Five Lives Represented in the Waiata Collected by Alfred Hill—A Biographical Methodology for the Historiography of Aotearoa New Zealand Musics

Abstract

<p>This thesis addresses the general lack of research on music-making in Aotearoa New Zealand prior to c.1950, and in particular the significant dearth of research on historical socio-musical exchanges made between Māori and Pākehā. Recognising that Māori cannot be excluded from research through ignorance, convenience, epistemological angst, or by design, I develop and test a tikanga-informed biographical methodology for the historiography of Aotearoa New Zealand musics. This methodology draws especially from Nēpia Mahuika’s argument for tikanga-based historical scholarship and the Pūtaiora Writing Group’s Te Ara Tika ethical research model. I present as case studies a collective biography of five individuals represented in the waiata collected by Australasian composer Alfred Hill (1869–1960) between the 1890s and 1950s. These biographees are: Hill; Ernest Hoben (1864–1918); Bella Papakura (c.1870– 1950, Ngāti Wāhiao); Tuahine Rangiuia (1866–1918, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki; Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti; Ngāti Porou); and Phyllis Williams (1905–1993). Using archival research and interviews conducted with my biographees’ descendants, I tell stories of how these five remarkable musicians engaged in cross-cultural musical exchange for personal fulfilment and to encourage amongst their contemporaries better cross-cultural understanding in the face of the many inequities wrought by colonisation. More broadly, my biographies reveal under-researched and previously unrecognised traditions of music-making in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the unbounded nature of these music cultures. Cross-cultural music traditions discussed in this thesis include waiata collection and recontexualisation, urban and rural haka concerts, men and women’s staged poi dance, rugby smoke concerts, national rugby haka, trans-Tasman theatre culture, popular Pākehā songs, and early women broadcasters. </p>