Te Vaka - "Manatu"

Honestly, I never should have started. Trying to find the Shona Laing song below, and it's turned into yet another lost day rummaging around in youtube.

It's all good however, since I found a genuine treasure: Te Vaka doing a live version of "Manatu":



And if you're listening and wondering "Manatu" is in Tokulauan, and it's Opi's song about when he first arrived in New Zealand as a boy and finds he can't bear it - have posted the lyrics below - and so is begging his father if they can go home to Tokelau. (An island group in the Pacific that's now underwater thanks to global warming.)

That's what the refrain at the end is saying: "Please take me home". Ultra-poignant when you know that "home" isn't there anymore, huh!

Do you love it?

And if you listen to the version of the song from the album - which is also up there - it also has Opi's father speaking the same advice he gave back then, about "pulling himself together and being a man"!

Te Vaka means a lot to Keith and me. In fact, more than a lot. It's the Kiwi group founded over a decade ago by the guitarist/songwriter from the band Keith played in back when they were teenagers. If you watch the clip, that's Opi, the lead singer. Isn't he just gorgeous. And that's his family with him on stage. Wouldn't you be so proud?

There's a gorgeous story attached to this. No, there are actually two.

1) The first time I went to New Zealand with Keith to meet his family, he spent several hours rummaging in the storage shed looking for several books he knew he had someplace, and discovered his band's old demo tape. "You have to listen to this!" he told me.

OK, when someone says you have to listen to the demo tape of their teenage band you have certain expectations, right? It'll be bad! In fact, it will be horribly bad! But I'm a nice person so I plastered on a polite face and said OK while inwardly groaning and thinking "What should I say?"

... but then Keith played it. My jaw dropped. It wasn't just that the band was tight and good, but that the music was actually original, significant and interesting ... and so I started to listen as I would to a "real record", and I must say have never heard such beautiful songs and such beautiful playing.

"Did you send this around the record companies?" I asked.
"All of them! No one replied."
"No one listened to it!" I assured him. "Every song there is a potential hit!"

And that's when Keith first told me about Opi. Oh, and also The Other Guy whose name I've forgotten. How when they first started out it was like everyone wanted to be famous and the new Jimi Hendrix and all that nonsense, but the moment they actually got tight something happened. First, it was The Other Guy who suddenly evolved "shaman powers", like he could "channel the magic" during their gigs, and then that he could channel it in real life as well, and that's when they all discovered that "real music" was like a giant secret garden, and that The Other Guy, Shaman Guy, had handed them the key. And in that garden they all bloomed!

But of the whole band, sweet gentle Opi bloomed more and bigger than the rest of them. It was like he'd suddenly found his own voice and a wealth of things he wanted to say, and shaped them into amazing and beautiful songs ... and those were the ones the band started to perform ... and people began to actually listen and suddenly the whole thing became "real" and they all decided that this was what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives.

And so they recorded their demo tape and sent it around. Nothing! And the silence from all the record companies screamed loudly that they should give up, and so that's when the band broke up and everyone went their separate ways.

Which leads onto the second story:

2) In Townsville one day, over a decade ago, we had the radio playing in the background while we were doing something else ... and then a really amazing song came on (Te Vaka's "Tagi Nui" from memory) that made us stop to listen. "That drumming sounds Samoan." said Keith and turned it up ... and then he shouted "I know that voice! That's Opi! It's Opi! I'd recognise his voice anywhere." "Opi from your old band?" I asked. "Yes! He sang beside me for five years. I'd know that voice anywhere." and then tears welled up in his eyes and he breathed out "Oh my god! Opi's made it!"

And indeed Opi has. It was a long hard road and it wasn't until George Harrison heard them, twenty years later, and organised a record deal that they broke through, but now Te Vaka's played all over the world and their albums have won the BBC's "The Best World Music" prize innumerable times, and they seem to be nominated for something important yearly and the only times they don't win is when it's lost to bands like "Johnny Clegg and Savuka" or to Ismael Lo or Youssou N'Dour ... and there's absolutely no shame in that.

To be nominated among giants? That alone is Enormous Success!

But, indeed, Opi's success was earned. He alone never gave up the dream. He had something important he wanted to say to the world and, despite nearly two decades of rejection and knockbacks, he kept on going ...

"Te Vaka" means "The Boat" in all the Polynesian languages, but it also means much more than that because, in New Zealand, The Boat is the key to Maori identity: "What boat did you arrive on?" Your boat means your tribe, which speaks to who you actually are. And with Te Vaka, Opi speaks about Polynesian identity and pride and rediscovering who you are and also about giving the Pacific a voice about their concerns. (Many songs about global warming, naturally, given that his homeland - The Tokulau Islands - is now under the sea, and that there are many other Island Groups on the verge of doing the same!)

Te Vaka played Hong Kong earlier this year. The concert was amazing and it was so funny watching the young guys in the band being mobbed by hordes of screaming young Chinese girls, and then, backstage afterwards, Opi's lovely wife says "Boys, just because you're feeling famous doesn't mean you don't get to lug equipment, so get that stuff out to the bus! Now!!!"

And then, when everything calmed down, Keith and Opi talked and I sat back and listened and I have to say that Opi was just a beautiful man with a genuine greatness about him. Very calm and "big picture"; little things don't get to him ...

... except ...

... when, revisiting the Old Days, they started talking about The Other Guy - who Opi also called "The Shaman" - and the debt of gratitude they owed to him ... except ... "He now owns a restaurant in West Auckland and keeps ringing me wanting Te Vaka as his houseband. I say to him "Mate, I play stadiums of 60,000 these days." and he says "Yes, that's why I want you!" and I just want to take him out the back someplace and slap him senseless!"

But Opi's a really nice guy and so funnels young bands who need the break in his direction, to play at his restaurant, sure, but also hoping that something of what The Shaman gave to him will rub off on them too.

So, there, Te Vaka. If you're interested in really significant and gorgeous music, check them out immediately.

Much later:

The actual lyrics:

HOMESICK

These clothes feel so strange on me
Stranger still are these shoes
Taken to another world
I'm now crying for my home

Tell me where my mother is
She forgot to explain things to me
Tell me where my father is
I thought I heard him leave this morning


Heavy thoughts
what I need is an explanation
The purpose of this journey
Searching for answers in this small room
I can only think of my river
My friends are searching for me
But no matter how hard I try
There's no way for me to answer them
I'm homesick , I'm longing
For my family
I'm longing for my home
Here I sit all by myself
In this darkness
My head is filled with hurt
With sadness - this darkness