Moana Maniapoto – Jackson

Tu Tangata, Issue 35, 1 April 1987, Page 17

Moana Maniapoto - Jackson

HAU O R A

One might ask “What’s a nice female singer doing singing about the demon drink alcohol?” Even more why sing about it in Maori. The answer is Kua Makona, “I am satisfied, I know when I have had enough.” And for the Maori people, that’s a question they must ask themselves, especially when it comes to drinking alcohol and eating kai.

Moana doesn’t claim to be a reformed alcoholic, she just sings from the heart the love-song ‘Kua Makona’. It speaks of a woman seeing what harm is being done to her man from his excessive drinking. There are no answers in the song, just a hopeless despair.

That’s not the situation in Moana’s life though. The man in her life is Willie Jackson from Ngati Porou. Moana is Te Arawa and Tuwharetoa. As she puts it he has been the highlight of her life, having been married now two years.

Her background is solidly in community and music. At present she works with Kia Mohio Kia Marama Trust as a barrister and graphic artist. Set up in 1983, the trust looks at getting out easily understood information on legal procedures, legal rights and duties. She does this through her skills in art, drawing and cartoon graphics.

She’s also working on a history of Aotearoa from a Maori perspective. “It’s a simple form so that people can understand processes of colonisation, political structures in place today, the Treaty, etc.” She hopes this will stimulate discussion on such issues.

Singing has always been her love, first at school with the St Joseph’s Maori Girls’ College. In 1981 Moana teamed up with Aroaro Hond (onetime Koha interviewer, now married to league player, Howie Tamati) and appropriately became the duo, Aromoana. They won four major talent quests with television work aplenty. Their most remembered song is ‘Ka-

hore he wahine’, which like all Maori language commercial songs, was shunned by radio stations. However Maori programmers on the Tonight Show soon got its popularity established. Moana took psychology, Maori and sociology at Waikato University in 1979 and then went on to Auckland University to study Law. In 1984 she passed her bar examinations. In this time she says she worked as a toll operator, as well as doing band work

following the break-up of Aromoana. Her work with Kia Mohio Kia Marama Trust in the legal area as well as the graphics, suits her music life well. “It works in well with my full-time five nights a week singing career with my band Whiteline. We sing at Club 21 on Queen Street. Mostly commercial dance-floor songs and have started working on originals. Moana says she can’t see a time when she’ll give up singing ... or law ... or art.