When you watch kapa haka, there is a sense of storytelling that some - but not all - groups give out to their audience, and when the two connect on that level it is no different from writer to reader, film director to movie theatre audience.
Nor is it any different to a music maker who tells his or her story through song.
For me, after watching the Olympics of kapa haka in Hastings over the last four days, it was the groups who could tell their story who stole the show and left a lasting impression on both judges and audience alike.
It has been an interesting hikoi of "hakability" for me living as a kapahaka widower, when mother and daughter spend endless hours practising. The one and only time I get to look and listen to the polished pounamu-like performance, is when they walk out on stage alongside the other 47 groups telling their story at Te Matatini 2017 Kapa Haka Festival.
So who am I to judge anyway?
Let me lay down some possible conflict cards and credentials on the table first.
I don't know the boss, my niece is married to Taika, our girl was performing. I know good theatre when I watch it, and the art of storytelling has not escaped me in my 40 years of writing them.
Above all, I am no kapa haka performer - far from it. In fact, my one and only time I took the stage it was tragic at best. Yes, I sucked - and my vivid memory of my mother sinking down in her seat as our performance progressed was worthy of a Minties moment.
Kapa haka for me is live theatre in its purest form and in the case of the 47 groups performing at Te Matatini 2017, the winners told their story best.
All types of social, political, spiritual and personal issues go into a kapahaka performance. More and more, in the modern genre, new ways of telling these stories are filtering into their thirty- minute performance. A thirty minute - one chance at impressing the judges, after two long years of hard-out practising.
The challenge is getting the balance of old and new right and keeping the essence of the intergenerational art of kapa haka in its purest story telling form. This must include opening the finals day up to new groups, not the same old same old.
When you watch kapa haka, there is a sense of storytelling that some - but not all - groups give out to their audience, and when the two connect on that level it is no different from writer to reader, film director to movie theatre audience.
The Dalai Lama once prophesised: "The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds".
Clever chap that Mr Lama and I reckon his holiness is right on the money.
Another clever genius - Arapeta Einstein also said: "If you want to grow intelligent children, tell them stories".
The 60,000 who attended Matatini 2017 over four days have a library of new stories to take home.
For all of us who live in a country finding our bicultural footprint, the renaissance of kapa haka as an avenue to tell our stories is a toanga - a jewel, in our cultural crown.
The All Blacks kick-started the renaissance by performing it properly. Now, the normalising of it across all 2000 Kiwi schools has given kapa haka the status or mana it deserves - especially among our daughter's age group.
Now we need to put kapa haka alongside all of the performing arts of Aotearoa - and fund it accordingly.
The art of kapa haka in a 21st century context is for me, fast becoming the new age art form from an old age ancestral art of storytelling, and the grounded groups - who are winning the tautoko (vote) of judges - have worked this out.
You only have to look at the flamboyant creative calibre of our country's top kapa haka judges to see where this art form is heading. Exactly in the same direction as all art forms where the cream of the crop are colourful characters who live and breathe their craft.
Maori story telling is coming into the global spotlight, the recent Waititi box office hit Moana is testament to this.
The success story of Matatini 2017 and its Ngati Kahungungu hosts in Hawke's Bay will be told for generations. The crowning of the new Kapa Haka Olympic champions - Whangara Mai Tawhiti will be debated, discussed and celebrated for the next two years, until Wellington 2019.
broblack@xtra.co.nz
Tommy Kapai is a best-selling author and writer.
