EARLY MAORI MUSIC
PRESERVATION OF SONGS NEED FOR TRAINING CHILDREN [by telegraph OWN correspondent] WAIROA, Saturday The question of training Maori children in learning to preserve their own songs was discussed when teachers gathered at Wairoa to meet Mr. J. A* Henry, senior school inspector in Hawke's Bay. It was pointed" out that the new training system, which includes staff notation, was inadequate as far as the Maori was concerned. The original Maori music, which was now virtually a lost art, required a more involved* system, of notation built up of quarter tones. This music could be learnt only bv ear. Maori music as frequently heard over the air and .on gramophone records, was actually not Maori music, but a European travesty of the original, / written to pander to the European ear and sense of interpretation. Mr. E. S. Wills, headmaster of the Kauponga Native School, explained that the only way to revive "and preserve Maori music for all time was to teach Maori children, with the aid of a gramophone and records,, the original music.
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New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23010, 11 April 1938, Page 8
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176EARLY MAORI MUSIC New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23010, 11 April 1938, Page 8
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