[Māori song forms]

Two episodes of Phyllis Williams radio programmes on Māori song forms - each opens with Hiruharama School performing "Po po".
(Phyllis Williams was also known as "Kirimamae" - a pākēha singer adopted by Ngāti Porou and given this name.)

1. She notes the changing tastes in Māori music for poi - and sings "E taku poi."
She says the new generation enjoys performing older songs such as "Tapu e rī, tapu e rā" which she also sings. She refers to the skill which Hiruharama teacher Matekino Brown had when singing this sort of item.

"Koru koru" is also used as a waiata poi and Phyllis explains the story behind it and sings it.

Phyllis says the waiata "Takiri, takiri, takiri" is one of her favourite waiata poi and good breath training for singers. Hiria Tamati and Ngaripi White sing it with her.

She talks about Alfred Hill's work, setting Māori waiata to European notation. She mentions "Waiata aroha" being sung by Mrs Mitchell of Rotorua and how it was also used as a voice training exercise. She demonstrates the different ways of singing the waiata: in a Pākēha-style and in the Māori style, with a closed throat which gives a more mournful intonation.

She ends with the haka "Ka mate, ka mate." She discusses its origin story and says some tribes have told her they knew it long before Te Rauparaha was born. She recalls Sir Apirana Ngata's timing when performing this haka.

2. Changes in the singing of older Māori waiata. She discusses Alfred Hill's album of Māori music including a waiata tangi sung at the death of Premier Richard Seddon by Whanganui and Ngāti Apa iwi. She sings Hill's European notation but notes that she cannot do this if she has been singing it in the traditional Māori manner. She then plays a recording of her and "a Ngāti Porou friend" singing it in the traditional manner.

She talks about the breath training a Māori child requires to be able to sing the older songs correctly. She sings "Tahi piti" an example of the sort of song young children learn in order to develop breath control.

Phyllis says Hamana Mahuika told her this waiata was performed by women in the 1900s at a hui in Tikitiki, accompanied by small side-steps. She plays a recording of him singing it the way it was on this occasion.

Phyllis recounts the story told to her by Sir Apirana Ngata, of the haka "Paikea", composed by Wi Pewhairangi of Tokomaru Bay in the 1870s on the occasion of the opening of a meeting house at Uawa, Tolaga Bay. She sings the modern Ngāti Porou version and gives an English translation. Then Hamana Mahuika gives the "proper haka version" as he learnt it many years ago.