With the release of her group's fourth album, Moana Maniapoto is taking stock of where her life, her music and her politics meet. She talks to Scott Kara
Moana Maniapoto wanders round her kitchen making cups of tea, cutting cake, slicing fudge, and pouring milk into a fancy white jug that looks more like a gravy boat. All this takes a while as she chats about meeting Bob Geldof in Germany last week ("I like him, he's very self-deprecating.") and how her 17-year-old son keeps her in touch with today's music, like the White Stripes, Kanye West ("He likes his politics"), and local lad Tiki Taane (who she wants to remix a song from her new album, Wha).She's nothing like the staunch, hard-talking Maori activist many people know her as. The musician and documentary maker, and leader of Moana and the Tribe, has never been scared to front up, be it about politics, Maori sovereignty issues, or getting te reo songs played on the radio."I haven't always been like that," she offers. "I come from a family who are shy and don't like conflict. But I've ended up with a whole bunch of people around me who can't be bothered with mucking around and are like, 'Bring it on'."
Like who?"Well, hell, I was married to Willie for years," she says of her ex-husband, the talkback host and former politician Willie Jackson. "The Jackson clan are a very strong family. And then there's my mentors and friends in my band, like [singer] Amiria Reriti, and I've watched my sister [Katarina] over the last few years, and she has come from the space I was at of being nice and accommodating and now, I tell ya, she's turned out just like us."But today, sitting at the dining table in her Grey Lynn apartment which has stunning views over sprawling rooftops towards the Waitemata, she's laid back, serene and at times, when talking about Wha, almost dreamy. Even so, she agrees she is a no bullshit-type person."I suppose you get to a certain age where you are very clear about your values and what's right and wrong and some things are immovable, and for your own piece of mind say something or do something about it rather than moaning,".On Wha there's the militant protest song Te Apo, which uses haka and sounds recorded by the Tribe at a protest in Hong Kong during the World Trade Organisation conference in 2006; the title track is about independence and sovereignty; and other tracks pay tribute to her heroes like the late Syd Jackson ("He was described as an activist but really he was a very compassionate person with a big heart.") and members of the Maori Battalion.These days though, for Maniapoto it's more about the music and the songs than pushing any cultural or political barrows."I'm not always trying to make a cultural point. Perhaps in the early days I was trying to say you can pull elements from traditional Maori music into the contemporary, and culturally and politically that fusion is going to produce something great. But now it's more about how do the musical elements all work together."
