how a Matariki anthem wrote a new chapter in the story of Māori country music

Matariki has come and gone for another year, but the melody still shimmers. I’m referring in particular to a song released for the 2025 Māori new year: Matariki Hunga Nui – Calling Me Home, by Rob Ruha, Troy Kingi and Kaylee Bell.

Bilingual and line-dance friendly, the music video for the track featured many joining in the fun, including former politician Kiri Allan and artist-activist Tame Iti. The song brought a musical heritage back into contemporary consciousness: Māori country.

It might not seem the most typical Māori musical genre, with rap, reggae, R'n'B and pop more usually associated with Māori creativity. But there has been a long history of Māori engagement with country music – dating back to the beginnings of popular music in Aotearoa.

Māori musicians related to country music’s lyrical themes – longing, land, rural life, loneliness, love, humour, community – and excelled at the musicianship central to its style.

Beyond the genre aesthetics, this musical story is also entwined in colonial histories and global pop culture flows.

Country music in the United States might currently be associated with conservative (even racist) politics, making it possibly seem an odd choice for a song celebrating an Indigenous celestial remembrance. But country as a genre is deeply rooted in African American musical traditions – the banjo, spirituals, field songs, hymns.

Recently, African American artists such as queer rapper Li’l Nas X and Beyoncé have challenged erroneous racial and cultural associations. The backlash against Beyoncé’s 2024 Cowboy Carter album highlighted how many people were unaware of the musical and cultural reality of “Black Country”.

The Hawaiian sound

American country music is also indebted to Hawaiian innovations and artists, meaning Polynesian stylistic elements were already ingrained in the country oeuvre when it arrived in New Zealand.

The steel guitar was invented on the Hawaiian island of Oahu by Joseph Kekuku in 1885. The Spanish guitar had been introduced in the earlier 1800s and Kekuku modified the instrument (and its sound) to create the lap steel guitar.

This became wildly popular in the mainland US during the 1920s and 30s, eventually becoming a staple sound of what became known as country music.

In the mid-20th century, Pacific and Māori artists in New Zealand gravitated towards this “Hawaiian sound”. In 1949, the Ruru Karaitiana Quintette recording the first ever locally produced hit song, Blue Smoke, with Pixie Williams on vocals, heavily featuring Hawaiian guitar slides.

Later, Tongan New Zealanders Bill Sevesi and Bill Wolfgramme had popular hits and successful careers with their Hawaiian sound and deft lap steel playing.

The shift of the steel guitar from Hawaii/Pacific styles into local country music can be seen in Manu Rere (1955) by Johnny Cooper (who became known as “the Māori cowboy”), and the humorous locally-flavoured Dennis Marsh’s Have a Maori Hangi (formal release 2000).

The Māori showbands of the 1950s and 1960s performed a range of styles, including country, in high-energy, elaborate shows that toured the globe.

Featuring Māori waiata (songs) alongside comedy, popular American tunes, soul and Hawaiian sounds, these bands generated local stars, including Prince Tui Teka. You can hear the Hawaiian-country blend in his song Mum and his rendition of Freddy Fender’s When the Next Teardrop Falls.

Creative negotiation

By the 1970s, Māori artists such as Eddie Low and Dean Waretini were having country-flavoured local hits, further weaving the genre into the Māori music story.

And it’s impossible to even measure country’s popularity in the covers band scene, school concerts, marae, pubs and homes. While not Māori themselves, queer country singing sisters The Topp Twins collaborated with Māori composer Hirini Melbourne in 1984 on Ngā Iwi E, a country song sung in te reo Māori.

As US country music has branched into various sub-genres, from traditional Nashville and bluegrass to cowpunk, Americana and “red dirt”, Māori country artist Marlon Williams has embraced alternative country-and-western gothic, perhaps resonating with his own southern New Zealand roots.

“I want to think and dream in Māori,” he said of his 2025 country album Te Whare Tīwekaweka, sung entirely in te reo Māori. Of Ngāi Tahu and Ngāi Tai descent, Williams had been disconnected from his language, but this album saw him composing his own original waiata.

While not known specifically as a country artist, TEEKS (Te Karehana Gardiner-Toi) has a smoky, deep soul voice that evokes and embodies the Māori-country connection when he sings (check out his live 2019 cover of Bonnie Rait’s I Can’t Make You Love Me, for example).

There has been a thriving country music scene among Pākeha New Zealanders, too. But the Māori contribution to and enjoyment of the genre is integral to the story. That creative negotiation, between the worlds of US country and Māori waiata, lives on in Matariki Hunga Nui – Calling Me Home

This complex American genre offers a vehicle for Aotearoa to celebrate its own heritage in the present, remember the past and plan for the future … under the Matariki stars.