What fuels a lifelong dedication to kapa haka? For Trevor Maxwell, it’s a passion for culture, family, and fierce competition.
It’s the same passion that has guided his long and illustrious local body political career - having just served 45 consecutive years as a Rotorua district councillor and three years between 1980 to 1983 as a Bay of Plenty regional councillor.
He was elected to Rotorua Council in 1977, then aged in his late 20s. He has previously served 11 years as deputy mayor.
It’s evident that with anything Maxwell sets his mind to, longevity will soon take over.
That’s also clear to see in the two and a half decades he spent on the national Te Matatini committee. He’s now a Te Matatini lifetime member - a title many outside of kapa haka would not be familiar with, but one that honours a lifelong dedication to one thing: kapa haka.
Maxwell says “with fondness, I look back on what it’s done for us as a family - we’ve been blessed”.
Kapa haka, for some, is an extra-curricular activity you do at school. For Maxwell, it was a lifelong passion that saw him travel the world to build a respected legacy within te ao haka [the world of kapa haka].
As a boy from Awahou, home to the Rotorua subtribe of Ngāti Rangiwewehi, kapa haka was a constant in their small pā [village].
The pā kids, including Maxwell and his siblings, participated in waiata [singing] and haka practices at the marae every week. As tamariki they were the ‘Rangiwewehi Midgets’, and later moved up the ranks to become the ‘Rangiwewehi Juniors’, travelling across the country to perform at significant Māori events every year.
Ngāti Rangiwēwehi gracing the Te Matatini stage. Photo / Te Matatini Society Incorporated
“I would so look forward to our trips. Our parents would have our bags packed a whole week before we even had to go,” he says.
Maxwell says this upbringing “built the passion” that propelled him into a new world of opportunity through Māori performing arts. With a smile, he reflects on doing a three-month global tour with the New Zealand Māori Theatre Trust in 1970, as well as taking 48 performers to Wellington for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo in 2000.
“It helped us to see Aotearoa and the world.”
Through these experiences, Maxwell and his late wife Atareta were, in their early 20s, entrusted the tutorship roles for the senior kapa haka group, Ngāti Rangiwewehi.
He says tutoring 40-plus members of your whānau is nerve-racking, and the beginning challenges included overcoming the fact they were now teaching their elders and extended family and making pivotal changes for the better.
He says one of the biggest changes at the time was getting the performers to stop smoking in the dining room during rehearsals.
“Even when you were singing, they’d be smoking!”
Proudly, he says “we made that change, we got that right”.
Maxwell says coming out of that era taught them to be creative and bold, and this resulted in the composition of some of today’s most classic kapa haka hits, with the group compiling these songs into an album called Wairua: Spirit of Ngāti Rangiwewehi in 1998.
Competitiveness within kapa haka is fierce. It sees groups committing endless time and money to take on an almost seven-month campaign in the hopes of placing in the final for Te Matatini. Maxwell says: “We were prepared to go to the edge, to go to the wire.”
“You can never be too competitive,” he adds.
When asked what it’s like to tutor, Maxwell says the key is preparation and organisation.
“I’m not going to play it down,” he says. In a position like this, you become more than a tutor - you become a councillor, an employment officer, a personal trainer, a shoulder to cry on.
“This is why I kept this together for so long. Our rehearsals were like a family reunion - [kapa haka] brings everyone together and keeps your marae alive.”
Trevor Maxwell and his award for 41 years of service to Rotorua Lakes Council. Photo / Stephen Parker
The couple led Ngāti Rangiwewehi to their ‘golden years’ of performing, with the group winning two Te Matatini championships in the early ‘80s and ‘90s.
Thirty-five years of tutoring later, Maxwell’s late wife Atareta passes, which he describes as feeling like “my right arm was cut off”. Their last performance together was at Te Matatini in 2002.
Maxwell and his late wife were there in the beginning, and he is still involved with Te Matatini today. He says “my job is ‘super-koro’, looking after the tamariki while Kahurangi and Inia [Trevor and Atareta’s children] earn places in the group, so I just love it”.
As Te Matatini nears, Maxwell shares advice for those who will be taking the stage:
“Try to relax, try to embrace the weeks leading up [to the event], and look after your most important instrument, your voice. Be proud, think of your family, and think of the things that make you feel good. Never give up.”
