Moving tribute to Tuwhare
Simon Sweetman of the Dominion Post gives the opening night of 'Tuwhare' a
glowing review.
The performance of 'Tuwhare' is guided by Charlottle Yates' conscientiously scripted biographical details. The evening's narrator - a natural - is Rawiri Paratene. His laidback but passionate delivery mirrors the style of Hone Tuwhare. Paratene even jokes, near the end of the evening "when they make a movie of his life, I wanna play him!" One audience member shouts back: "you've been auditioning for it all night!" Paratene encourages the crowd to call out in support, to applaud names like Ralph Hotere and Tuwhare's anti-apartheid stance. When he occasionally bumbles pronunciation, he apologises and takes the time to repeat the name correctly, thoughtfully.
The 11 songs on offer run the gambut from rock to folk, to chamber-pop to hip-hop, electronica meets with reggae, acoustic instruments work with electric. The best arrangements (and almost all of them are fantastic) show a real empathy for Tuwhare's words. For these musicians, it is clearly not just a project that involves putting a poem to an original tune; the music created adds emotional weight to the lyrics, and the musical settings help to reflect the tone of the poem.
Don McGlashan's rendition of 'Rain' (arguably Tuwhare's most famous set of lines) is a classic example: David Guerin's piano evokes the plink-plonk of raindrops; a mournful euphonium line from McGlashan conjures a mood of loneliness, contemplative and alert as he delivers the line "I can hear you making small holes in the silence/rain". Graham Brazier's acoustic guitar and harmonica treatment of 'Friend' is another highlight. The deceptively simple arrangemnt again mirrors the tone of the words - troubadour playing a guitar at a local pub, the perfect setting for one of Tuwhare's tales from an afternoon spent over a pint and a packet of chips.
Mahinarangi Tocker's powerful voice is sublime, her take on 'A Northland Heart-Scape' has her backed by the New Zealand Trio (piano, violin, cello) and Charlotte Yates' guitar. Whirimako Black also possesses a beautiful voice, whether singing in english or te reo on her version of 'Spring Song'.
The evening was a triumph. It was a moving tribute to one of our literary heroes; Tuwhare is still producing great work, still performing and looking at the work in his quizzical way, commenting on politics one moment, with satire and irony, addressing personal loss the next. 'Tuwhare' was a celebration of the great man's life and work.