Taonga pūoro practitioner Horomona Horo says the recongition left him speechless. Photo:
Horomona Horo (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou, Taranaki), one of Aotearoa's best known taonga pūoro practitioners, is now an Arts Laureate.
Horo is a masterful composer and musician, known for his expertise in traditional Māori musical instruments as well as his cross-genre collaboration, working with classical, operatic, choral, pop, and hip-hop musicians, from Kiri te Kanawa to Moana and the Tribe.
Taonga pūoro, meaning 'singing treasures', have been revitalised through Horo's predecessors, whom he regards as his mentors, including Brian Flintoff and Hirini Melbourne, Richard Nunns, Hinewirangi Kohu.
"They re-invigorated this practice that was nearly lost to our people," Horo told Music101's Charlotte Ryan.
"What was known as the Tohunga Suppression Act [1907] stopped a lot of our cultural practices, for many varying reasons. And so it wasn't until the 1970s, 1980s, with the likes of Hirini, Richard and Brian and many others [who] started to revitalise and bring this practice of musical healing back into form."
Horomona Horo: Best known taonga pūoro practitioner becomes Arts Laureate
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Horo did not grow up knowing a lot about his Māori culture and these traditional instruments, so it was not until the fifth World Indigenous Youth Conference in 1998 that he fell in love with it.
"Through that, I was told to pick up a conch shell and play it and started to pick up all these other [instruments] ... and it did something to me that nothing else did.
"I already loved music. I was a freestyler in the world of hip hop. And when I came across the world of taonga pūoro, it hit me emotionally. Picking up these instruments, when I would play certain melodies, it would make me cry and I was like, 'oh, oh, what's it doing to me?'
"And I'd play certain instruments and then I'd get little birds coming and dancing and prancing in front of me. And I was thinking, 'am I seeing this right?' And I'd be there with my nephews and nieces and they're like, 'oh uncle, look, when you play that whistle thing, the birds are coming and dancing with us'. I was like, 'can you see that?' You know, I thought it was just me.
"And so like it introduced me to a different type of magic, and I've been enticed from that very moment from then to now to this very day of seeing what other areas of that particular magic can do."
Horomona Horo. Photo: Jessica Chloe Photography
When he got the phone call that he was now an Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate, he was "lost for words and got a little bit emotional".
"Holding the laureate in my hand was quite surreal, was really great, because as an artist sometimes you can feel unseen.
"It was really a wonderful acknowledgement that I can share with my kids because [of] the many times over the years that I've sacrificed time away from my family, away from my young kids, they were babies. I was playing taonga pūoro to their mother when they were each in the womb of their mother. I would talk to her womb, sometimes more than I would talk to her."
Horo hopes to pave the way for up and coming generations to find their place among other artists and receive the recognition they deserve.
"For taonga pūoro, for many it's seen as an accompaniment or something to help add the flavouring to a musical track ... and yet still there's, I suppose, in the music world, there's not really a lot of acknowledgement in some spaces in the world of music, here in Aotearoa New Zealand.
"When you see categories in our music awards where you see country music, you see heavy metal, you see rock, reggae, hip hop, R&B, there's nothing really there for taonga pūoro, because it's always used as an accompaniment in all those genres. I've played with all of those genres and still trying to challenge the system [to acknowledge] taonga pūoro.
"When we can have our up-and-coming taonga pūoro players, musicians, composers coming through and seeing the voices of taonga pūoro in these spaces, it allows us to see there is something to have long-term visionary goals for, and so being an arts laureate is part of the journey to show the next generation they can do it."