A postcard from Wales – a world stage for Māori music

Thursday, 29 May 2025

Three Māori bilingual recording artists – MOHI, Jordyn with a Why, and MĀ – represented Aotearoa in May at the Focus Wales international music festival in Wrexham, Wales. Andrea Hammond asked MOHI to reflect on the experience…

It's the other side of the world and the time zones are crazy.

APRA AMCOS Aotearoa approached me, Jordyn with a Why, and MĀ to perform and kōrero (speak) at Focus Wales, a festival I’ve wanted to do for years, not only because of how big it is – more than 250 artists and 22,000 people – but also because it's on the other side of the world.

This is my first time to Wales, and first time to the United Kingdom. The architecture and culture here are definitely different. There's a lot of buildings that were built a long, long, long time ago, making me reflect on our whare (house) and marae back home.

One thing that really struck us is that in pubs and music venues, Welsh is the predominant language spoken. Also all of the signage is bilingual – and the first version on the sign is in Welsh. That’s a really cool thing to see and something Aotearoa could do – it normalises the idea that the language is alive and well.

Welsh music is pretty cool and the language is through a whole lot of genres – traditional music, hip hop, rap, R&B, and they use familiar as well as some different ways to incorporate their language and English into songs.

We were welcomed by the rōpū (group) Cymru, the people from this area, who performed poetry for us, which was amazing. We did our thing, as we would do back home, and it was a nice way to start FOCUS for us and our crew with manaakitanga (respect) and reciprocity.

At the welcoming, the artist Talulah sang a waiata, a hymn, and the language was Cymraeg, their native tongue. The way she took those kupu, those traditional words and sang a capella but within a jazz, R&B-esque melodic flow was quite similar to what we do back home with our music – taking traditional stories and inspirations of old and then trying to make sense of them in the now with music we love and create.

The majority of my songs are in Māori, and here, like when I first started out in Aotearoa, I worried if mainstream audiences would understand what's being sung. Then we performed Te Aroha Mauroa on Glyndwr TV which broadcasts across Wales. The audience loved it – once they got the hook on the chorus, they were all singing along!

We’re so grateful to the British Council and the many partners who created this cultural exchange for us. I'm super honoured to be here to share our culture and our language alongside Jordyn and MĀ. Not only the music, but the stories that we each carry in our own songs and our own whakapapa (genealogy) has a big part to play. I feel like it's a huge privilege, and we don't take it lightly, because we know that these connections that we make will hopefully build pathways and opportunities for the next generation of Māori artists.

For te reo Māori to flourish globally and be in front of people, this experience is showing that we just need the stage, the audiences and the exposure. A big thing for my music is to build a fan base and a space in the UK, to build communities and stretch the sound. I hope that from this there will be collaborations in the future – new songs, new music with Māori and Welsh musicians and communities, helping to revitalise and normalise both languages.

– As told to Andrea Hammond