Moana And The Tribe

New Zealand band Moana & the Tribe defy easy definition as their music slips and slides across genre ‘creating dub-ambient-soul-funk from nowhere else but right here, right now.’

One of the most distinctive, articulate and significant voices and long acknowledged for having consistently pushed the boundaries of M?ori music in both her recordings and live performances, singer/songwriter Moana Maniapoto (Ngati Tuwharetoa /Tuhourangi /Ngati Pikiaao) who – first with Moana and the Moahunters and latterly as Moana & the Tribe – has taken her often politically conscious music to festivals across the world.

She paid her way through law school by singing in covers bands, took her version of the feminist soul song Black Pearl with her band Moana & the Moahunters onto the charts in 1990. Moana has articulated a Maori perspective of colonisation in memorable songs (not the least in the powerful song Treaty) and has effectively incorporated taonga puoro (traditional instruments) into music which refers to rock, soul, classical and reggae – but always sounds solely like Moana-music.

Moana Maniapoto has been awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to Maori and music, and in 2007 was also honoured with the prestigious award of New Zealand Art Laureate and won the Grand Jury Prize of the International Songwriting Contest with her song Moko. She was also the driving force behind the APRA Maioha Songwriting Award

Moana Maniapoto has released the albums Tahi, Rua, Toru, Acoustic ,Wha and the DVD Live & Proud as well as a retrospective album The Best of Moana & the Tribe and teamed up with band member Paddy Free (Pitch Black) to produce and co-write in 2014 her fifth studio album Rima.

Since 2002 Moana & the Tribe have played many big festivals and smaller venues in Germany, Italy, Poland, Austria, Netherlands, Russia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Spain, England , Scotland, Greece, Turkey, Norway , Canada, South Korea, China, Taiwan, New Caledonia, Australia and New Zealand.

They have taken their haka-funk-dub-fusion to venues as iconic as Herodus Atticus (Athens) or the Sydney Opera House as well as to the Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland), Chiemsee Reggae (Germany) Etnosur (Spain) Cross Cultures (Poland) and Sziget Festival Budapest (one of the biggest festivals in Europe with more 400,000 visitors)

The New Zealand Herald described Moana & the Tribe as “the most powerful, enjoyable and important act on Womad 2014 main stage delivering a thumping, visually powerful and cleverly calculated implosion of waiata, haka and electronic-flavoured soul-funk”.

They performed at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games 2014 where they represented New Zealand in the “Boomerang Project”, a collaboration between Scottish, Maori and Aboriginal artists.

She continues to articulate the desires and aspirations of her people while also addressing head-on the wrongs of the past. Moana does this with a rare voice, which can be as seductive as it is assertive. The emotional depth and sad beauty of her songs, as much as their hypnotic melody and groove, confirms Moana’s status as one of New Zealand’s finest artists.