Bilingual folk duo Charles and Emily Looker have released their fourth album as Aro.
Each song on He Rākau, He Ngārara tells a pūrākau about a different child of Tāne Mahuta.
Charles Looker says they worked with Te Kapua O’Connor, who’s doing a PhD on kōrero tuku iho at Auckland University, on the song Kaikōmako, using the tree’s role in the story of Māui and Mahuika to tell another on parenthood.
“Hine-Kaikomako is actually the mother of Mahuika. The story that we’d had learned was that Mahuika returned into the forest when she realised what was going on that the whole world was ablaze and she wasn’t sure really what to do. But when she returned to the forest, she went looking for a mum Hine-Kaikomako and her mom just embraced her. The waiata is about, for all of us who have tamariki no matter what they do, we’re going to embrace them,” he says.
Aro is also working on a song for Dame Hinewehi Mohi’s Waiata Anthems kaupapa.
- Waatea News