A haka, my dictionary tells me, is
1 a Maori ceremonial war dance accompanied by chanting. 2 an imitation of this by members of a sports team before a match.
The “Ka Mate” haka is the particular haka customarily performed by the All Blacks.
Warning: If you read on you will never again think about the haka performed by the All Blacks in the same way.
Last weekend I attended the a golden graduates luncheon and other activities celebrating the 50th anniversary of the class of ’59 at my alma mater, a place near here called St Peter’s College. Inevitably I reflected on some of the traditions of the place.
One such tradition, introduced by the redoubtable W.H.A. (“Bill”) Lohe, as teacher, rugby coach and subsequently as head master, was this Maori war cry he’d picked up during a stint of teaching in New Zealand. It was in fact the “Ka Mate” haka, which we performed with great gusto, in a huddle, from memory after the match rather than before.
We were told that the words meant:
We are the men, the hairy men, that make the sun to shine.
‘Tis life, ’tis life,
‘Tis death, ’tis death,
The sun doth shine!
The fact that there seemed to be more Maori words than required by that short message didn’t bother us. It was very elemental, the sounds expressed your feeling perfectly and it was a great war cry to perform.
On the weekend I thought I’d google the thing. This is the text courtesy of the University of Idaho:
Ka mate Ka mate
It is death It is deathKa ora Ka ora
It is life It is lifeKa mate Ka mate
It is death It is deathKa ora Ka ora
It is life It is lifeTenei Te Tangata Puhuruhuru
This is the hairy manNana i tiki mai whakawhiti te ra
Who caused the sun to shine again for meUpane Upane
Up the ladder Up the ladderUpane Kaupane
Up to the topWhiti te ra
The sun shines!
Immediately you can see that it is a personal story, and death comes before life. The Maori words can also mean “I die” and “I live”. Also there is a curious bit about climbing up a ladder.
The story of the origins is given at the bottom of the above link. There is more at Wikipedia on The “Ka Mate” haka specifically and the use of the use of the haka by the All Blacks as well as the origin of the “Ka Mate”.
It seems that the Maori chief Te Rauparaha, pursued by his enemies, hid in a pit in the ground used for storing kumara, a type of sweet potato, on one account beneath the skirts of a woman. Cowering in there he became aware that the pit was being opened and the sun began to shine in. Assuming his imminent death he cries out “I die, I die”. Then he realises he is looking at the hairy legs of a friendly chief, giving the all clear. He hauls himself up the ladder and in gratitude does a dance to express his relief, weaving his chant into the words of an ancient haka.
I’d always imagined that the words “hupane, kaupane” involved some elemental warlike threat. Crawling up a ladder out of a hole in the ground is a bit different.
Also instead of hairy men with supernatural powers that put the sun in the sky, we have the hairy legs of a friendly chief.
It can be argued, I think, that the All Blacks have built a tradition with quite a different feel about it. One wonders, however, whether they really understand the meaning of the words.
Yeah, but when NME asked Chief Te Rauparaha about it, he said
The real Haka…
Haka meets the Tongan Sipitau. (inane Australian babbling at end warning)
Oh yeah, um here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW9nLK5PHqg
Good one LE. Here’s the Tongan Sipitau by itself.
Sean, I’d reckon if you were a Wallaby about to play the All Blacks you’d be well-advised to forget the lyrics and respond to the body language.
I would question some bloke in Queensland questioning the All Blacks about their understanding of Ka Mate.
Kiwis take their M?ori heritage really quite seriously, it is not a shallow understanding. Apart from the fact that they’re normally about 50% polynesian, the pakeha mostly know what they’re on about.
The Kapa O Pango is a different matter.
Good luck with this one, Brian. Ka Mate has become for better or for worse such a complex amalgam of the original haka tradition with NZ’s developing biculturalism – a far different thing from Australian multiculturalism – and the All Black rugby ethos, that the exact translation and Te Rauparaha’s situation in composing it are practically irrelevant. It will take a practising New Zealander and rugby tragic (not me) to explain it all. I suspect most comments, if there are any, will be flippant (I await the handbag haka video).
Test: do the All Blacks performing Ka Mate (not the recent alternative, Kapa o Pango, a bastard child of the Ka Mate tradition which should never have been born) make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck? If not, you don’t get it.
The only thing like it in the sporting world, for mine, was 40,000 Welshmen in the old Arms Park launching into Cwm Rhondda, and you don’t really get that now it has become the Millenium Stadium.
Ah, nostalgia.
