For Living People

Te Ao Hou, June 1963, Page 34

For Living People The more carefully one looks at moko the more one sees, too, how well its lines are designed to suit the contours of the faces on which they were carved, and how effectively they added to their wearers' dignity. One only wishes one could see those finely tattooed faces in motion—especially in the middle of a haka. We can see this art now only in drawings and on dried heads in museums, but it was designed for living people: for a fierce race of warriors who were also artists.

A Wellington newspaper, ‘The Dominion’, has donated a cash prize of £100 for the winner of a Maori choir contest. The contest, which will be one of the classes of the Wellington Competitions' Society's festival held in August and September, will be open to choirs with a minimum of 16 and a maximum of 40 performers, who must appear in Maori costume. The class will be known as ‘The Dominion’ Maori Choir Championship and will be in two sections, a test piece and an own selection. The test will be the hymn, ‘Fierce Rage the Tempest O'er the Sea’, and the own selection item must be a choral, not an action song. After working on the ‘Aussie circuit’ all this winter, the Howard Morrison Quartet hopes to travel on a concert tour of the East and may take up a contract in the United States later this year. ‘If it was just a matter of going to the States, we could have gone 18 months ago,’ Howard said. ‘But most contracts tied us down for too long a period. We'll be back in New Zealand if I have anything to do with it.’ Training in the carpentry and joinery trade is now available for Maori boys at Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The special carpentry centres established in these three places now provide pre-apprenticeship training in this trade for 72 Maori boys each year. In addition, special one year pre-apprenticeship courses in plumbing, electrical wiring and motor mechanics are now being conducted at the Seddon Memorial Technical College, Auckland, with twelve Maori boys in each class. These special schemes now provide training for more than 100 Maori boys each year. These schemes are available to Maori boys living in country areas, who are not able to obtain apprenticeships in or near their home towns. If your son qualifies under this heading and is interested in taking up a worthwhile trade when he leaves school, you should get in touch with the nearest office of the Department of Maori Affairs to learn more about the scheme.