Mari Hamunata and the Hybrid Waiata
- Amanda Riddell
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- Sep 8
- 7 min read
Updated: Sep 27
Abstract
Mari Hamunata (Ngāti Irakehu, Ngāti Hikairo, Ngāti Whātua) represents a generation of Māori composers whose works negotiated between inherited mōteatea and the tonal frameworks of European music.
Her scores and manuscripts reveal a unique hybrid style: sliding Māori idioms notated within diatonic melodies, Italianate declamation and harmonic colouring, and bilingual lyric settings that point to both the challenges and creativity of cultural adaptation.
1. Background and Training
In the early twentieth century, Māori composers increasingly engaged with Western notation and publication. Hamunata travelled to Sydney for further education, where she was exposed to Italianate singing and declamatory practices. This influence is evident in her scores: her treatment of vowel stress, phrasing, and ornamentation mirrors the operatic style of Italian song, while retaining uniquely Māori cadential gestures.
2. Melodic and Gestural Features
Hamunata’s melodies extend across a compass of a tenth, which was standard for popular music of her era. Tin Pan Alley songwriters and their Commonwealth contemporaries frequently worked within this range, and Hamunata’s adoption of it suggests that she was writing with a keen awareness of the conventions of early twentieth-century popular song.
One of Hamunata's distinctive elements as a composer is that she keeps her melodic phrases aligned with the basic repetitions of Māori mōteatea, hovering around a central note with repeated phrases. In subsequent repetitions, she often transposes the same figure to a different note of the scale.
This is an effect that's often associated with Tin Pan Alley, where some of the more adventurous composers would put an A-section in one key, then an A' in another key (often a third apart) [ie Love Can Change The Stars], or else use sequencing* while remaining in the same key.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_(music)
Within this framework, she preserved distinctively Māori features:
Sliding intonation: In Puhihuia, the titular name is set as “Pu-hi-hu-i-a,” with the -i- vowel notated between Ab and G — a deliberate effort to capture the cadential dip of Māori chant within staff notation. This is present in both the composer's manuscript and the published score, suggesting that it was part of Hamunata's design. There is also a use of a rising cadential phrase, transposing the dip upwards - D leaping up a seventh to C, rather than down a step - in Kotiro Poi (tu-a), which then resolves traditionally when the phrase is repeated. Sliding intonation is also implicit in Hamunata's use of descending chromatic scales, which demonstrate, for example, 'na-ngā' vowel fluidity in chromatic passages. This distinction suggests an attempt to notate the fluid vowels of Te Reo Māori.
Loose notation: Her manuscripts often provide a clear melodic outline but leave space for vernacular performance, recognising that Māori singers would instinctively supply idioms that Western notation could not fully capture.
3. Harmonic Language
Hamunata’s harmonic writing reinforces the expressive contrast between different works.
In Patu Poi, a joyful celebration, she often employs sixth chords as a default tonic, lending brightness and uplift.
In Puhihuia, by contrast, she favours a sombre minor mode, underlying the tragic, but ultimately successful, elopement of Ponga and Puhihuia.
Her placement in her manuscripts of fermatas only on the treble staff suggests a performance style where the bass part moved a piacere, colla voce or con rubato during cadences and post-cadential transitions, rather than following a metronomic European metre. This is visible in Kotiro Poi, where colla voce is indicated in the manuscript on page 3. This reflects a sensitivity to declamation and flexibility reminiscent of both Māori chant and Italian vocal practice. Reo Māori is metrically uneven, and Hamunata has used classical voice and accompaniment techniques to capture this flexibility.
4. Lyric Setting: Bilingual Challenges
Hamunata’s manuscripts frequently place Māori texts beneath English lyrics.
English versions: Quaint in tone but meticulously stressed and rhymed, clearly crafted for parlour performance.
Māori versions: Far freer, liberated from end-rhyme, closer to the assonant and open style of Italian opera. This suggests a deliberate alignment of Māori text-setting with operatic aesthetics, prioritising vowel colour and rhythmic flexibility.
Publication challenges: The declamatory rhythms of te reo Māori did not map neatly onto Western notation. For non-Māori parlour singers, the rhythm would have been difficult to realise without knowledge of the language. This may explain why some of her submitted works were not published. Given that the manuscript of Puhihuia doesn't have an English lyric, it's possible that the published lyric may have been something the publishers insisted on.
5. Legacy
Hamunata’s hybrid waiata show how Māori composers of her era did not simply borrow European frameworks, but reshaped them to serve Māori expression. She combined the compass of early twentieth-century popular song with iwi-specific cadential gestures, blending harmonic idioms of hymns and parlour music with the declamation of mōteatea.
Her work reveals both the adaptability of Māori tradition and the limits of Western notation in capturing its nuance.
By writing bilingually and leaving room for vernacular interpretation, she preserved the integrity of Māori vocal style, even within published scores.