Most of the other ‘war dances’ are far more martial, far more directly relevant to what’s about to happen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kailao
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cibi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siva_tau
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haka_of_the_All_Blacks#.22Ko_Niu_Tireni.22_1924
Yes, I would too, and the appropriateness of an Australian school using any sort of haka, not to mention the Brisbane Lions ripping off the French. It all seems a bit sacrilegious in a way.
But I was hoping for some serious comment as well as the inevitable levity.
Could be worse from an australian point of view. The wobblies could still be doing this one:
Wallabies War Cry 1908/09
Gau Gau [opponent's name and the venue] Whir-r-r!
Win-nang-a lang (Thur)
Mu-e-an-yil-ling
Bu rang-a-lang (Yang)
Yai!Yai! Gun-yil-lang-yang-yah!
Translation (it was not performed in English):
Greetings to [opponent] in [place]
You are great men
We are pleased to meet you
We think we can beat you
Come, let us try
“No one has been able to prove that the words or actions of the Wallabies war-cry was directly taken from an Aboriginal custom. The war-cry was given to the team by a doctor, who was an official of the Newtown rugby union club. Where he obtained it is unknown, though the players told everyone it came from “the once powerful Illawarra tribe”.”
As opposed to Port Adelaide and Freo, whose songs are entirely original and utterly shit.
The Kapo O Pango is my favourite. I really like the drawing of the thumb across the throat bit, often accompanied by the sticking out of the tongue. To me it says “We are here to win and we will play hard” or you gunna get slaughtered. The haka does give me chills. I love it.
I have also seen it used in an Australian school to help give Maori kids a sense of self esteem and a feeling for their culture. Seeing them do the haka was fantastic.
For Freo please read “West Coast”.
IIRC, Fremantle misuses the Song of the Volga Boatmen.
Not entirely, my be-bereted friend.
levity?
Doesn’t surprise me that rugby players would be aroused at the thought of looking up the skirt of a bloke with hairy legs.
Curses! Must type my corrections faster.
Although, the S of the VBs is just the intro to an abysmal pastiche of 80s rock-rap overproduction, tacked on as artfully as a car chase in a comedy of manners.
Yes, FDB, I knew you’d jump on my Katz-style Entirely Deliberate Error. Just testing. [ahem]
Pardon my levity; I love the haka too. You can see why even non-NZ pakeha try to appropriate it – it is sooo f..ken cool.
Brian, I think the trick is NOT to respond to the All Blacks’ body language, or you’ve lost before the kick off.
I like the proffered story about the Chief’s escape. A more dangerous but also exuberant time. I was only half joking about the NME interview. Even if “hupane, kaupane” meant “rip your arm off and hit you over the head with the wet end”, it still wouldn’t be directly relevant to rugby. It’s not actually tribal warefare to the death. We don’t really want to live in that deadly tribal world. Sport gives us some of the exhaltation, eg we Wests Tigers fans were pretty heavy on the “I die! I live” at the end of this season. Imagine if we’d escaped up the ladder in to the top 8!
That’s the hairs on the back your neck right there; the haka somehow sums up a fast moving, heavy contact sport, gets you ready for what’s coming. It ain’t fixed. It ain’t even really safe. Who’s gonna win? Dunno. Bravery, risk, split second decisions made by individuals on the fly.
Ah, damn. Now I miss playing again.
I really don’t think the Haka is the source of the Wallabies current woes.
By the way, this is an opportune time for me to promote the best rugby blog I’ve come across – I only found it a few weeks ago, the commentary is spot on.
http://www.greenandgoldrugby.com/
At the moment, Australian rugger players have more to fear from what occurs after the haka I’d say.
“Ka mate” is part of my childhood lore. I love it.There have been some very fine performers of it in the last 15 years, Maori and pakeha.
Technically a haka is any ceremonial dance, not just a war dance. As for Ka Mate, wikipedia also says this:
The “Ka Mate” haka is classified as a haka taparahi – a ceremonial haka. “Ka Mate” is about the cunning ruse Te Rauparaha used to outwit his enemies, and may be interpreted as “a celebration of the triumph of life over death” (P?mare 2006).
Personally, I just think of it as the national anthem. You know, the one kiwis actually know, as opposed to the droning, shuffling, awkward official one.
The Brisbane Lions actually ripped it off the Fitzroy Lions. And don’t you forget it.
Just on this, and Idiot/savant’s point about kiwis actually knowing the Haka – is it just me, or is Waltzing Matilda great song, and vastly superior to our national anthem?
Gimme the Eureka flag, and a great song about a sheep-stealing scrote and I’ll salute. Toss that late 19th century “glad confident morning of a young nation” shit in the bin, and I’m onboard.
