Marlon Gerbes of Six60 at Tomoana Showgrounds in Hastings at the start of 2021. The band performs in Napier at McLean Park this Saturday. Photo / NZME
Marlon Gerbes of Six60 at Tomoana Showgrounds in Hastings at the start of 2021. The band performs in Napier at McLean Park this Saturday. Photo / NZME
Six60 have warmed up in Wellington, and they are now ready to rock Napier even harder than before with McLean Park's first full-capacity concert this Saturday.
Band member Marlon Gerbes, a Napier local, said he was looking forward to the Napier show after settling into the Six60 Saturdays tour in Wellington.
"The first show in Wellington is like any first show - you're not settled into the tour, you've got a bit of anxiety, you've got a bit of heightened emotion. You're trying to focus more on executing the show, rather than it being second nature."
He said playing at McLean Park as a local was "just like a dream come true."
He said ahead of the show, the band will visit Hawke's Bay local Dame Hinewehi Mohi DNZM, the musician who inspired the bilingual version of Aotearoa's national anthem which is sung today.
He said they had the fortune of working with her and Sir Tīmoti Kāretu KNZM QSO CRSNZ, Māori language academic, when translating their music into te reo Māori and writing 'Pepeha'.
"She has been an awesome champion for incorporating te ao Māori and te reo Māori within the music industry," Gerbes said.
"He's [Kāretu] really entrenched in the Māori philosophy as well, so we got a bit of both the language and the philosophy behind it."
He said they loved the "holistic" nature of the Māori language.
"Everything about the Māori language, every word, has a wider and deeper meaning."
(From left): Six60 band members Marlon Gerbes, Ji Fraser, Matiu Walters, Eli Paewai, and Chris Mac. Photo / Supplied
He said Kāretu helped them translate English lines into Māori, which they would then translate back into English again.
"When we asked for the literal meaning of his translations... it would be different... it would be way better."
"The English lyrics in Pepeha are that process of re-translating back to English. The way the English was structured when you translate it back from Māori was way more profound."
He couldn't say if there would be more waiata coming from Six60, only promising that they will never tread over ground they had already covered.
"We will go to places we haven't been before, that is the goal. We won't do what we have done in the past; keep it unexpected."
He said there was a lot of potential for artists to find wider success while incorporating te reo Māori into their music.
"We need to normalise it. Just do it. Put it in a song like it was always meant to be there. I feel like we are at that stage now," Gerbes said.
"We don't need to do it like, 'this is your Māori song'. Just put it in."
"I think young artists are doing that now - they will put words in. We've all grown up with the lingo and there are certain Māori words we all know. We just need to do it."
Six60 members and Hawke's Bay natives Eli Paewai and Marlon Gerbes, right, with the Ranfurly Shield when visiting Napier in 2020. Photo / NZME
He said he would also visit his dad while in Hawke's Bay, while the band will enjoy the wine and food that the region had to offer and possibly visit the music room at Gerbes and his bandmate Eli Paewai's former school, Napier Boys' High School.
He said this show would be quite different from Six60's previous visit to Hastings, as it was designed around a stadium rather than open venue.
In the lead-up to the concert's original date in April before it was delayed due to traffic light restrictions, Napier City Council events manager Kevin Murphy said earlier that it will be the first full-sized concert ever at Mclean Park and its biggest since 1984.
"In 1984, we've had Split Enz, which was 6000 people, and in 2013, Stan Walker did an Easter concert and there were about 1200," Murphy said.
