How Rotorua Club Made First Recordings of Maori Music

Te Ao Hou, September 1961, Page 63

How Rotorua Club Made First Recordings of Maori Music An increasingly large number of Maori records have appeared over the past two years bringing a surge of interest in Maori music by ordinary Pakeha New Zealanders as well as overseas visitors. However, this availability of recorded Maori music is nothing new, for the first large scale recordings of Maori songs in this country were made as long ago as 1930 by the Columbia Graphophone Company Pty. Ltd. Today when many records and artists enjoy only a very brief period of popularity it is worth noting that these early Columbia discs, after 30 years, are still selling well and have recently been re-released collected together in three long playing recordings. The recordings were of a group known as the Rotorua Maori Choir. A former musical director of the Columbia Graphophone Company, Mr Gil Dech, is now a music teacher in DUNEDIN and conducts the 4YA studio orchestra. Mr Dech was musical director of this pioneer Maori recording venture. Mr Dech is a Londoner and his first acquaintance with New Zealand music was in 1927 when he accompanied on the piano and conducted an orchestra for a series of recordings made in Sydney by Ernest McKinley. McKinley was a Scottish tenor who had made a study of Maori music and collected together a number of tunes and published them in an album.