Te Ao Māori-centred punk rock band, Half/Time, has returned from Wales.
Lead gutarist Wairehu Grant from Ngāti Maniapoto, is a Phd student at Waikato University. His thesis focuses on creative and ideological crossovers between Te Ao Māori and punk rock culture. Grant says he wants to remind people that there is a community of Māori who listen to punk rock.
The similarities between punk rock and te ao māori aren't often drawn but this rocker says when completing his thesis he has found a clear link.
“There are people I interviewed who have been playing punk since the 1990s, and are on the Waitangi Tribunal now. You just never know. A good example is Metiria Turei. She goes back in the punk scene locally. Yeah, just lots of different people that you wouldn't necessarily associate with the music or the genre, or the aesthetic,” he says.
Only recently has this Ngāti Maniapoto descendant returned home from a music tour in Wales. Grant says his love for the genre stemmed from the free-flowing nature of the sound.
People connections
“When I was younger I used to practise guitar a lot and I never wanted to put out any music because I was so obsessed with it having to be perfect but, with punk, you kind of just throw that away and it's like, 'just do stuff' when you feel like it. And however it is, is how it is.”
Grant is working towards his PhD and his thesis looks for comparisons between punk rock and Te Ao Māori. While in Wales watching other performances, he says he saw distinct similarities between Māori people and the Welsh, regardless of culture.
“In Wales for example there were people that came up to me that have a Welsh father and an English mother and they talk about navigating life when they were kids... The way they talk about their lives as kids, it is insane to think this person on the other side of the world had a really similar childhood to us because maybe they didn't grow up with their language or they felt kind of alienated by the people around, and that's really interesting.”
His focus while overseas was creating relationships with like-minded people who look to maintain their indigenous language, Grant says he met many indigenous people from around the world who also share the same love for music.
“I met a lot of other people from other indigenous cultures as well that engage with punk. I've met people from indigenous American backgrounds or Southeast Asia. And there can be this instant bond that is formed over the fact that there is something as simple as being a person of colour in a scene that people don't necessarily associate with that.”