Haka (; plural ''haka'', in both
Māori
Māori or Maori can refer to:
Relating to the Māori people
* Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group
* Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand
* Māori culture
* Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...
and
English) are a variety of ceremonial
performance art in
Māori culture. It is often performed by a group, with vigorous movements and stamping of the feet with rhythmically shouted or chanted accompaniment. Haka are performed to
welcome distinguished guests, or to acknowledge great achievements, occasions, or funerals. Haka have been traditionally performed by both men and women
and for a variety of social functions within Māori culture.
Kapa haka groups are common in schools. The main Māori
performing arts
The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perform ...
competition,
Te Matatini, takes place every two years.
New Zealand
sports teams' practice of performing a haka before their international matches has made haka more widely known around the world. This tradition began with the
1888–89 New Zealand Native football team
The 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team was a New Zealand rugby union team that toured Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand in 1888 and 1889. It mostly comprised players of Māori ancestry, but also included some Pākehā (white N ...
tour and has been carried on by the
New Zealand rugby union team (known as the All Blacks) since 1905. Although popularly associated with the traditional battle preparations of male
warriors, conceptions that haka is a "war dance", and the
non-accurate performance of haka by non-Māori, are considered erroneous and sometimes offensive by Māori scholars.
Etymology
The group of people performing a haka is referred to as a ''
kapa haka'' (''kapa'' meaning ''group'' or ''team'', and also ''rank'' or ''row''). The Māori word ''haka'' has cognates in other
Polynesian languages, for example: Samoan ''saʻa'' (
saʻasaʻa), Tokelauan ''haka'', Rarotongan ''ʻaka'', Hawaiian ''haʻa'', Marquesan ''haka'', meaning 'to be short-legged' or 'dance'; all from
Proto-Polynesian
Proto-Polynesian (abbreviated PPn) is the hypothetical proto-language from which all the modern Polynesian languages descend. It is a daughter language of the Proto-Austronesian language. Historical linguists have reconstructed the language using ...
''saka'', from
Proto-Malayo-Polynesian ''sakaŋ'', meaning 'bowlegged'.
History and practice
Origins
According to Maori scholar
Tīmoti Kāretu
Sir Tīmoti Samuel Kāretu (born 29 April 1937) is a New Zealand academic of Māori language and performing arts. He served as the inaugural head of the Department of Māori at the University of Waikato, and rose to the rank of professor. He w ...
, haka have been "erroneously defined by generations of uninformed as 'war dances'", while
Māori mythology
Māori mythology and Māori traditions are two major categories into which the remote oral history of New Zealand's Māori may be divided. Māori myths concern fantastic tales relating to the origins of what was the observable world for the pr ...
places haka as a dance "about the celebration of life". Following a creation story, the sun god,
Tama-nui-te-rā
In Māori mythology, Tama-nui-te-rā (Tamanuiterā) is the personification of the Sun.
Etymology
In the Māori language, ''Tama-nui-te-rā'' means "Great Son of the Sun". The Māori word for "sun" or "day" is ''rā'', deriving from Proto-Polyn ...
, had two wives, the Summer Maid,
Hine-raumati In Maori mythology, Tane-Rore is the personification of shimmering air as he performs a ''haka'' for his mother Hine-raumati.
Family
Tama-nui-te-ra had two wives, Hine-takurua and Hine-raumati. The child of Tama-nui-te-ra and Hine-raumati, Tane ...
, and the Winter Maid,
Hine-takurua. Haka originated in the coming of Hine-raumati, whose presence on still, hot days was revealed in a quivering appearance in the air. This was haka of
Tāne-rore In Maori mythology, Tane-Rore is the personification of shimmering air as he performs a ''haka'' for his mother Hine-raumati.
Family
Tama-nui-te-ra had two wives, Hine-takurua and Hine-raumati. The child of Tama-nui-te-ra and Hine-raumati, Tane ...
, the son of Hine-raumati and Tama-nui-te-rā. Hyland comments that "
e haka is (and also represents) a natural phenomena
ic on hot summer days, the 'shimmering' atmospheric distortion of air emanating from the ground is personified as 'Te Haka a Tānerore'".
Jackson and Hokowhitu state, "haka is the generic name for all types of dance or ceremonial performance that involve movement." The various types of haka include ''whakatū waewae'', ''tūtū ngārahu'' and ''peruperu''. The ''tūtū ngārahu'' involves jumping from side to side, while in the ''whakatū waewae'' no jumping occurs. Another kind of haka performed without weapons is the ''ngeri'', the purpose of which was to motivate a warrior psychologically. The movements are very free, and each performer is expected to be expressive of their feelings. ''Manawa wera'' haka were generally associated with funerals or other occasions involving death. Like the ''ngeri'' they were performed without weapons, and there was little or no choreographed movement.
