I’ve been interested in Taonga Pūoro for many years and have had the honour of working on the websites for Brian Flintoff’s www.jadeandbone.co.nz website from the early 2000’s as well as James Webster’s www.tahaa.co.nz website.
In just over the past year I’ve been working with the Haumanu Collective to develop a marketing plan to provide them with a digital platform for Taonga Pūoro enthusiasts to be able to connect with these experts and engage in their live events and keep abreast with the developments.
Over the past few days at Te Papa Tongarewa (New Zealand’s National Museum) in Wellington we’ve been presenting taonga pūoro workshops, discussions and performances.
Today we featured a live panel talk at Te Papa’s Rongomaraeroa marae and I took the opportunity to live stream this, much to the delight of many enthusiasts nationwide whom wanted to be present but couldn’t. This is now archived on the Haumanu Collective YouTube Channel and featured on their website as a piece of history for the group and for the movement in revitalising Taonga Pūoro.
This was an awesome little sub-project in a busy day working with Carl and the Te Papa crew and setting up the live streaming through their network through to our socials. It was live streamed in HD but with everything going on I didn’t grab a copy of the original file so this has been downloaded from Facebook, and rey-loaded to YouTube which has left the file a little lossy. Even still it’s a great watch.
The panel discussion was fascinating in getting to hear about what drew these mātanga to Taonga Puōro and their various view points of tikanga, kōrero, aspirations for taonga pūoro and advice to those starting out to play them.