HINE: A Sonic Journey of Whakapapa
Image credit: GiGi Crayford
Kia ora GiGi, can you share about yourself and your new music project, HINE?
Kia ora Ataria. Aē, so I grew up in Pōneke, immersed in a musical family. On my dad’s side, my whānau are all jazz musicians, and my childhood memories are of snuggling up in his drum bags with my sister, surrounded by the vibrant sounds of jazz music. I was creative and always musical, writing songs and finding music-making natural. I grew up as a ballerina as well, so I very much embodied music in different facets of my life.
This new project, HINE, is a woven korowai of taonga pūoro and my experience of opening the door to my te reo Māori, which I have been privileged to be immersed in at Te Wānanga o Raukawa and the foundation kaupapa that Whakatupuranga Rua Mano planted.
My dad, Greg, was the first in our whānau to start re-claiming his reo back in the 80s after the generations before him who it was lost to. I remember him speaking to me in Māori before bed, singing waiata—it was always music. But I didn’t have much of my own reo, and it was something I was whakamā about before being at wānanga. This has allowed me to access deeper parts of myself and my connection and embodiment of whakapapa and Māoritanga.
My Māoritanga has been woven with taonga pūoro, our atua and te reo, all of which have created and brought forth this new project of HINE. It is a mihi to the spectrum of atuatanga in us all, and innate humanness. All of which started with taonga pūoro. Around 2012, I heard Rob Thorne playing a pūtatara in Pōneke. I didn’t even know what a pūoro was, but as I listened to him, all of my body hairs stood on end, and I found myself calling back to him and singing. It resonated at a blood and bone level and was a karanga to me to connect to my tūpuna.
I have since had the privilege of being a teina touched by many wonderful pukenga and tuakana of taonga pūoro, such as Ariana Tikao, Sam Palmer, Te Kahureremoa, Jerome Kavanagh, Al Fraser and, of course, Rob Thorne, to name a few. Carving, making and having an ongoing relationship with taonga pūoro is a central pou of this new project of HINE. Honouring the mana, whakapapa and tapu of these taonga and the fact that they are another language in which we can share our pūrākau and communicate with whenua and our tūpuna.
What was your creative process for HINE and writing the atua wāhine?
The process of each of these songs is very intuitive. I listen to my dreams, what I feel I am being guided to from my ancestors, from nature, from our atua, my puku and whatumanawa. I did not plan to create a whole project for Māreikura Māori but it is what has manifested through my experience of active listening and living faith as a practise, pulling on the threads of whakapapa and allowing life to show me the way.
What has materialised now is five songs in an EP, each an expression and mihi to a different face of Māreikua through my personal experience of connecting to them. This looks and has been expressed completely differently for each song. For example, in ‘KA MUA KA MURI’, the first song of the EP we have recently released, started off as a feeling, a feeling of wanting to connect deeper to Papatūānuku, but the realisation that we as humans have laid so much on top of her through systems like colonisation, urbanisation and capitalism have created a sense of dis-connection from ways in which we used to live, which I believe were healthier for us as humans as well as the health of the planet.
So the song, kupu and melody came from this surreal feeling in my puku of knowing we have paved this matrix over our matriarch, but despite all our human knots we have tied ourselves in, she is very much still there beneath it all, here for us, nourishing us still through our pito and umbilical cord even if it has been stretched.
We did have a lot of fun and creative exploration in the recording process of ‘KA MUA KA MURI’. I knew I wanted to start the song with sounds of the urban, very human world and end with sounds of the ngahere, manu pūoro, as if throughout the song we travel through time or space from isolation to connection. It’s very much sonic storytelling and was a great experience travelling around capturing the sounds of the city and then nature sounds to weave in and elevate the expression of the kaupapa.