War haka (') were originally performed by warriors before a battle, proclaiming their strength and prowess in order to intimidate the opposition. Various actions are employed in the course of a performance, including
facial contortions such as showing the whites of the eyes ('), and poking out the tongue (', performed by men only
), and a wide variety of vigorous body actions such as slapping the hands against the body and stomping of the feet. As well as
chant
A chant (from French ', from Latin ', "to sing") is the iterative speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two main pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of notes ...
ed words, a variety of cries and grunts are used. Haka may be understood as a kind of
symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning com ...
in which the different parts of the body represent many instruments. The hands, arms, legs, feet, voice, eyes, tongue and the body as a whole combine to express courage, annoyance, joy or other feelings relevant to the purpose of the occasion.
18th and 19th centuries
The earliest Europeans to witness haka described them as being "vigorous" and "ferocious".
Joseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, (19 June 1820) was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences.
Banks made his name on the 1766 natural-history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. He took part in Captain James ...
, who accompanied
James Cook
James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean an ...
on his first voyage to New Zealand in 1769, later recorded:
:"The War Song and dance consists of Various contortions of the limbs during which the tongue is frequently thrust out incredibly far and the orbits of the eyes enlarged so much that a circle of white is distinctly seen round the Iris: in short nothing is omitted which can render a human shape frightful and deformed, which I suppose they think terrible."
From their arrival in the early 19th century, Christian
missionaries
A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...
tried unsuccessfully to eradicate haka, along with other forms of Māori culture that they saw as conflicting with Christian beliefs and practice.
Henry Williams, the leader of the
Church Missionary Society mission in New Zealand, aimed to replace haka and traditional Māori chants (''waiata'') with
hymns. Missionaries also encouraged European harmonic singing as part of the process of conversion.
The use of haka in welcoming ceremonies for members of
British royal family helped to improve its standing among Europeans.
Prince Alfred, the
Duke of Edinburgh
Duke of Edinburgh, named after the city of Edinburgh in Scotland, was a substantive title that has been created three times since 1726 for members of the British royal family. It does not include any territorial landholdings and does not produc ...
, was the first royal to visit New Zealand, in 1869. Upon the Duke's arrival at the wharf in
Wellington, he was greeted by a vigorous haka. The ''Wellington Independent'' reported, "The excitement of the Maoris becomes uncontrollable. They gesticulate, they dance, they throw their weapons wildly in the air, while they yell like fiends let loose. But all this fierce yelling is of the most friendly character. They are bidding the Duke welcome."
Modern haka
In modern times, various haka have been composed to be performed by women and even children.
Haka are performed for various reasons: for welcoming distinguished guests, or to acknowledge great achievements, occasions or funerals.
The
1888–89 New Zealand Native football team
The 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team was a New Zealand rugby union team that toured Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand in 1888 and 1889. It mostly comprised players of Māori ancestry, but also included some Pākehā (white N ...
began a tradition by performing haka during an international tour. The common use of haka by the national rugby union team before matches, beginning with
The Original All Blacks in 1905, has made one type of haka familiar.
Some events have caused protests. The 1979 annual "haka party" parade at the
University of Auckland – in which engineering students persisted in parodying haka by painting male genitals on their body and performing with sexually obscene gestures – was disrupted by a collection of Māori and Pacific Island students (''He Taua'', or The War Party) headed by
Ngā Tamatoa
Ngā Tamatoa (''The Warriors'') was a Māori activist group that operated throughout the 1970s to promote Māori rights, fight racial discrimination, and confront injustices perpetrated by the New Zealand Government, particularly violations of the ...
, a prominent Māori activist group. For two decades people including Māori students at the university had asked the university and the engineering department to stop the tradition. In 1979 the protesters included
Hone Harawira, later a
Member of Parliament. Several of the engineering students were assaulted, and members of ''He Taua'' were arrested. Their court case in Auckland sparked anti-racism protests outside the courthouse and was supported by a range of people including the president of the Auckland University Students Association.
The choreographed dance and chant popularized around the world by the
All Blacks derives from "
Ka Mate",
a brief haka previously intended for extemporaneous, non-synchronized performance, whose composition is attributed to
Te Rauparaha (1760s–1849), a war leader of the
Ngāti Toa tribe. 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".
Concerns were expressed that the authorship and significance of this haka to the Ngāti Toa were being lost and that it had "become the most performed, the most maligned, the most abused of all haka", and was now "the most globally recognised form of
cultural appropriation
Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from ...
