Song Loss and Social Context among the New Zealand Maori
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2603673 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mervyn Mclean (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1965 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 296 |
| Publication date | 1965-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ethnomusicology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0014-1836 • E-ISSN: 2156-7417 |
| Publisher | University of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2307/850240 |
| OpenAlex | W2332476560 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
The Maori of New Zealand are a people whose way of life has seen profound changes since extensive European contact first began in the 19th century. This paper examines the mechanism by which social change amongst the Maori may affect the transmission of traditional chant. Of the social institutions of the Maori, none can be said to have reached the present day unaltered, and some have disappeared altogether. Nevertheless it must be pointed out that the Maori community is in many ways a conservative one with strong resistance to change, and the mechanism of song loss here presented would be very different in a society which placed positive value upon change or which had greater tolerance to change. With the decline of social institutions, decline in the language itself has gone hand in hand. With inability to speak Maori, inability to learn the songs not un-naturally follows. Decline of language ability is a very obvious reason for the failure of the present day younger generation to learn the songs. Even amongst fluent Maori speakers and expert singers, however, a certain amount of song loss occurs and may always have occurred. For an explanation it is necessary to turn to social institutions and it is with this aspect of the problem that the present paper is mainly concerned. [Kinship grouping amongst the Maori is by whanau (extended family), hapu (clan or sub-tribe) iwi (tribe) and waka (canoe). The whanau is a small group all of whose members are closely related. The hapu is a non-exogenous group of up to several hundred members and is named generally after a common ancestor. The iwi consists of a number of related hapu each able to trace ancestry back to a common ancestor. Finally, the waka is a group of tribes whose ancestors formed the crew of one of the famous canoes
Clan · Context (archaeology) · Ethnology · Genealogy · Kinship · Sociology · Tribe · Value (mathematics) · Anthropology · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Gender Studies · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · New Zealand Economic and Social Studies
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,06 |
| Citation span | 1977 - 2022 (46) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |