Mahana Rock Opera
| “ | To most people Mahana was a rock band.
To the folk involved Mahana was a travelling road-show, a spiritual family, a community on wheels. |
” |
The musical production of The Mahana rock opera was a colourful and perceptive view of early New Zealand life and begins with the coming of the Māori in canoes from the South West Pacific, their meeting in the high seas and subsequent voyaging to Aotearoa. It portrays the arrival of the white man, his politics, his religion, early colonisation and the often negative transformation of the country dear to Māoridom. The storyline and music climax as Māori and Pākehā do battle with each other, and continues with the eventual reconciliation of the two races. The rock opera employed many special effects, costumes, and some 20 actors, singers and musicians.
Mahana was formed in 1977 when a group of Māori and Pākehā friends who were mobile-truckers started jamming together. What they shared was a common bond. They were all mobile and lived with their families in a nomadic gypsy lifestyle in handcrafted house trucks and buses. They first came to notoriety when they performed on the Aerial Railway stage at the 1978 Nambassa 3-day festival, becoming a huge hit. They called themselves "Mahana" in honour of a friend who loaned them his equipment to perform the 1978 festival. Within 24 hours and by popular acclaim they were headlining on the Nambassa main stage with a 20,000W PA in front of tens of thousands of people.
After the Winter show Mahana performed at the Nambassa 1979 3 day festival in Waihi in front of 40,000 fans and again at the 1981 5 day celebration up Waitawheta valley. At Nambassa 1979 they formed their own self-contained gypsy encampment circle incorporating dozens of house-trucks and buses. This was the beginnings of the Road-show Fayre era, and within their large magic circle enclosure, continuous entertainment and theatre was available for children and adults, organised and spontaneous. After the festival the Roadshow Fayre and Mahana continued their musically founded gypsy lifestyle, touring from town to town entertaining people throughout the nation. Mahana was filmed live on the main stage at Nambassa 1979. The film was part of the New Zealand Film Commissions entry to the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.
By telling the story of New Zealand through a musical blending of the two cultures it was hoped that the Rock Opera would provide a vehicle to express their collective feeling of Ko Tahi Tatou, "We are one together."
Mahana Rock Opera written by Billy TK and Mahana, and Produced and Directed by John Tucker and Mahana.
Read more about this topic: Nambassa Winter Show With Mahana
Famous quotes containing the words rock and/or opera:
“Together, we three, until the world crumbles and there is no longer a stone or a rock or a tree or a blade of grass.”
—Griffin Jay, and Harold Young. Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey)
“A pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anywhere else, I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)