The ‘Māori strum’

Then we look there's a section with images of Māori and guitars, because looking at where did – how did the guitar end up being so central in Māori performance.

So this is a collection of, sort of, two sets of images, a set of four images from very early on and then six images from much later on. So in the early images, there's an image of one of the black minstrel groups who came through New Zealand in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and who apparently had a real strong connection with Māori. And also they found it a curious experience being in New Zealand having been so discriminated against in America to come to New Zealand where, not to say there was no discrimination, but it was quite different in terms of things like coloured bars and things.

But we love this photo, because as well as the banjo in the photo with the singers, there's a guitar. And then we have an image of Tai Paul and his Pohutu Boys in Whakarewarewa meeting house. So this was donated to us by Chris Bourke, who's a historian and writer, who was a great help to us in researching the exhibition. And he actually very generously donated this image, which is in his ‘Blue Smoke’ book.

And it's a fascinating image, because it's acknowledging one of the key groups in the Māori show bands phenomenon. And actually a lot of those show bands are famous for having performed overseas, but this was a group that performed in Whakarewarewa and apparently Howard Morrison's parents would go along to this group. And it's acknowledging that that is part of this whole incredible tradition of show bands – Howard Morrison, Tai Paul's son, Rim D. Paul, went on to perform in show bands as well.

Then the final two images is an image we know very, very little about. Its four men standing with a violin, a cello, a horn, and also a guitar. And we really don't know much about them, just that they're an unidentified group of Māori men with musical instruments, date unknown. It would be great if as a result of things like ‘Pūkana’ that we might learn a little bit more about these.

There's also an image in the section of Inia Te Wiata, who was a very famous Māori base singer but also before that was a part of the Methodist Māori Choir, which was sort of how his singing talent got noted. But he's in a photo with another man, but he's standing holding a guitar.

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