They’re known for packing out some of the country’s largest venues, but this time around, Kiwi band Six60 is "taking the gig to the people". The bandoff their Grassroots Tour at Pōtahi Marae in Te Kao at the top of the North Island on Tuesday night.
It was a more intimate and personal experience for the group, especially for lead singer Matiu Walters, who has whakapapa links to the area through grandfather Muru Walters whose mother is from Te Kao.
“It's hard not to feel the wairua, being back here,” said Walters, who is staying in Ahipara where his grandfather was born.
“My brother, my father and my uncle have come up too. It's really cool seeing them reconnect and talk about all these places they used to go to, because Muru, obviously my grandfather, made his way down to Dunedin, so they were estranged as well.
“It was cool to come up here and meet all my cousins. There's heaps of them now.”
Located 46km from Te Rerenga Wairua (Cape Reinga), Te Kao is home to just over 200 people. The village holds great significance for Far North iwi Te Aupōuri, with Pōtahi Marae acting as the main meeting place for the tribe.
It’s the first and only time the band have come together to perform in a marae setting. Pōtahi Marae committee member and proud Te Aupōuri Rosie Conrad said it was a great opportunity for the haukāinga to get together for a night and celebrate one of their own.
“So good for our marae, so good for our community, for the haukāinga and everyone else that is coming tonight - the five hundred that's coming tonight. Yeah, it'd be awesome.”
The iwi welcomed the band with a pōwhiri on Monday, and later that evening the haukāinga were treated to a “free gig for the whānau” where Six60 performed their yet-to-be-release new single.
“We played one of our new songs which is in Māori… a new song of ours that we played for the first time last night called Kanikani,” bass player Marlon Gerbes said.
“That went down a treat, I think it was the favourite song.”
Going into detail about the rest of the tour, Chris Mac – who has taken over the drums after the departure of former band member Eli Paewai in February – explained it was a way to explore all the different parts of the country.
“We wanted to go to the people, we wanted to go see all of New Zealand, to all of the far-flung regions from right up here in the north, to right down the bottom of the south and this is the perfect place to start.”
The band is set to play at 23 “exclusively small venues” from this month, starting at Pōtahi Marae and ending in Stewart Island on May 14.
Glossary
whakapapa – genealogy
haukāinga – home people
kanikani – to dance
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