"Why won't you put the guitar in centre?"

Because then it's not about European imagination of Māori. If Rameka sits tacit in the centre for four out of the five movements, he's the exotic object. - The whole point is that 'the maori' isn't a real person. The guitarist and harpist could be of any ethnicity. - Says it all about how people are wired. The quartet is explicitly a critique of representation, and the response from mainstream classical was to strongly suggest (read "force me") to add token representation as a way of softening the implicit edge that their music distorted Māori music. The critique is an outgrowth of The Perfumed Garden, so the Golriz movement demonstrates - at her suggestion - a non-representational Islamicate approach to representation. - Guitar is the stereotypical Māori instrument, hence it has to add the brownness. If I could convince Ruby and a few others, we'd be able to sidestep all that shit. If it's all-Māori, then the gimmick seating with harp and guitar in the middle is fine. Given the NZ String Quartet's history of subtle and unsubtle racism, pushing back is a fairly reasonable decision. Ultimately, they've got to buy the rights to do it, and I'm not going to give them any creative say. Play my music as written, as you would for nine out of ten composers. As for the tunings: well, my essay is very thorough. -

Here's something that gets my point across! Inclusivity can still be bigoted.