU is the Māori language and culture project of Theia, a bold advocate for Māori Indigenous rights. As Theia, she most recently performed at Auckland’s Neck of the Woods venue for The Others Way Festival.
I Roto I Te Poo, I Roto I Te Ao includes the soothing guitar waltz and falsetto lullaby of its title track. With bilingual recitations available after each waiata, TE KAAHU “invites the non-Māori speaking listener into her world.”
“One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about performing TE KAAHU live, is taking the audience on a journey and sharing with them the meaning of the songs and their stories. At shows, I’ll often recite the lyrics from certain songs, and it’s always met with such a warm reception. So I’ve done that here on this recording,” she says.
The music video is a shot in a bright space, where TE KAAHU’s Indigenous ankle tattoos stand out beautifully. Two extra songs of shorter duration, “E Te Tau O Taku Ate” and “Taku Makau”, prop up the title track, “symbolically representing pou, or pillars of support.”
“I really enjoy exploring the art of Māori songwriting and one of the beautiful aspects of this is that not all waiata have to be a certain length or structured in the way that we’ve come to know songs in the Pākehā sense. These waiata are intended to be listened to and experienced side by side, but they also stand alone in their own right,” says TE KAAHU.
TE KAAHU praised fellow wahine Mā0ri artist Jacqui Broughton (Muaūpoko, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa), who created the EP artwork.
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“When whaea Jacqui sent me the finished art she accompanied it with this explanation: ‘A wahine wears kootuku feathers in her hair with korowai piupiu dripping in gold protected by tuupuna. He mana wahine!’ I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect mahi toi to embody the wairua of this record – love songs written for my ancestors. Tupuna-inspired!” TE KAAHU says.
TE KAAHU’s ‘I Roto I Te Poo, I Roto I Te Ao‘ EP is out now.