Another big aspect is the support from my whānau to play these songs, the whole project is about whakapapa and I wanted to have all the instrumentation played by my whānau, drawing from the wellspring of our whakapapa. My dad Greg played drums, my brother Miles on the Rhodes piano and organ and myself on the foundational instruments as well as vocals and pūoro. This was such a taonga to do together and I will remember our shared kai and laughs and creative collaboration as long as I live.
Why do you think many of us are now connecting to our atua wāhine and our māreikura Māori?
To be frank I think it is because we need to in order to hopefully enable us and future generations to have a future on this planet. I believe everything is getting more and more intense as the polarities of this world shift. I think we know as a human species that we have created ways of living that are un-sustainable and it is hopefully through re-connection to nature and more natural and earth conscious ways of being we can reimagine the future and ensure a life for our mokopuna.
It is natural then that our atua are getting stronger in their communication with us at personal and collective levels. As humans, that which we have intimate and personal connection with, we value more and fight for. It is my hope that the wave of re-indigenisation that is sweeping a lot of human consciousness is the grand spiral of justice, that has come so far from itself that it is returning, calling for and bringing about balance for our tūpuna, our whenua and our mokopuna.
Te Kahureremoa Taumata once said to me “our atua are waiting to connect with us” and I believe this is very true and once we allow them into our lives, massive shifts, transformation and evolution can occur, activating and expanding our potential as humans to be agents of and collaborators with our atua and taiao.
Who is the atua wahine you feel you work with most often?
Great question. My first thought was Hine-nui-te-Pō. I am very much into astrology and in that framework I am a double Scorpio, meaning it is my sun sign and rising sign. So I feel a great resonance between Hine-nui-te-pō and the archetypal Scorpio energy, it feels like blood red, like transformation, like alchemy and bridging between worlds, the seen and unseen, birth and death, all of which I feel are both in the realm of Hine-nui-te-pō realm as well as aspects of Scorpio energy.
This is a constant that I have found in my life, the cycles of transformation and great death and rebirth patterns enabling regeneration, evolution and deeper creation using the energy that we are letting go of as fuel to alchemise emotion into art, spirit into song and grief into peace.
What was playing at Māoriland like?
Intimidating, surreal, exciting and just such a blessing and privilege. It is such a pito for tangata whenua not only from Aoteaeoa but the world over, hosting the biggest indigenous film festival in the world. What an amazing place to be in, imagining all the mauri, history, art, experience that that whare and space has borne witness to as well as held in its walls. It was just such an honour to be able to share a little bit of my own art in that beautiful whare. It felt so aligned for the kaupapa and was a wonderful night, full of kind and receptive humans who made me feel really seen and valued in this art and project.
My whānau and I played through the whole EP as one which was another very special component; standing on stage with them at my side was highly emotional yet deeply supportive and right for the kaupapa. We had Nikau Te Huki of Casual Healing open for us and he shared with me after that it was one of his favourite gigs he’s ever played. There was just a very special Mauri in the room and I think a huge part of that was the whare of Māoriland we were held in.
How can people support your music?
Engaging with the art, music on Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp. You can also give koha on Bandcamp if you like. Otherwise just your presence and listening ears is a huge support. The music video for ‘KA MUA KA MURI’ is now on YouTube and I’m on IG and FB. But my personal favourite is coming to shows, if you see me playing near you, come down, give me a hongi, have a kōrero, get some merch. Keep an eye out for the remaining releases, there will be four more waiata coming out with music videos before next Matariki.
I think the biggest way to support too is everyone following their own puku, their own connection and expression of Atua, truth, frequency and oro. I believe when we are all weaving in our threads of pono, they come together and hopefully contribute to a korowai of healing on our plane. Supporting as within so without, personally and collectively for the greater good.
Ngā mihi nunui ki a koutou i tēnei kaupapa mīharo. He rawe rawa atu tō koutou nei mahi.
Tēnei te mihi ake ki a koe Ataria e te māmā, e te Kaituhi, e te ngākau pono, e te wāhine toa.