supplement to other methods. Tape recordings offer by far the most useful means of first preserving and then learning the songs. In a tape recording, the song is captured complete in all its detail and the recording can be played again and again without noticeable loss of quality.

Collections of Recorded Waiata There are now two main collections of recorded waiata in New Zealand. One is that of the N.Z.B.C. which now includes all of the material recorded from 1953 onwards by Mr W. T. Ngata for the Maori Purposes Fund Board. From time to time these recordings are broadcast. Anyone with access to a home recorder may then re-record them for this won use. Some of the Maori Purposes Fund Board recordings have also now been issued on gramophone records. The second collection is that made by the present writer, with financial assistance from the University Grants Committee. At the time of writing it includes 619 items from several tribal areas. To allay fears of commercialisation it is not intended to allow these recordings to be broadcast. Instead, arrangements are being made to deposit copies with tribal authorities in each area. Each area will receive only its own songs; the recordings are being given over entirely without charge; and the condition is made that the recordings must be made available to groups within the area wishing to make use of them. Later it is hoped to publish in these pages a complete list of the recordings available, together with the names of the institutions which have accepted custody of them. In the meantime there can be found elsewhere in this issue a discussion of the musical style of Maori chant and beginning with the next issue there will be a series of transcriptions of chants in musical notation. Most of the transcriptions will be of songs which have already spread beyond their tribal boundaries and none will be published unless it has been fully released by the performers. It is hoped that the recordings and the transcriptions will together play some part in the active preservation of a unique form of music which New Zealand can ill afford to lose.

The article printed below is to be published as a preface to the Third Part of ‘Nga Moteatea’, edited by Mr Pei te Hurunui Jones, which will be published by the Maori Purposes Fund Board later this year. ‘Te Ao Hou’ is grateful to the Maori Purposes Fund Board for permission to publish the article here. The Music of Maori Chant by Mervyn McLean

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS Most readers of ‘Te Ao Hou’ will know that there are two kinds of Maori music. The kind with which most people are familiar, known as action song, dates only from about the first decades of the present century. In its present form it is little more than a Maorified form of Western popular music. The other kind of Maori music has a long tradition dating back to the beginnings of the Maori people. Even today it remains associated with the old values and institutions of Maoridom. It exhibits, in consequence, great tenacity of style. It is with the older form of music that this article is concerned. Since, so far as the writer is aware, there is no generally accepted name which incorporates the whole of the older song tradition, it will be called here ‘Maori chant’. This term is used as inclusive of waiata, patere, pao, and all the other forms discussed. It is used in preference to the term ‘Maori song’ which could also include action song. Until now, scholarly attention to Maori chant has mostly been directed towards the words. Sir Apirana Ngata for example, in the Prefaces to both parts 1 and 2 of ‘Nga Moteatea’, deals with the chants exclusively from a literary point of view. This did not mean that the importance of the