Te reo meets Cymraeg in a musical project partly spearheaded by Kawiti Waetford, a Kiwi opera singer with connections to Wales.
You probably saw it on the news. Last month, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa ONZ, one of our most revered cultural figures, was honoured at Parliament. The occasion was Dame Kiri’s 80th birthday but this was a celebration of a life, not a day. There were speeches, there were waiata, and then it happened: for the first time since retiring almost a decade ago, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa sang in public. She’s still got it, of course, the glorious voice. It wouldn’t fill Covent Garden or La Scala but there’s that sound, pure and true, and it earned her a standing ovation from the assembled politicians. Largely overlooked in all the excitement is that it wasn’t Dame Kiri’s rendition of Pōkarekare Ana at all; she was just singing to support the guy to her right.
“I thought I’d help Kawiti out,” she told Newshub afterwards, “because he was most probably nervous. I wasn’t,” which is a very Dame Kiri thing to say. A few weeks later, lounging on a sofa in Joel Little’s Big Fan recording studios, Kawiti Waetford (Ngāti Hine, Ngātiwai, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāpuhi) is entirely relaxed, quite tired, and laughing in a way that suggests he’s a little bit embarrassed Dame Kiri outed him as anxious.
“It was a privilege to be there to support her,” Waetford says. “I think she was really touched to be at the seat of the nation’s power and have them mihi to her in that way.”
A trained opera singer with a rich baritone, Waetford knows Dame Kiri better than most. They met when he sang for her as an undergrad at the University of Otago. Waetford was subsequently mentored and supported by Dame Kiri and her foundation, and they are close enough to have spent a Christmas together at the soprano’s English home. The two of them sang carols at the local church, undoubtedly to the amazement of the parishioners. It was the Dame Kiri connection that pointed Waetford to Wales, and a master’s degree at the Wales Academy of Voice & Dramatic Arts. He studied with Welsh tenor Dennis O’Neill, one of Dame Kiri’s singing buddies from way back, who was an adjudicator at the 2012 Lexus Song Quest, in which Waetford was a finalist.
“If it weren’t for Kiri’s relationship with Dennis and his involvement in Lexus, I wouldn’t have gone to Cardiff,” Waetford says. “There was talk of going to London, but because of this connection, I found myself in Wales, land of song.”
Which, in a circuitous way, is why he finds himself on a sofa in Morningside as co-curator of the Māori Cymraeg SongHubs. The project, run by music rights body Apra Amcos with funding from the British Council New Zealand and the Pacific, and the British High Commission, aims to promote the use of te reo Māori and Cymraeg (Welsh language) in music.
Waetford came through kōhanga reo and kura kaupapa, and speaks Māori as his first language, which also explains why he’s here, but, since he’s neither singing nor writing, not what he’s doing. “It’s not really my world but because the kaupapa is language, it does fit. I’ve been here to help and support the APRA team to draw in the artists we think might collaborate with our whānau from Wales, and help facilitate the connection between these people, languages, and cultures. This guy,” Waetford says, pointing to a man stretched on an adjacent couch, “started the whole thing.”
This guy is Greg Haver. He’s a big deal in music. Haver is married to a Kiwi and mostly lives here, but he’s from Wales and works all over the world. Production credits include The Chills, Kimbra and Sporty Spice Girl Mel C; however, he’s best known for a long association with Welsh rockers Manic Street Preachers. And despite not speaking Cymraeg, he worked on the album Mwng, an important Welsh-language record by Super Furry Animals. He’s particularly proud of that one. “After Bryn Terfel, I think it’s the biggest-selling Welsh [language] record of all time,” he says. “A lot of young Welsh musicians cite it, ‘Oh, you can be a big band and sing in your own language.’”
For Haver, SongHubs is a coming together of his worlds. “It’s quite emotional,” he says. “It doesn’t matter that I don’t speak the language, I can tell when something’s moved me. Just popping into the studio and hearing Māori artists singing backing vocals in Welsh, there are definitely some cadence similarities between the languages. There’s always been a strong connection between New Zealand and Wales. I know when I first came here it felt familiar and welcoming.” The connections aren’t always welcoming. “There’s a castle near me in Hay-On-Wye [Wales, where Haver has a house] and the earthworks of a Norman keep. Of course, it’s about conquest and colonisation. There’s a shared history and people feel that.”
Haver’s comment echoes a SongHubs panel discussion, moderated by Waetford and held a few days earlier, at Unitec’s Te Noho Kotahitanga Marae. Welsh and Māori panellists alike talk about the suppression of language as a tactic of colonisation. Among the speakers is Sir Tīmoti Kāretu, Aotearoa’s first Māori Language Commissioner, and a central figure in te reo’s revitalisation. He tells the forum how he visited Wales in 1976, found inspiration in the way Welsh was taught to young people, and brought the model to Aotearoa.
Singer-songwriter Georgia Williams, who performs and releases music in English and Welsh under the name Georgia Ruth, was a beneficiary of Wales’s full-immersion education programme. Chatting before the panel discussion begins, Williams explains that her Welsh-language songs have a different character ‒ less literal, more mystical, though she catches herself as she says it, unnecessarily worried about sounding fey.
“I’m not being Celtic and interesting,” she insists. “I’m just very, very jet lagged. Welsh music is in a really healthy state, there’s a confidence there. That’s changed in my lifetime, and now it’s natural, almost the go-to language.”
If it’s unlikely that te reo Māori will become the go-to language of New Zealand opera (or is it?), Waetford says he’s constantly having conversations about what shape the artform will take in this country. One such discussion took place at RNZ with New Zealand Opera boss Brad Cohen, who suggested opera was not a European artform, it was a world artform first practised by Europeans.
“I’m interested in how the world of opera, and the techniques used in opera, can be transferred if needed – if wanted – into a Māori context, whatever that is,” says Waetford. “Whether it’s recording in a studio, knowing a bit more about how to create resonance or lift so you’ve got more height in the sound, or can diminuendo or crescendo as you want. What does opera look like in the context of New Zealand?”
That question will be addressed later this month when Waetford acts as a mentor at NZ Opera’s week-long New Opera Forum. “I’m there to provide a perspective and some guidance and cultural safety, but also to be part of that conversation.”
He’s not there to sing, though. Waetford is coy when asked directly, but he wears so many hats – mentor, facilitator, administrator, bridge-builder, and not just in the arts – that his performing career appears to have receded.
“I sing to my babies,” he laughs. “Covid’s played a big part. I sing if I get asked. I was in Luxembourg and Rome last year singing for a minimalist theatre creator. What I do know is that I don’t want to be away from my family nine months of the year. Some opera singers are and their personal lives suck.”
Waetford and his wife, Jesse, have been a couple since high school, where they bonded over a Shakespeare production. She now owns her own self-care business, Modern Rituals. They live with their two young children in a tiny home on a block of land up north, a place where, just maybe, they can decompress, so that their hectic lives don’t suck.
“We forget that we’re so removed from nature, from knowing the seasons and the signs from our environment,” he says. “We have gardens, we grow food. The way we live is niche. We have a composting toilet and after a year, that compost goes on to the trees in our orchard to bring back the mauri of Papatūānuku. Having our babies growing up in that way brings me joy.”
Whether that’s a forever thing or a for-now thing, Waetford claims he’s not one to look too far into the future and seems content to leave that to others.
“I plan maybe a year ahead,” he says. “My wife’s the planner, the long-term dreamer. I remember a kōrero that our ancestors were intergenerational planners, visionaries. I think we’re still part of those visions playing themselves out.”
