New Zealand music is a vibrant expression of the culture of New Zealand. As the largest nation in Polynesia, New Zealand's music is influenced by the indigenous Māori and immigrants from the Pacific region. The origins of New Zealand's musical culture lie in its British colonial history, with contributions from Europe and America. As the nation has grown and established its own culture, local artists have mixed these styles with local influences to create music that is uniquely New Zealand in style.
Māori music
Māori music consists of waiata, (literally songs), as well as haka, ("war" dances). Interestingly, the first white colonisers of New Zealand reported that the Māori had no singing/vocal music at all; they had chants and a peculiarly intoned vocalisation at the end of lines of poetry (perhaps related to the imene tuki of the Cook Islands), especially dirges honouring the dead, but did not 'sing' as such. For this reason the chord harmonies and tune structures of the Māori song repertoire as it evolved are derived from western music, in particular church music. As the Māori have an oral history, it was only when Sir Apirana Ngata wrote down and recorded waiata and traditional poetry early in the twentieth century that any of this music was preserved or became widely known.
The overall traditional musical performance is now known as kapahaka, which often involves actions performed with sticks that are thumped or the poi - a small ball on the end of a string - that are twirled in the hands and slapped to provide rhythmic accompaniment. While the guitar has become an almost universal instrument to accompany kapahaka performances today, traditional instruments, which are primarily woodwind, can give hauntingly eerie sounds. Some modern artists have revived the use of these traditional instruments and are writing and performing original instrumental Māori music that has a unique sound.
Folk music
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