". Specific legal challenges regarding the rights of the Ngāti Toa to be acknowledged as the authors and owners of "Ka Mate" were eventually settled in a Deed of Settlement between Ngāti Toa and the
New Zealand Government
, background_color = #012169
, image = New Zealand Government wordmark.svg
, image_size=250px
, date_established =
, country = New Zealand
, leader_title = Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
, appointed = Governor-General
, main_organ =
, ...
and
New Zealand Rugby Union agreed in 2009 and signed in 2012.
Cultural influence
In the 21st century, kapa haka has been offered as a subject in universities, including the study of haka, and is practiced in schools and military institutions.
In addition to the national
Te Matatini ("many faces") festival,
local and regional competitions attract dozens of teams and thousands of spectators.
The All Blacks' use of haka has become the most widely known, but several other New Zealand sports teams now perform haka before commencing a game. These include the
national rugby league team ("the Kiwis"), and the
men's national basketball team ("Tall Blacks"). In the lead up to the
Rugby World Cup in 2011,
flashmob haka became a popular way of expressing support for the All Blacks. Some Māori leaders thought it was "inappropriate" and a "bastardisation" of haka. Sizeable flashmob haka were performed in Wellington and Auckland, as well as London, which has a large New Zealander immigrant community.
In November 2012, a Māori kapa haka group from
Rotorua
Rotorua () is a city in the Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand's North Island. The city lies on the southern shores of Lake Rotorua, from which it takes its name. It is the seat of the Rotorua Lakes District, a territorial authority encompass ...
performed a version of the "
Gangnam Style
"Gangnam Style" ( ko, 강남스타일, ) is a K-pop song by South Korean rapper Psy, released on July 15, 2012, by YG Entertainment as the lead single of his sixth studio album, ''Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1'' (''Ssai Yukgap Part 1''). The term ...
" dance mixed with a traditional haka in
Seoul, celebrating 50 years of diplomatic relations between South Korea and New Zealand.
On 7 December 2014, at the
2014 Roller Derby World Cup
The 2014 Roller Derby World Cup is an international women's roller derby tournament organized by ''Blood & Thunder'' magazine. Teams of amateur skaters from six continents compete for their respective nations.
The 2014 Roller Derby World Cup is ...
in
Dallas,
Texas,
Team New Zealand performed a haka on roller skates to the
Australian Roller Derby team before their bout in the quarter-finals. Team New Zealand performed a haka before their debut game against
Team USA at the
2011 Roller Derby World Cup
The 2011 Roller Derby World Cup was an international women's roller derby tournament organized by ''Blood & Thunder'' magazine. Teams of amateur skaters from around the world were fielded to compete for their respective nations.
The inaugural 20 ...
, on 1 December 2011; however, it was unexpected and the arena music was still playing. It has since become an expected tradition.
In March 2019, following the
Christchurch mosque shootings, school pupils and other groups performed haka to honour those killed in the attacks.
The choreography in the "
Miroh" music video by K-pop group
Stray Kids featured haka elements.
Three or four
American football teams are known to perform haka as a pregame rite. This appears to have begun at
Kahuku High School where both the student body and local community includes many Polynesian Hawaiians, Māori, Samoans, Tahitians, and Tongans. The
University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors football team also adopted haka as a pregame rite
during the 2006 season, and the practice has spread to a number of other teams overseas; there has, however, been some criticism of this as inappropriate and disrespectful. Non-traditional or inaccurate haka performances have been criticised by Māori academics, such as Morgan Godfrey.
See also
*
Kapa haka
*
Māori music
*
War song
A war song is a musical composition that relates to war, or a society's attitudes towards war. They may be pro-war, anti-war, or simply a description of everyday life during war times.
It is possible to classify these songs by historical conflic ...
; Similar dances
*
Cibi
The Cibi () is a Fijian meke of Bauan origin and war dance, generally performed before or after a battle. It came to prominence in the rugby field in 1939 when it was performed by the Fiji national rugby union team before the match. It is also kno ...
*
Hoko (dance)
Hoko is the tribal war dance of Easter Island, a dance of welcome and a sign of hospitality. It is also used before sports matches in the same way that the Haka (sports), Haka is performed by the New Zealand national rugby union team, similar to th ...
*
Hula
*
Kailao
*
Siva Tau
References
Inline citations
General references
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*
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* McLean, Mervyn (1996). ''Maori music''. Auckland: Auckland University Press.
*
* Pōmare, Mīria (3 March 2017)
"Ngāti Toarangatira – Chant composed by Te Rauparaha" Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand.
*
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External links
Haka – A New Zealand icon* Waihere Dance Group
Original Maori Haka Dancevia
YouTube
{{Authority control
Dances of Polynesia
Group dances
Māori culture
Partial squatting position
Ritual dances
War dances