International act Wu-Tang Clan headlined Raggamuffin at the weekend and one member of the American hip hop group was fascinated over a brief encounter with the Māori culture.
Wu-Tang Clan was a hit with the Auckland crowd, but back stage, the hip hop group was impressed with the Māori culture.
"We did get a greeting last night, an official Māori greeting, at Cong and ah, it was interesting, noticed first of all the tradition is part of the ancestry here," says Wu-Tang Clan artist RZA.
Seven members of the 10-man Wu-Tang Clan performed.
Rapper RZA says Māori people should be proud of their culture, "For me to see the ancestry in 2016 that goes along hundreds of years, if not thousands of years with the culture, is a blessing because we are black men from America and a lot of our culture and our ancestry is erased."
Wu-Tang Clan began in New York City in the early 1990s. Some of their hits like C.R.E.A.M talk about their experiences in regards to colonisation.
"As far as colonisation goes, we're a product of colonisation, we black American you know America is a colony but our story is from where we grew up you know a song like C.R.E.A.M tells you how we grew up on the crime side of the New York Times side and staying alive was no job, we got second hand clothes, our mothers and fathers were separated from each other, we moving to different places you know what I mean and there was no way for us to survive besides doing crime,” says RZA.
However, the band say they enjoy sharing their American culture with the world.
"You all gotta remember we started with this in New York city, you know in small neigbourhoods, and you get to travel the world and show our culture and share it with other people so it's always a blessing for us," says RZA.