Electronic music producer and academic Tiopira McDowell (Ngāti Hine) is the artist behind the music venture MOKOTRON Photo: Ngaru Garland
As Mokotron, electronic musician and academic Tiopira McDowell (Ngāti Hine) takes crowds on a spiritual journey with live taonga puoro, heavy breakbeats and sub-bass.
On the release of the debut album WAEREA, McDowell is challenging himself and other electronic musicians in Auckland to clear away their own "cultural cringe" and create for the city a distinctive local sound.
"Are we really as a nation so uncreative that we have to basically appropriate everything from overseas? Do we believe in ourselves so little?
"Every great city has its own genre of music these days and they're always specific to an urban area. What about Tāmaki Makaurau?"
MOKOTRON on music's role in decolonisation
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Mokotron shows tend to be a serious and spiritual experience, says McDowell, who is also a senior lecturer in Māori Studies at the University of Auckland.
"Right from my first gig, people were often on the edge of tears ... I think I've just dug into that and just gone with it."
Auckland academic Tiopira McDowell (Ngāti Hine) makes music as MOKOTRON. Photo: Sunreturn
Rather than performing to the crowd, when he is onstage McDowell goes within himself to connect with something "beyond human".
"That's why I often close my eyes when I perform because you have to go to a space where you can get that spiritual power."
A karakia performed over the vehicle that had transported his late father to be cremated was what first got McDowell thinking about how to use the principle of negative energy clearance in his own life.
"It just struck me as so ridiculous that we were removing the negative energy [on the] motor vehicle and we should have been doing it over ourselves.
"I thought 'how do I clear away my upbringing, the things that were done to me, trauma, and in a positive way so that I'm not passing that on to my kids?'
"Sure we can take [negative energy] off a car but if I'm not careful I will pass that on to my kids, both through DNA and through my behaviour."
McDowell says he writes music as a way to express his feelings rather than hold them in as both Māori and Pākehā men are traditionally, and unfortunately, taught to do in Aotearoa.
"Our country was created during the Victorian era where the stiff upper lip and Man Alone and all those kind of values were imposed and they're very dangerous."
Mokotron's upcoming shows:
- The 95bFM Christmas Party: Friday 20 December - Whammy / Double Whammy / Public Bar, Auckland
- Port Noise 2025: Saturday 1 March - various venues, Ōhinehou / Lyttelton