E puāwai ana - Hutt Fest performances

It's been a busy and eventful week. With the enclosure finally completed, we blessed and opened the sound garden, and I've had groups of excited tamariki coming through to learn the rules and explore the place for themselves. Then on Wednesday night we took our Year 6 class to Hutt Fest (formerly Polyfest) to perform in front of their whānau and community. Getting all the taonga there was a massive effort, and I am so grateful to Matua Hemi and Māmā Moira who went beyond the call of duty to help me with this, despite the atrocious weather.

Matua Hemi rocking the bass marimba with Whaea Helen Willberg, a friend of mine who came to help prepare the class for the concert. Helen is an amazing force in the music education world, particularly in all the mahi she has done for early childhood, and it was a pleasure and a privilege to have her come and support us,

Here is the last practice we had before the concert. Our tamariki did a great job and you can see their excitement at the very end when they managed to get the ending spot on:

The song they managed to nail is Kōpata, a waiata I wrote about love and its ability to lift and transform us, connecting individuals into one group in the way that scattered dew droplets become one body of water when stimulated. It's made up of a number of reasonably simple patterns but some of the interesting timings can be tricky, and they were justifiably stoked when they got it right.

I chose this class to take to Hutt Fest this year because of their enthusiasm for music. One of the neat things that they managed to do on the night was to manage themselves through the performances without a conductor or adult assistance. Here they are performing their first song at the concert. The waiata is about Matariki, the star cluster that marks our Māori New Year, and the time of renewal this heralds. 

Being a teacher is a big role with a lot of work that goes into supporting our tamariki, but there can be some amazing benefits from it. Two of the students from this class were helping me this morning to put the marimbas back together, and as a reward I let them play on the taonga and eventually started teaching Te Maioha a new waiata on the ukulele when she showed interest. She picked it up so fast I was amazed, and had soon pretty much mastered it! Here we are playing together. Go you Te Maioha!!