As some has pointed out, this comment doesn’t really recognise how important a place the Maori culture and language occupy in NZ (not to mention the fact that quite a large portion of the Kiwi population have Maori heritage!). Maori words are routinely used on formal occassions; Pakeha people will often take part in Maori ceremonial. It’s not something that’s just dredged up on the odd occassion; it is fundamentally part of NZ national identity.
Lefty E,
Perhaps the original verses from Advance Australia Fair should have been kept. No sheep theft, but a lot of British heart type stuff.
National anthems aren’t meant to be musically worthwhile, Lefty E. The whole point is that they’re simple to sing and remember (although I still don’t know our new one – look like a fucken goldfish when supposed to be singing it – but I can still sing up a storm with “God Save the Queen”).
It’s not music. It’s magic. Part of the glue that holds society together.
The only thing that I can add is that a hand shake is not what it was originally, but we all do it, and enjoy doing it. We do it for what it has become, what it means to us today. Ditto Haka.
David @26: “but I can still sing up a storm with “God Save the Queen”
I can still remember singing it on the parade ground in primary school, before marching in two-by-two.
Took years to understand what the Queen had to do with Santa. You know, the line about “…Santa victorious, happy and glorious…” or some such?
Just assumed that adults had some strange meaningless rituals, which just had to be performed to keep them happy…
The Haka’s amazing. I had a friend who did it for us. He was a really quiet and gentle guy (huge of course). He launched into the Haka and I was ready for the world to fall apart. Almost wet myself. It’s fierce.
.
But I hung on to my composure and contributed the traditonal Scots response – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_WEP9ZkpS4
Elise@28 “I can still remember singing it on the parade ground in primary school, before marching in two-by-two.”
*nods* I reckon I could still play it on a recorder.
Adrien @ 29 – you crack me up.
Monkeytypist
The importance of Maori language and culture to pakehas is little grasped over here in Aus. NZ has Maori taught in many schools, Maori history deep within school history classes, etc. More and more Maori used in everyday speech.
Aus is quite different; we don’t have our indigenous past and present suffusing our lives. We may be learning – slowly – but the basic respect and knowledge isn’t evident yet.
IMO
Ka mate !! Ka ora!!
Ka ora!!
Ah… that would be, “Kia ora!”
Ka kite ano.
I started this post with my own shallow subjective experience and have been richly rewarded, especially by the commentary on NZ culture. Ambi @ 32, I’ve only been to NZ once, back in 1981. In a taxi in Wellington with a Maori driver I remember reflecting how at that time it would be impossible for an Aboriginal to make a living driving cabs in a major Australian city. That is probably still the case although we now have legions drivers of Indian origin.
I’ve just released wilful @ 8 from moderation, which contains links to four other hakas. So all the numbers from there move along one.
Elise @ 29
Oh lord. How I detested Friday mornings at Lower Plenty Primary in the early 70s.
Darren @ 31
I don’t know about playing the bloody thing on a recorder after all these years – most of the time I was my recorder like a straw to suck green antiseptic out of the bucket to spit at my mates.
I’m guessing Saddam Hussein didn’t perform the haka when they found him.
“It’s not music. It’s magic.”
False dichotomy alert!
The All Blacks, right on! I saw those at MoMA a couple of years ago, there was a whole room full of them, it was incredible…
Oh, wait. I thought you were talking about
Ad Reinhardt.
Never mind.
I recall many many years ago watching the Fiji rugby team take on the All Blacks at Buckhurst Park.
The All Blacks hakaed away in the face of the deadpan Fijians who then, when the thing was over, whipped large wooden forks out of their afros in unison and held them out while smacking their lips, rubbing their tummies and generally indicating it was time for some long pig.
The All Blacks won as usual but not by as much as usual.
Mind you, when Fiji played Tonga, there were actual bite marks being dressed afterwards.
j_p_z, if you’d seen a room full of these guys or maybe of these guys you’d never forget it
Talking of the black clad Melburnians over on another thread: when I went with my NZ husband to visit his relatives with our 6 mo son we discovered you could buy All Blacks onesies! Black with a white rugby collar and the fern logo on it!
It looked really cool… never seen a baby in a black onesie before or since… must dig up a photo!
helen, being ignorant I’d always thought of silver ferns in this context.
But googling I can see it all over the place, including this!
Helen, my mad aunt in Tauranga sent me a one piece, with very cute matching booties with ferns on them, in All Blacks gear, for my infant. Not very welcome in our house, but we did laugh.
@12 – Kapa o Pango ends with a drawing down of the breath/spirit, hau-ora, into the lungs. It has been misinterpreted as a slashing of the throat.