About Us - Kohine Ponika - Ka Haku Au



		About Kohine
		In 1938, Sir Apirana Ngata visited Ruatoki and was stunned by the beauty of their welcoming waiata. When he asked who the composer was, the people directed him to a young woman. Her name was Kohine Te Whakarua Ponika. The master immediately recognised her extraordinary skill, took Kohine aside and asked her to write him a song. It would be one of many that became New Zealand classics. Today, her works lead some of the most popular Māori music ever written, sung by iwi across the nation, indeed throughout the world. Poi Porotiti Atu, Aku Mahi (Karanga, Karanga), Tōia Mai Rā, E Rona E, Kua Rongorongo, Ka Kimi and the exquisite Ka Haku Au are just a handful of compositions which are now instantly recognisable. Yet beneath the friendly, catchy tunes, lay words which subtly called her people to action. By being captivated by her songs, they unknowingly were playing to her tune – reclaiming te reo Māori. Many then and many still today do not realise the enormity of purpose behind the waiata. Kohine Te Whakarua Ponika was born in Ruatoki, 28 June, 1920, one of eight children to Hinerotu Numia, Tuhoe and The Rev Wharetini Rangi of Ngāti Porou. She was actually born in a corn field. “It’s a wonder I wasn’t called Kaanga or Corny. Still Kohine is near enough,” she wrote. Home was the Mission House in Ruatoki and the untouched earth of Tūhoe. Music was her world, humming and creating since her memories began. “I would write my little songs and the whole valley would sing them.” Thus, many of her waiata were a fixture in her valley years before they were claimed by the outside world. But as a child it was not only music that drew attention. Historian and friend, Tāmati Kruger, says Kohine wasn’t like other children, preferring to sit with the old people rather than play. Even when they encouraged her to go outside, she would return and sit for hours listening to the discussions of her iwi. “In the end they let her stay and in later years when she spoke of things no-one ever questioned her because she was there,” says Tāmati. Her knowledge of whakapapa and tikanga was supreme. She was even schooled in the discipline of taiaha and haka, a skill which led many students to her doorstep. “People often came to visit. Not just about her music. I recall many Tūhoe men coming to learn haka from her. Next minute they would be outside on the front lawn, three men behind her and my tiny grandmother in front of them, leading the haka, eyes ablaze with passion and body and feet keeping the rhythm as the men followed behind her,” says granddaughter, Ngahuia Wade. As a young woman she met and married Koti Ponika, one of the last students of taiaha under the Tūhoe masters of that era. Standing more than 6ft he towered over her tiny frame and was not Kohine’s father’s choice. The Rev. Wharetini Rangi wanted his daughter to marry another but she only had eyes for Koti. In 1938, her homespun songs struck a new note after she was singled out by esteemed Māori leader, Apirana Ngata, during one of his many government visits to Ruatoki. “Select your words well, make them soft, smooth and flowing with rhythm and keep the ear attuned to the sound. These were words from the old Master that I realise now I was so richly blessed with and humbly acknowledge,” she recorded in her diary. Kohine would eventually fulfil Ngata’s personal request to write a waiata based on the music of Schubert’s Serenade. She had never heard of Schubert but the following diary entry reveals the first time she did: “The effect on me was one of stunned silence and haloed awe then sprinkling the seconds with sad but warm memories. The tears welled and rolled uncontrolled. So much for a humble listener’s introduction to unforgotten masters of music … The tune up to this time was filling my brain, haunting my ears, my throat and pulsating deep within the pit of my stomach … Aue! E kore oti ranei e kore pea – and I found the first words for the last line of the verse.” Kohine Ponika’s version was recorded and performed by Mark Metekingi and the Aotearoa Māori Chorale. She became a prolific writer, restoring poetic reo of old through the allure of verse and contemporary music. All of her poems are about being Māori, a call to preserve tikanga; the language and the culture. Her opus, Ka Haku Au, was recognised in Witi Ihimaera’s compilation of NZ writers, the much acclaimed, Into the World of Light. It was the literary equivalent to the Māori political awakening of the day. Kohine Ponika was the poet of Māori renaissance. “Kohine was absolutely within the forefront of showing us if you want to go somewhere you have to put your past before you and in all of her work that’s what she was doing for us,” says Witi Ihimaera. She was often surprised when her works, written and composed at her kitchen table, won national awards and humbled when her songs were sung by others. Her preference to remain at home with her family lessened a public profile she did not hanker for. “I’ve never travelled. I’m just a housewife,” she once said. “I don’t have wealth. I don’t have land. But what I have been blessed with is the gift of expression.” Kohine and Koti had one son, Hati Winston Ponika, and adopted eight more children. Her eldest daughter, Tini Ponika, was abandoned as a baby on a bus. “The bus driver pulled up at her home and called out: ‘“There’s a parcel here for you.’,” says Tini Ponika. “She came out and asked: ‘where is it?’ The bus driver replied: ‘It’s over there sleeping. It’s yours,’ and from that moment, my mother was Kohine.” Her children became her sounding board, her orchestra, her choir on call. Kohine would often have epiphanies in the midnight hours and stir the household to waken and play the ukulele before the tune left her. Because she did not write music, she would teach the song to her children. By morning they knew it by heart. By that evening they were singing the new songs to adults learning kapa haka under Kohine’s firm tutelage. Her music was often inspired by the most simple. From a cricket to a simple dripping tap, Kohine Ponika instead heard pulse and rythym. Indeed, one of her most celebrated waiata, Tōia Mai Rā, was composed after she heard the tuning of a ukulele. Thus, the genesis of the famous, Tōia Mai Rā, are from the chords, My Dog Has Fleas. Yet one of her most stunning waiata is least widely known. Ngā Mahara, the song she finally wrote for Sir Apirana Ngata based on Schubert’s Serenade, was recorded by Mark Metekingi and the Aotearoa Māori Chorale in 1984. The lyrics actually retell that fateful meeting with Sir Apirana and beseech him and others passed to draw near again, to give her strength to write his song. Ngā Mahara ends with the lines: “At last, a promise fulfilled! At last, memories are laid to rest!” Kohine Te Whakarua Ponika died from illness in 1989 and was taken back to her beloved valley. She is buried at Tauarau Marae with her husband, Koti. She is home.








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