Taonga pūoro

Taonga pūoro are the traditional musical instruments of the Māori people of New Zealand.

The instruments previously fulfilled many functions within Māori society including a call to arms, dawning of the new day, communications with the gods and the planting of crops. They are significant in sacred ritual and also fulfill a story-telling role. Many of the sounds of the instruments and tunes are imitations of the sounds of nature, including the wind, the seas and the natural world of birds and insects.

Knowledge of taonga pūoro has been revived over the past thirty years by Hirini Melbourne, Richard Nunns and Brian Flintoff after bobg in the 20th Century.

Taonga pūoro and their uses and classifications are intimately connected with Māori culture and religious practice. The instruments are all part of the families of the gods, and their classifications are directly related to the gods and the creation story where "The Gods sang the Universe into Existence". The universal building blocks of music, melody (Rangi) and rhythm (Papa) are named for the Sky Father and Earth Mother (Ranginui and Papatuanuku, or Rangi and Papa) from the Māori creation story. Further classifications are derived from their children. The god of the winds is Tawhiri, and from him come the wind instruments. The shell instruments are from Tangaroa, god of the sea, and Tane and his daughters Hine Pu te Hue and Hine Raukatauri govern the other instruments derived from forest and earth materials. Today, sometimes substitute materials are used in the making of the instruments and several instruments fall into more than one family being a combination of materials.

The use of these instruments, as part of the toolkit of the tohunga (Maori priests), seemed to be exclusively used as an oral flux between Ira Tangata (man) to Ira Atua (the Divine/Gods) or the temporal and the spiritual, which is why Māori regarded them with awe and respect; they were regarded as tapu (sacred/taboo) items of use from the tohunga. When used for entertainment and for recreation, it was a hidden and private practice.

Many of these musical traditions had been lost over time because of spiritual reservations Māori people held towards the instruments, but sensitive researchers and enthusiasts such as Richard Nunns, Hirini Melbourne and Brian Flintoff have done considerable restorative work and provided a wealth of knowledge and information around the sounds, history and stories of these taonga (treasures).

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