TUINI NGAWAI

Te Ao Hou, April 1956, Page 46

TUINI NGAWAI The first person I met on Makomako station was the manager. He seemed rather surprised to hear that to-day's leading Maori song-writer was at that moment working in his shearing shed, but at the name Tuini Ngawai he showed recognition. Yes, she was there. But, he added, to see her in the shed, you wouldn't believe she had composed any songs. Miss Ngawai was just finishing her midday nap on top of one of the wool bales. She looked up when I came in and fixed her very penetrating eyes upon me. The station manager had been only partly right. The black and blue shearing gang uniform evidently was not his idea of the apparel of a literary lady, but the face looking at me was at once very amused, very serious and remarkably shrewd; it betrayed a consciousness of the hidden depths of the mind that is in general more typical of writers than shearers. With unusual intensity she set about discovering who this pakeha was who wanted to translate her songs. We had a long talk about songs and about the way the Maoris to-day are singing them. Like many poets, Miss Ngawai has had words dictated to her by something outside her consciousness, ‘in a dream,’ she says. Arohaina Mai which she regards as her best song, took only a few minutes to compose. She never writes but always dictates the words to a helper. The Maori people are still wonderful singers, they sing as an entertainment; but actions to-day are often poor due to the words not being understood fully or even at all. Miss Ngawai thinks that teaching action songs in schools will be unrewarding unless the language is also taught. Miss Ngawai likes the shearing routine; she likes to live for a while with the young people and keep touch with the way they feel. She had an offer last year to train a party for a film on Maori dancing, but the producer wanted the party to consist of glamorous people. Tuini Ngawai turned it down. She doubted whether these glamorous people could do her action songs properly. Would they lift their eyebrows right up in certain passages?