Māori music
Contemporary rock and roll, soul, reggae, and hip hop all feature a variety of notable Māori performers.
Captain Cook, who visited the New Zealand archipelago in the late-18th century, reported that the Māori sang a song in "semitones".
The work of researchers and enthusiasts such as Richard Nunns, Hirini Melbourne and Brian Flintoff has provided a wealth of knowledge and information around the sounds, history and stories of these instruments, which included various types of flutes, wooden trumpets, percussion instruments and bull-roarers.
As part of a deliberate campaign to revive Māori music and culture in the early 20th century, Āpirana Ngata invented the "action song" (waiata-a-ringa) in which stylised body movements, many with standardised meanings, synchronise with the singing.
He, Tuini Ngāwai and the tourist concert parties of Rotorua developed the familiar performance of today, with sung entrance, poi, haka ("war dance"), stick game, hymn, ancient song and/or action song, and sung exit.
Tours of travelling Hawaiian musicians like Ernest Kaʻai and David Luela Kaili to New Zealand in the 1900s to 1920s introduced the Māori to steel guitars and the ʻukulele which were readily adopted with innovations from their own sonoral traditions.
[7] Some modern artists such as Hinewehi Mohi, Tiki Taane, Maisey Rika and Taisha Tari have revived the use of traditional instruments.
Two government agencies began to fund Māori music: NZ On Air and Te Māngai Pāho.
[8] In the 1990s, musicians such as Moana and the Moahunters, Southside of Bombay and Hinewehi Mohi ("Kotahitanga") released high profile songs that were sung in or included Te Reo Māori lyrics.
[12] In 2019, to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1999 Rugby World Cup semi-final where Hinewehi Mohi performed the national anthem in te reo, Mohi created Waiata / Anthems, an album where 11 New Zealand musicians re-recorded songs into te reo Māori, including Six60, Stan Walker, Benee, Drax Project and Bic Runga.
In mid-2021, Recorded Music NZ began publishing a chart of the top songs sung in Te Reo Māori in New Zealand.
The groups performed in a wide variety of musical genres, dance styles, and with cabaret skills, infusing their acts with comedy drawn straight from Māori culture.
Their 1959 parody of "The Battle of New Orleans" called "The Battle of the Waikato" became one of their biggest hits and a parody of "My Old Man's a Dustman" called "My Old Man's an All Black" was topical because of the controversy over Māori players not being allowed to tour apartheid South Africa with the 1960 All Blacks in South Africa.
In 1992, this category developed into the Aotearoa Music Award for Best Māori Artist; initially as Best Maori Album in 1992 and 1993.
