Tararua: Bird Like Men

The Lord of the Rings film trilogy flaunted New Zealand’s spectacular landscapes, but over the past generation there has also been, as one critic recently described it, a quiet revolution on the nation’s soundscape. Turn on a news report in 2022 and you’re likely to hear English-speaking commentators sprinkling their speech with Maori words and expressions. The language of the nation’s indigenous population is increasingly seen as a common … More Tararua: Bird Like Men

Te Vaka: Amataga

As a teenager, Opetaia Foa’i knew music was his calling—to the chagrin of his family, for whom singing was integral to life but hardly a profession. Born in Samoa—father from Tokelau, mother from Tuvalu—and raised in New Zealand, he played jazz, blues, reggae and the songs of Jimi Hendrix. But as he started writing his own music, Foa’i found he felt most at home with the rhythms of his roots. … More Te Vaka: Amataga