Maori music records and analyses ancient Maori musical tradition and knowledge, and explores the impact of European music on this tradition. Mervyn McLean draws on diverse written and oral sources gathered over more than 30 years of scholarship and field work that yielded some 1300 recorded songs, hundreds of pages of interviews with singers, and numerous eye-witness accounts. The work is illustrated throughout with photos and music examples.

This classic text on Maori culture collects indigenous New Zealand songs recorded over a period of 40 years by a respected Maori leader and distinguished scholar. The essence of Maori culture and its musical tradition is exhibited in the original song texts, translations, audio CDs, and notes from contemporary scholars featured in this new edition. This rare cultural treasure makes accessible a fleeting moment in Maori history when traditional practices and limited experience with the outside world allowed indigenous songs and customs to flourish.

Comprehensively covers the world of Māori musical instruments, including a background to the tunes played on the instruments, and the families of natural sounds with which they are associated. Covers various types of instruments (flutes, gourds, wood and shell trumpets, and bullroarers, for example) giving technical information along with that of the mythological and cultural context to which they belong.

In waiata our forebears spoke their hearts - in grief and celebration. For many hundreds of years this great oral tradition of song flourished in Aotearoa. During the second half of the nineteenth century, in times of rapid change, Maori scholars recorded for the future the words of thousands of waiata. Their manuscripts were preserved by Pakeha of foresight and commitment, and along with a vast body of other Maori writing they are now accessible in libraries throughout the country. Margaret Orbell has been working with these manuscripts for 25 years. She has come to occupy a special place in Maori scholarship, having brought to light and translated many ancient texts. In this new anthology she places waiata of the nineteenth century in their social and political setting, conveying the poets' responses to their people's trauma. There is a fascinating richness of detail here about traditional Maori life, with insights into the lives of ordinary people as well as into tribal relations and the interaction of Maori and Pakeha. Margaret also reveals the great skills of the composers - their use of imagery, rhythm and symbolism, and the profound knowledge they convey. Her authoritative and illuminating commentaries will make this collections hugely interesting to a wide range of readers.

This book celebrates our native birds and their unique talents. Learn about the great recycling talents of the kereru, the fishing ability of the kotare, the flying sklls fo the toroa and many more. At the end, we realise that we all have special talents. Use this book to expand your use of sentences in te reo and to uncover the unique abilities of your children.

What did popular song mean to people across the world during the First World War? For the first time, song repertoires and musical industries from countries on both sides in the Great War as well as from neutral countries are analysed in one exciting volume. Experts from around the world, and with very different approaches, bring to life the entertainment of a century ago, to show the role it played in the lives of our ancestors. The reader will meet the penniless lyricist, the theatre chain owner, the cross-dressing singer, fado composer, stage Scotsman or rhyming soldier, whether they come from Serbia, Britain, the USA, Germany, France, Portugal or elsewhere, in this fascinating exploration of showbiz before the generalization of the gramophone. Singing was a vector for patriotic support for the war, and sometimes for anti-war activism, but it was much more than that, and expressed and constructed debates, anxieties, social identities and changes in gender roles. This work, accompanied by many links to online recordings, will allow the reader to glimpse the complex role of popular song in people’s lives in a period of total war.