the harmony is lovely and the singing crisp and disciplined. A second record please from the Patea Methodist Club but scrap the Pakeha tunes and tone down the guitar! He Toa Takatini should not be confused with a Kiwi record of the same name, and presumably by the same Waikato group, as both are led by the Rev. Canon W. T. T. Huata. This is a pleasant enough record even if it is largely a case of a rather average group being enhanced by the excellent quality of the recorded sound. However this high quality also tends to point up that there is the odd passenger in the group who pauses for a rest along the way. In particular the beginnings of some of the items are faltering and the group seems to need a couple of bars to get up steam. The whole effect is rather mundane and even the hakas sound a little bit dispirited. Side Two is better than Side One. It features some Paraire Tomoana classics such as ‘Te Ope Tuatahi’ and ‘I Runga Nga Puke’ and the cover pays a graceful tribute to this ‘gifted Maori composer’. There are several lovely solos but the chorus work in contrast is harsh. There is plenty of variety in the numbers which the group has chosen but unfortunately there is a certain sameness about the presentation.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE FIRST NEW ZEALAND POLYNESIAN FESTIVAL, ROTORUA Kiwi SLC-115 Stereo Mono 12in LP 33⅓ rpm Springing from a proposal put to the National Development Conference, the New Zealand Polynesian Festival was organised by a committee of representatives from interested Maori and other organisations under th chairmanship of the Rev. Kingi Ihaka and the patronage of the Governor-General. The festival was held at Rotorua in March 1972 and hosted by the Arawa people. Seventeen Maori groups, which had been selected from their districts in prior competition, and six other Polynesian groups took part. Digressing for a few paragraphs before getting onto the record and speaking as one of the large and appreciative crowd who attended the festival, I must say that the domestic organisation reflected great credit on the Arawa people. It can have been no small task to feed and accommodate such a large number of groups and their supporters. What was particularly impressive was the smoothness of the change of venue when the weather made it impossible to stage the festival out of doors. There were bad patches of course—an Arawa powhiri group dragged from preparing a hangi to welcome the Governor-General and appearing on TV in singlets and football shorts (this must never be repeated); the inexcusable bad manners of certain judges keeping thousands of people waiting for the start of the night performance whilst they finished a leisurely evening meal (whilst the then Minister of Maori Affairs, the Hon. Duncan MacIntyre, conducted an impromptu sing-song to keep the audience entertained). However, these pale into insignificance in retrospect when one considers the success of the whole affair. In some ways it was a blessing that the weather kept everything indoors because the hall contained and projected the sound in a way which would not have been possible outside. It is perhaps appropriate to question whether it is a good idea to hold the festival annually. One fears that it might thereby become ordinary and routine. Also it is an event which requires tremendous effort and organisation and there are few areas which have sufficient maraes to cater for the numbers involved, therefore the choice of venue is very limited. I personally feel it would be best to make the festival a once in two or three years ‘spectacular’. Another point might be to consider whether districts should not be represented in proportion to the numbers of teams which they are able to field in the preliminary selections. Some districts had only a few groups in their preliminaries; Wellington by contrast had thirteen. Yet each district sent two teams regardless (Arawa three because of a tie for second place) to Rotorua. The result was a very uneven standard. The groups which came third and fourth in the Wellington preliminaries (and therefore could not go to Rotorua) would have soundly trounced the second, if not the first, place-getters from other districts. Fif-