SOME THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF MAORI CHANT by A. Mihi Hill I was most interested to read, in the June issue of ‘Te Ao Hou’, the two articles by Mr Mervyn McLean on Maori chant, or traditional music. Mr McLean, a professional student of traditional music (the academic term for this is ethnomusicologist) is devoting a great deal of his time to collecting and preserving old Maori chants. He is studying their nature and structure, and he has worked out a method of notating the airs. But he is not stopping there. He is re-distributing recordings of these chants within the tribal areas from whence they came, at no charge to the tribal authorities; he asks only that they be made available to groups within the area wishing to make use of them. Thank goodness for people like them, and how ashamed it makes me. For I continue to think how great a tragedy it is that the preservation of such material should almost always rest in the hands of a few far-sighted Europeans who see further ahead than we ourselves do.

Can It Survive In Traditional Form? While Mr McLean is performing a most valuable service in preserving a fast-dying art form, I am myself most dubious as to whether it will be possible for Maori chant in its present form, to survive as a living part of our culture. If asked to give one short answer to Mr McLean's question, ‘Can Maori chant survive?’ I would, I think, have to say, ‘No, because not enough younger Maoris care sufficiently to help it to survive.’ I should like to explain my reasons for thinking this, and then offer a suggestion as to how, in a somewhat less traditional form, it might have a much better chance of true survival. When primitive Maori society was thrust so abruptly into the modern world, the future of Maori chant would have been sure only if the elders, on realising the difficulties of the new environment, had really exerted themselves and done all within their power to make it as easy as possible for the chant to survive. But this they could not do. The shock of transition was too great, and by the time that the Maori-Pakeha wars were over, and the race had been greatly reduced in numbers and brought to the lowest point in its morale, the next problem was not the survival of the chant, but rather the survival of a race. Naturally enough, if this is your target you will not place too much emphasis on the survival of unnecessary non-physical extras. So the race rallied and lived, and the action song came into its own. I sometimes wonder whether it would be better to have no music at all rather than a bastardised Maori version of European pop tunes. It's such an easy way of making music. And with all due respect to those Maoris who will disagree with me, Maoris like to get things easily. I do myself.

Language Also Declining During this time the language also was declining, for it was much harder to be bilingual when one had to speak only English at school. While all of this was happening, Maori chant was being performed still at tangis and other gatherings, but because of the impact of the new society there was not the same need or opportunity to gather and sing together. Today very few Maori children learn their language in their own home. The only places in which other people can learn Maori are at some Maori schools, at Adult Education classes throughout the country, and at the University of Auckland. But today if you want to learn Maori you have to be really keen, and once you have learnt Maori you have to be fanatic to learn the old chants. They are not easy to learn and, many would say, not easy to listen to.

Difficult At First To Understand I have a musically trained ear, and yet when I first started listening to Maori chant when employed by the N.Z.B.C., I was amazed at the seeming ‘monotony’. It took many weeks of solid listening before I began to appreciate this completely different musical form. As for understanding the words, I speak reasonable