Te Mahi Tamariki - Te Mahi o Matariki - June 2019

I'm not sure nowadays what constitutes 'busy' for He Waka Kōtuia, but perhaps the month of June might give us an example. Having just finished the second of our three noho marae for the kapa to prepare for regionals at the start of the month, as well as regular weekend fitness sessions and practices for the same reason, we also hosted the Ngā Manu Kōrero regional competition.

Huia te Aroha

That leads us nicely in to Matariki season. The manager for our album Te Mahi Tamariki, Mara TK, informed us that he had a videographer, Mumu Moore, heading our way on June 21 and 22 to shoot a music video for the single from the album, Huia te Aroha. We gathered together everyone we could at short notice and headed out to Ōtākou to film a music video.

Pīata Mai - Te Mahi Tamariki Album Launch

Te Whenua Harawira had already asked us to organise one of the nights of the Pīata Mai Festival. We decided it would be a great time to actually release the Te Mahi Tamariki album.

This was a big night for He Waka Kōtuia, it saw the fruition of work that had started in 2017, with our Tito Waiata, Composition wānanga, laying the tracks of the songs that had been completed and finally using mattresses to build a makeshift recording studio in Tamatea at Ōtākou to get the songs recorded. We had a pre-release on our return from the National Kapa Haka Kura Tuarua competition in 2018 and the album was ready for release a short time later. It took a while, and we're glad we waited. We didn't have a label to record under and although we'd made some progress towards securing a label we hadn't followed through. Fortunately for us in February of this year Mara TK launched his own label, MeetingHouse Records, so we released under his new album.

The actual release was a little less stressful than the pre-release held at the same the previous year because a bit of time had passed and we were all alot more relaxed about the whole thing by then.

HWK Noho Marae

We also had organised to have the third and final of our noho marae for the kapa to prepare for the regional competition. This all aligned with Matariki so on our final morning we all got up before sunrise and headed out to Pukekura to watch Matariki rise above the horizon and celebrate the Māori New Year. Unfortunately the weather was against us in this regard with some heavy cloud cover blocking our view.

Our preparations for the regionals are nearly complete, but here are a compilation of photos from all three noho that we have had so far this year.

HWK Noho Marae 4/5/2019