Conclusion
Mari Hamunata’s scores reveal a composer negotiating multiple traditions with skill and creativity. Her melodies adopt the tenth-wide compass of early twentieth-century popular music, while her harmonic language contrasts joy and tragedy with precision.
Her bilingual settings balance the quaintly rhymed English of parlour song with Māori texts that retain their declamatory freedom. And her notations of cadential dips and sliding vowels demonstrate a deliberate attempt to inscribe Māori idioms into a Western framework.
In the end, Hamunata’s hybrid waiata exemplify how Māori composers maintained continuity with tradition while adapting to the musical conventions of their time.
Her work stands as a testament to Māori resilience and artistry: music that is at once grounded in iwi whakapapa, shaped by the conventions of early twentieth-century popular song, and liberated by vernacular performance practice.
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Hybrid Waiata Compared: Mari Hamunata and Paraire Tomoana
1. Context and Purpose
Mari Hamunata: Composed in the early 20th century, with iwi roots in Ngāti Irakehu and Ngāti Hikairo, her works are embedded in mōteatea traditions but adapted for Western notation and parlour performance. Her training and time in Sydney exposed her to Italianate vocal practices, which she blended with Māori declamation.
Paraire Tomoana: Leader and politician from Ngāti Kahungunu, he composed “Pōkarekare Ana” around 1912, during World War I, as a love song that became a de facto national ballad. It was written for Māori soldiers, but rapidly gained traction in both Māori and Pākehā communities.
Both composers worked at the boundary of Māori oral tradition and Western popular music, but their creative choices diverged.
2. Melodic Language
Hamunata: Melodies often span a tenth, consistent with early 20th-century popular idioms, but she preserves sliding cadential dips and declamatory gestures characteristic of mōteatea. In her scores, vowels like the -i- in Puhihuia are notated between pitches, signalling a distinctly Māori inflection within a diatonic outline.
Tomoana: Pōkarekare Ana is narrower in scope, generally confined to a pentatonic framework familiar to Western folk and parlour traditions. Its strength lies in lyrical contour and emotional accessibility, rather than ornamental slides. It reads as a love ballad rather than a chant-influenced piece.
3. Harmony and Accompaniment
Hamunata: Harmonically adventurous within her idiom. In Patu Poi she favours sixth chords as a tonic, creating an open, luminous sound. In Puhihuia, she opts for a minor mode, framing the tragic but ultimately successful elopement of Ponga and Puhihuia. Her placement of fermatas in manuscripts to frame transitional, post-cadential passages suggests an ear for rubato and declamatory freedom, more akin to art song than folk ballad.
Tomoana: The harmonisation of Pōkarekare Ana is comparatively straightforward, diatonic, and sentimental, reflecting the conventions of Edwardian parlour song. Its chord progressions are regular and easily harmonised, facilitating its spread across choirs and community singing groups.
4. Text and Lyric Setting
Hamunata: Works bilingually. Her English lyrics are quaint but carefully stressed and rhymed, while her Māori texts are freer, often liberated from rhyme and aligned more with the vowel-centred declamation of opera. Her scores reflect the difficulty of notating te reo rhythms, which may have impeded wider publication.
Tomoana: Pōkarekare Ana is entirely in te reo Māori, but written in a flowing, rhymed lyric style easily adaptable to Western melodic rhythm. Its text is sentimental and universal, readily embraced by audiences beyond its iwi origin.
5. Vernacular Reach
Hamunata: Her works occupied a more specialist niche, bridging iwi oral tradition and Western parlour/classical idioms. Because her notations relied on knowledge of Māori declamation, they may have been harder for Pākehā singers to access. Puhihuia was a successful song, recorded by the BBC - and is still recognised within iwi and hapū communities today - but largely forgotten.
Tomoana: Pōkarekare Ana became a vernacular anthem almost immediately — sung by Māori soldiers in the First World War, picked up by choirs, and later arranged for everything from brass bands to pop singers. It became part of New Zealand’s shared repertoire.
Conclusion
Mari Hamunata and Paraire Tomoana represent two distinct faces of the hybrid waiata tradition. Hamunata leaned towards art-song fusion, preserving Māori vocal idioms inside a framework of Western notation, harmony, and bilingual text-setting.
Tomoana leaned towards vernacular balladry, crafting a waiata that travelled fluidly between marae, concert hall, and popular culture, eventually becoming iconic across Aotearoa.
Both approaches illustrate the adaptability of Māori musical creativity in the early twentieth century: Hamunata ensuring that mōteatea-derived idioms could be notated and published successfully, Tomoana ensuring that Māori waiata could resonate as widely and recognisably as any European parlour song.
Footnote
1. This is regarding a range of a tenth being standard. Also true in the Commonwealth. References
Alec Wilder, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), quoted in Howard S. Becker, “Alec Wilder on American Popular Song,” howardsbecker.com (accessed September 2025), https://www.howardsbecker.com/articles/wilder.html
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