A midwinter restrospective for springtime: Erin Harrington reviews Ka Noho, Ka Mate, presented in the Great Hall as part of the Te Matatiki Toi Ora Arts Centre Matariki Festival, 14 July 2023.
The Matariki performance (or gig? or lamentation?) Ka Noho, Ka Mate starts solemnly. Kaiako and rapper Kommi Tamati-Elliffe (Kāi Tahu, Te Ātiawa), producer and singer-songwriter Mark Perkins (aka Merk, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui), eclectic multi-instrumentalist Taipua Adams (Tūwharetoa), local guitar hero Heather Webb (Tangata Tiriti) and troubadour-slash-travelling salesman Delaney Davidson (Tangata Tiriti) line up like mourners, or funeral directors, wearing black suits and white shirts. A kawakawa wreath drapes Tamati-Elliffe’s face in shadow as he opens with a waerea. An introduction in English from Davidson, then the Great Hall falls into darkness as we are invited to join in two minutes silence in “acknowledgement of people who have passed away beyond the veil”. The sold-out audience sits and breathes together; the atmosphere crackles. The lights rise barely into a deep indigo as the five sing the Kāi Tahu waiata “Ka Tū Te TīTī”, then pull out little hand-cranked music boxes. The slightly off-key plinky-plonk sits delicately in the spacious hall, evoking the star cluster brushing up against the horizon. Bewitchment.
Ka Noho, Ka Mate is an inspired piece of programming from The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora. It sits within the organisation’s commitment in recent years, led by Creative Director Chris Archer, to better reflect the diversity and complexity of Ōtautahi’s people and communities. In action, in midwinter, this means offering a thoughtful slate of Matariki events over nearly three weeks. These include hands-on art and craft workshops, film screenings, talks, stargazing, and performances that creatively explore Te Ao Māori in contemporary Aotearoa, all simultaneously casting an eye to the past and the future.
Such collaboration and community-building has also been a key element of Davidson’s work over the years, clearly seen in his almost supernatural ability to draw together diverse artists and create something genuinely new and frequently unexpected. In this show, it manifests as a coherent, impactful hour of music that exceeds the sum of its parts: gnarly swamp rock, rap in Te Reo Māori, folksy Whakaraupō-Americana, waiata, grungy blues riffs, breathy torch song and lullaby, distortion and collision, intimacy and expanse.
The show’s evocative opening leads to a country-inflected take on “Pō Atarau / Now Is the Hour”, a dreamy song associated with farewells and separation. Davidson’s leathery drawl is simultaneously hopeful and resigned. The thread of melancholy continues into Perkin’s yearning “Canyons”, in which finger plucking and snapped fingers join the whisper of stone swirled on stone. This delicacy convulses into the pulse of “Rere”, Tamati-Elliffe’s rhythmic rapping in percussive dialogue with distorted guitars. The lights dim red and performance shifts into a more dynamic, forceful mode. Grief and loss tilt toward fury, perhaps: we have a barnstorming, bilingual take on Bob Dylan’s “In My Time of Dyin’”, a discordant and somewhat menacing drift into “Dream a Little Dream”, and Tamati-Elliffe reminding us all that we’re worm food in the insistent “Kai a te Iro”. A tilt, again, into something more contemplative as Davidson’s “Listen to the Stars” combines waiata with a sweet, melodic lullaby. Each form poaches from each other, grows into each other.
My favourite moment of the night comes as Heather Webb sings Davidson and Barry Saunders’ “Everything Is Here”, hands behind her back, eyes somewhat downcast. She’s a well-known and prolific guitarist, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her sing before. Her face is lit as the others stand in the darkness, their heads covered with black fabric. Like other quieter moments we hear the beautiful combination of the vaulted hall’s spacious acoustics, the rough edges of the solo electric guitar and the sweet, breathy intimacy of voice. We’re in the realm of the earthly now: “there is no horizon” sings Webb, almost regretfully, “open up your eyes babe, everything is here”, as the others’ voices offer a ghostly whispered back up. It’s a promise and an apology; it’s after hours at David Lynch’s roadhouse.
A transition, the lights deep red, and Davidson is back in carnival barker mode with distorted, amplified voice as he and Tamati-Elliffe growl through “Te Ara Ripeka / Fork in the Road”, a waltz-time, looping collaboration between Davidson and Troy Kingi about bad pasts and hard choices. A brief pause as everyone puts on cheery party hats. Why not? We’re down in purgatory but it’s Adams’ birthday, so he gets the weirdest, most blackly comic version of “Happy Birthday” I think I’ve heard peppered through Tamati-Elliffe’s “E Parau”, itself a languid, minor-key slow jam with drum machine and call-and-response rap.
The show’s closing beats gesture back, with compassion, to the opening. Webb gives a soft, vulnerable take on the Modern Maori Quartet’s “He Rā Anō”, looking ahead perhaps as the farewell strains of “Pō Atarau / Now is the Hour” come through like a nearly forgotten promise. Davidson whistles through the verse, the song’s lyrics of goodbyes, remembrance and returns hanging unsung in the air. Perkins makes the keys wheeze like a Wurlitzer playing to an empty theatre. Nearly time to put out the lights.
Throughout the show the air has felt thick with a sense of intense focus. As the musicians bring out the music boxes one more time, and the twinkling stars return, there is a sense of release and relief in the audience. This carries us out of the liminal, shifting space of performance, above the horizon again, into the return “Ka Tū Ka Tītī”. “Hoki mai, hoki mai, kia whitia ai / Kia mau ki te aroha e”; the lyrics instruct us to stand strong, be resilient, to look to the land from which we’ve come, to remember. Tamati-Elliffe offers kupu whakamutunga, karakia, and a final call, from all: Mānawatia a Matariki.
It takes a long time for the applause to finish. The hour with Ka Noho, Ka Mate has been extraordinary, intense, so it takes some time to decompress. Afterwards we talk about how special the event felt, and how important: drawing from the past, sitting in a briefly-held and always fragile present, but looking and sounding like the future.
Flat City Field Notes 