Perhaps one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary NZ music was that of Mahinaarangi Tocker. Her inimitable vocal and guitar style, heartfelt songs and fearless performance endeared her to audiences, and garnered significant peer respect, amply displayed at the 2018 Auckland Arts Festival’s tribute concert, Love Me As I Am, a commemoration and celebration of Mahinaarangi’s life and music some 10 years after her untimely death at 52.
Mahinaarangi was the fourth of Rihitapuwai Rauhihi and Norman Tocker’s eight children. She was proud of her Māori/Pākehā heritage. Of Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Ngāti Maniapoto descent through her mother, her father’s family was Jewish, with Celtic ancestry…
...Her childhood in Taumarunui was busy and convivial with music integral in whānau life. Close harmonies reigned and performance was collective – at home, the local marae and other family gatherings – with Mahinaarangi’s eclectic guitar playing and improvisational bent already apparent.
While formal education was valued – both parents met at Wellington Teachers College and her father taught at Taumarunui High School – Mahinaarangi’s early musical influences were more organic, absorbed through a high rotation of traditional waiata, Catholic hymns and her jazz-fan father’s Ella Fitzgerald, Mills Brothers and Southernaires albums.
However, Mahinaarangi’s sporting prowess as a competitive diver and keen netballer was more to the fore during school years, and she was by her own description “an absolutely staunch kapa haka chick”. On leaving school, music wasn’t an initial career choice either. She entered the nursing school then attached to the Taumarunui Hospital.
But Mahinaarangi had been compiling a collection of her own songs and poetry on a more private scale for years. One writer described her using music “as a survival kit, from her first day of school when she wrote a song on the way to help her cope”.
Travels overseas in the late 1970s prompted a refocus to seriously consider performing her own music, and ultimately settling in central Auckland, she connected with an inner-city milieu of independent musicians at a fertile and politically active time. Venues such as Java Jive and Atomic Café provided well networked outlets and audiences for the “shy but firm” singer-songwriter, as well as the occasional dishwashing stint between gigs. And she started recording and building her extensive repertoire.
With the release of three of her tracks on the Web Women’s Collective compilation album Out of the Corners and her first full length album Clothesline Conversation in 1982, Mahinaarangi’s beguiling vocals and emotive but intelligent songs quickly made her name as a talented artist who wrote beautiful melodies and intuitive jazz flavoured folk-pop songs, but was not afraid to write about provocative or controversial issues. She had seated her first releases firmly in the feminist “Women’s Music” camp alongside The Topp Twins, Hilary King, Jess Hawk Oakenstar and fellow activist Māori female musicians, Mereana Pitman and Tracy Huirama.
Right at the close of a very busy 1982, she gave the birth to her daughter, Hinewairangi, and the strands of intergenerational whānau connections and plural heritage echoed back and forth even more throughout her lyrics. While both her parents spoke te reo fluently, Mahinaarangi grew up when the language was completely absent from the classroom. As a Māori songwriter who wrote the majority of her lyrics in English, she was unabashed about using words, phrases, and on occasion complete songs in Māori, always encouragingly and carefully edited by her mother throughout her career…to be continued… - audioculture
trax:
1. E Te Matua 2. Raukawa 3. Nga Hau E Wha 4. When I Grow Up 5. A Woman Who Feels Nothing 6. Kei Hea Koe 7. Tender 8. To Beat With Her Heart 9. Takiri 10. Forever 11. Danger Kissing 12. Maggie Goodbye 13. Ko Te Nau Pararahi 14. Holy Laws 15. Where Do We Grow To 16. I'll Breathe For You
…served by Gaius…
%2045%20-%206427B.png)
.jpg)
%2001.jpg)
