AESTHETIC VALUE

Te Ao Hou, June 1964, Page 37

AESTHETIC VALUE Before going on to discuss the style of Maori chant it may be worthwhile to say a word or two about the aesthetic value of the songs. That the songs have great merit from a literary point of view is well attested by Sir Apirana Ngata and others. That they have equal value musically is not so widely recognised. From the start it ought to be made clear that judgements of musically untrained persons about the so-called ‘monotony’ of Maori chant should be disregarded. Such judgements are made in terms of Western culture whose values are quite different from those of Maori chant. They form no more valid a means of comparison than would (say) Chinese music or Japanese music, both highly developed forms in their own right but virtually incomprehensible to most untrained Western listeners. As the conclusions which follow will demonstrate, Maori music was, and in its traditional form is, an advanced form of music with its own rules and its own values.