Forty years ago this week, something magic happened in the southern Taranaki town of Pātea. A little waiata was composed which would become a national anthem: Poi E.
The town was on tough times in 1982, after the hulking meatworks on the river’s edge brought a spate of job losses, driving whānau to leave town en masse.
Patea Māori Club wanted a song to inspire their people, to tell their story and to bring some joy.
They brought in a hometown hero, musician and composer Dalvanius Prime, and Māori language teacher and advocate Ngoi Pewhairangi.
“She came out and she had gumboots on and she was the most unassuming, unpretentious woman I’ve ever met,” Prime recalled in a 2000 interview with RNZ.
“She says to me: ‘I’d love to write some songs with you.’ I said: ‘I’d love to write some songs with you!’”
The song they wrote was distinctive from the first lyric, the karanga cry over a heavy electronic snare: “Te poi patua taku poi, Patua kia rite tāpara patua, taku poi e!”
Then the ballad begins: “E rere rā e taku poi porotiti” – the rest is seared in the nation’s consciousness.
The lyrics were composed by Pewhairangi, who then laid a challenge to Prime: How do we make our language accepted by the young people?
He came up with a track infused with disco. Heavy beat, flourishing synths, a rollicking bass. It was very ’80s, it was very untraditional.
Pewhairangi hated it.
“When I said to her, ‘this is the new version of Poi E’ and I played the backing tapes to her, you know what she says to me? ‘You’re going to have many enemies if you follow this course’,” Prime recalled.
In the end, Pewhairangi was convinced.
“I said to Ngoi, have you played the video to your kids, to the mokopuna?” Prime said.
“And she says to me they love it! They won’t take it out of the VCR, they play it out loud and they’re doing the poi to it!
“I said that’s why it’s going to be number one. Because you hate it.”
Ngoi Pewhairangi and Dalvanius Prime.
Photo: poiemovie.co.nz
So Pātea Māori Club persisted.
Prime toured the country meeting with record labels, none of whom wanted to know them. “I knew Pākehā radio wouldn’t play us,” he said.
Instead, he went to every business in Pātea asking for $100 and he produced the album himself.
Laura Marurea, the current chair of Pātea Māori Club, said they worked relentlessly to push Poi E.
“We travelled around Aotearoa to fund-raise, to take it overseas, we recorded with the community and our farmers pulled money out of their pockets to start our recording and [for] our travel. We fund-raised hard to get Poi E to number one,” Maruera said.
It turned out the record companies and Pākehā radio did not know what they were on about: Poi E was an absolute hit.
After two years of hard work from Pātea Māori Club, Poi E was released in 1984. It topped the charts for a month, outselling all international artists including Michael Jackson. It sparked a world tour and a musical from the Pātea Club.
It bopped and swayed itself into the echelons of Aotearoa’s most legendary songs.
“It was a blessing, it was a privilege it was really fun that we could do that,” Marurea said.
“Because most of us learnt and understood Māori through the waiata we are singing ’cause our tutors explained what the waiata were about.”
Today, Maruera said Pātea was gathering to celebrate 40 years of the anthem.
“Our younger tutor from the generation down from us, they have called for a big haka, waiata wananga which we are going to teach all our whānau and revive Dalvanius’s songs.”
Marurea was a child when the iconic music video was filmed in the town, now she leads the club.
“They’ve got heaps of pride, they sing it like nobody’s business and the beauty of the group comes out. I don’t think they ever get sick of it, we do it all the time. That is one waiata that we don’t get sick of,” Maruera said
“It’s just one of those waiata we continue to sing no matter where we are.”
Pātea gathering as Poi E turns 40: ‘It was a blessing, it was a privilege’ & Latest News Update
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