Music for a fair go
How a Kiwi songwriter was inspired by a remarkable 1864 letter which tried to set the rules for the war between Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯, writes Grant Smithies.
Music can calm the nerves or lift the spirits. It can tinkle away quietly in the background at dinner parties or shatter the neighbourhood peace until someone calls noise control.
It can make you sing, cry or dance like a loon. If you’re lucky, it might teach you something, too.
The debut album by Taurangabased musician Ria Hall does all these things, and more.
Rules of Engagement is an album about culture and colonisation, conflict and compromise, love and war. It’s about what it means to be a New Zealander, and what it means to be have a relationship turn sour.
Five years in the making, it’s a thematically meaty record that takes as its starting point a fateful battle between Tauranga Ma¯ori and the British in the mid 1800s.
‘‘That history is at the root of this project, yes,’’ says Hall, who also co-hosts TV show AIA Marae DIY. She’s speaking via cellphone from ‘‘the Carrot Capital of NZ’’, Ohakune, where Mt Ruapehu dominates the skyline.
‘‘But I’m a musician, not a historian, so I wanted to use my music to keep our history in the forefront of people’s minds. For Ma¯ori people, it’s a case of walking backwards into the future. You look back, to see what you need to learn. I’m doing what I can to help create understanding between Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ sowe can move forward with compassion and understanding, rather than resentment and bitterness.’’
The seed of the album was planted in 2012, when Hall went out to dinner with her old mate Riki Gooch, former drummer for Wellington soul trio Trinity Roots.
‘‘Me and Riki made an EP together in the past, and he thought my next record needed a unifying concept to give it strength and power. I decided to make a record about love and war – two huge concepts that affect all of us.’’
The key story that unlocked the flow of songs was a very personal one, involving her own tribe and a bloody conflict that took place on her home turf in the Bay of Plenty.
‘‘I thought of the Rules of Engagement letter, which was written on March 10, 1864 by He¯nare Taratoa, who’s from the same area as me. This was during the Waikato Land Wars, and the first major battle was Pukehinahina – the famous Battle of Gate Pa.’’
Taratoa wrote to the first Governor of New Zealand, Sir George Grey, outlining what he saw as an appropriate code of conduct for fighting between Ma¯ori and the British.
‘‘He laid out these things he thought would make these battles more honourable, and I found that fascinating, given the scope of what was about to happen. Here was a group of people coming in to wipe you out and take everything you had, but Henare Taratoa wanted to act with honour. One one level, it was a taunt, a sort of middle finger in the air. He was saying, ‘You treat us like savages, but we are more civilised than you in these matters.’ He sent that letter to Governor Grey, who read it, but ignored it.’’
I read it myself, in the little booklet with Hall’s new CD, and was amazed. It was easy to see why a suite of heartfelt, meaningful songs might spring from this.
Here, after all, is one of Hall’s
‘‘Friend, salutations to you,’’ he writes, to a man whose armies are threatening to wipe out his people and steal their land. Taratoa then suggests they might settle upon some mutual ‘‘laws for regulating the fight’’.
He proposes that the wounded, or anyone who surrenders once captured, will not be killed. If his people encounter an off-duty and unarmed soldier, he will not be executed.
He promises that any soldier who flees the battlefield to the nearest church will be safe and his warriors will not follow them to exact revenge. And he promises that all ‘‘unarmed Pa¯keha¯s, women and children will be spared’’.
It was a document driven by generosity and compassion, says Hall. ‘‘Really, He¯nare Taratoa wanted to make the point that, even in times of war, life was sacred and there should be no unnecessary murder. We shouldn’t ambush unarmed people or pick on one another’s families. If we are going to die, it should be man to man, on the battlefield.’’
The battlefield features prominently in many of these songs. Hall imagines herself as a terrified warrior, dug into the trenches inside Gate Pa, bombarded by British artillery.
Alongside a host of sympathetic collaborators – Che Fu, Tiki Taane, Kings, Electric Wire Hustle – she sings of later battles where her ancestors suffered heavy losses, and mourns the 50,000 acres confiscated from her people.
There are other battlefields, too. Rules of Engagement also contemplates the broken promises and power plays of love, the stormed fortifications and emotional ambushes and furious acts of revenge that sometimes attend romantic relationships.
‘‘I thought it was important to bring in stuff about my own internal conflicts and personal relationship battles, because I wanted this music to be as raw and open and honest as possible. Also, singing about those things helps people relate these songs to their own lives. It gives them a way in.’’
Hall has a knockout voice. There’s something of Rihanna in her vocal tone, and she sings in both English and te reo Ma¯ori over backing tracks that suggest some sort of knotty urban blues, shot through with references to hip hop, 70s soul, reggae and contemporary R’n’B.
It’s a sound that evolved organically over a long time, she says. ‘‘I lived in Wellington for ten years, and did some early demos there with the Electric Wire Hustle guys in 2013. Then this time last year I moved back home to Tauranga and started working on it hard-out, pulling in other composers and producers to help get the sound I was after.’’
Hall debuted the songs at arts festivals in Taranaki and Christchurch during August. She also plays a flagship show at the Tauranga Arts Festival on October 28, the day after her album is officially released.
‘ Ma¯ori won that battle! ... Surely us kids should have been told the other side of the story, right? But I’m telling that story now, all these years later, with this record.’ RIA HALL