Stan Walker, pictured at the Victory Convention Centre in Auckland, will help to lead a massive outdoor community sing-along to launch Auckland Arts Festival. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Stan Walker, pictured at the Victory Convention Centre in Auckland, will help to lead a massive outdoor community sing-along to launch Auckland Arts Festival. Photo / Jason Oxenham
A te reo Māori version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" will open the annual Auckland Arts Festival on Thursday.
Thousands are expected to gather in Aotea Square for Tira (Choir), the festival's free opening night event where Stan Walker, Maisey Rika, Ria Hall and Troy Kingi lead a massive outdoor karaoke with waiata sung in te reo.
They range from the simple "A E I O U" to the more challenging "Hareruia" (the te reo version of "Hallelujah") but those who don't speak te reo can use a new app, created by design agency Whakaaro Factory, with lyrics and translations as well as tutorial videos of some of the songs.
Sought-after singer-songwriter Ria Hall.
Non-Māori speakers may also be able to call on help from the festival's te reo ambassadors, including The Hits drive-time host Stacey Morrison and her husband Scotty Morrison, actors Jarod Rawiri and Jennifer Ward-Lealand, TVNZ sports commentator Jenny-May Clarkson and AUT lecturer and author Hemi Kelly.
Tira and the ambassadors' programme are part of a new festival initiative called "Toitū Te Reo" (uplift te reo) to champion the Māori language through the arts. It includes plays in te reo, bilingual signs and programming material and using the ambassadors, all fluent language speakers, to create connections with non-speakers.
AAF creative associate Tama Waipara, also a musician and director of Te Tairāwhiti Arts Festival in Gisborne, helped put Toitū Te Reo together.
"As the leading arts organisation in the country, we wanted to acknowledge we have a role to play in championing the reo," says Waipara.
"It's been about looking at what is done and finding ways to connect to the landscape of Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. Our number one expression of that is through the arts so we thought, 'how can we champion te reo through this and make it an everyday thing within the things we do?'"
Moana Maniapoto performs in Tōku Reo Waiata midway through Auckland Arts Festival.
As well as "Tira", a second concert, "Tōku Reo Waiata", is on midway through the 17-day festival.
That stars Walker and Rika along with Annie Crummer, Hinewehi Mohi, Moana Maniapoto, Rob Ruha, Tami Neilson, Seth Haapu, Maimoa and Whirimako Black and is billed as a one-night extravaganza with singers sharing the joy of music and te reo.
Other Toitū Te Reo include a kids' show, "Te Kuia Me Te Pungawerewere", inspired by Patricia Grace's classic picture book "The Kuia and the Spider", and a new play by Apirana Taylor, "Ka Tito: Kupe's Heroic Journey", a one-man show about Kupe's epic journeys across the Pacific.
It will travel to halls and marae across Auckland. The festival's community-led participatory arts programme Whānau is also centred around te reo.
Waipara says a growing number of fluent speakers want to see works in the language while learners, too, want more exposure: "It's a journey for our nation that we are all on."
