POPULAR VOCALIST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22659, 26 August 1935, Page 11

POPULAR VOCALIST

MISS ANA HATO After the distinctive success scored Ly Miss Ana Hato, the celebrated Maori singer, at the Returned Soldiers’ Choir concert last week, all who have a thorough appreciation of musical artistry have been asking when this talented and vivacious vocalist will make her next appearance in Dunedin. The management has engaged the vocalist for a one week’s season and at her appearances this week in the Tudor Hall she is expected to repeat the instantaneous success which she fully merited at the earlier concert.

Miss Hato is a singer whose reputation has preceded her here. For several years now, her fascinating voice, true Maori in its husky beauty, has been known the world over by her gramophone recordings, but it is now admitted by those who heard her last week that her personal performances are infinitely more pleasurable. Her music is fascinatingly rich and true, but it is her vivid and most unusual personality that gives to her singing such distinctiveness and appeal. A striking figure in the traditional costume of her race, she appears to enjoy singing as much as her audi cnees enjoy her work. The songs of the Maori race are alluringly melodious, pulsating with rhythm and vibrant with life and emotion, and there has been heard no better interpreter of them than Miss Hato, whose rich quality of voice has been extolled by the many overseas visitors who have heard her concert party at Rotorua. At the Savoy she will have a splendid setting for her songs, the best known of whic{i include “ Waiata Poi,” “ Hine B Hine,” “ Pokare Kare,” “ E Pari Ra,” “He Moea Moea,” “By the Waters of Minnetonga ” (in Maori), “Akoako 0 Te Raugi,” and Tahitian folk songs. The Savoy promises to be unusually colourful with this striking young lady as the entertainer in a hall that will be a veritable bower of flowers, dainty and beautiful and truly springlike. In some o' her numbers Miss Hato will accompany herself, with the ukulele, while in others she” will have the musical background of the popular Savoy Quartet.