MAORI MELODY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 179, 30 June 1936, Page 11

MAORI MELODY.

REVELRY AT WAITARA. Per Press Association. NEW PLYMOUTH, Juno 29. Through blind tourist eyes, more than a thousand pakehas at Waitara on Saturday watched the Maoris’ re-r pertoire of ritual dance and song. They went away satisfied. Yet they had caught barely a glimpse of the true spirit of a race. It vanished from Manukorihi on Saturday morning and did not return until, when night fell and the pakeha was gone, it was free to wander among the tents and laugh with the crowds in the carved meeting house. When darkness came the first songs were heard and the pa changed into a friendly place of shadow-clouded lights. The north wind flapped the tent canvas and whipping rain turned the marae into a shallow sea of mud. The Maoris) floundered about in the dimness, tripping over the intricate guy ropes and colliding at odd corners. But their singing went on. From hundreds of brown throats it rose and gathered volume with the hours—a rhythmic undertone that made of the pa a world apart, where time was of no moment and life had no edges. The shrill keening of solitary women passing the statue of Sir Maui Pomare, murky I white against the starless sky, served only to make more significant the spell of endless melody'. 1 Inside the meeting house the murmur of music hardened. It was coherent. It became slik 20th Century jazz between, of all things, walls made grotesquely beautiful by carved pillar and lintel. Yet even jazz exchanged its fever for a queer dignity. A dozen l Rannevirkc Maoris played, but with j none of the cocktail sparkle of fashion--1 able bands; their irresistible rhythm set the toes dancing to the beat of old, dreamy cadences, j The dress of the dancers would have ; shocked even Bohemia. Men in over- j coats and hats stepped with women in j backless evening frocks; dinner jackets I I rubbed shoulders with hockey 7 tunics; ! and patent leather pumps jostled I muddv farm boots in fox-trot and waltz.’ But here was perfect tolerance and a real democracy. Shod with patent leather or cowhide, what matter? They were of one blood, and the night was lor song and rejoicing.