- 2025-01-22
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MUSIC
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Marlon Williams Announces First Māori Language Album “Te Whare Tīwekaweka”, Shares New Song “Aua Atu Rā”
Lyttelton-based singer-songwriter Marlon Williams has announced his first Māori language album “Te Whare Tīwekaweka” will be released on April 4, 2025.
It is his fourth studio album since the 2022 album “My Boy”. This time, the album was created in Māori, reflecting his Ngāi Tahu and Ngāi Tai roots.
The album comprises a 14-track, featuring guest appearances from Lyttelton-based rapper KOMMI and Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde.
From the album, he unveiled the first single called “Aua Atu Rā” on January 21, 2025.
He wrote the song with KOMMI. Produced by Marlon Williams and Mark Perkins.
The accompanying music video was directed by Marlon Wiliams.
The track references the Maori proverb “he waka eke noa”.
Marlon Williams said of the song, “'My stumbling around in flawed, simple Māori in my Lyttelton bedroom studio, spurned on by the thought of writing a depressively isolationist rebuttal to the above whakatauki, was the moment that kickstarted the record. It speaks to something universal, but especially pertinent to Te Ao Māori's collectivist culture, that I've always found difficult to square. We ARE all in the same boat, and as the British literary pundit GK Chesterton added to the picture, 'we owe each other a terrible loyalty,' and yet are at once utterly alone.”- He continued, “As a songwriter, I cherish simplicity, but as a speaker of Māori, I had a bucketload of whakamā (self-doubt) to push through before I could even approach my friend Kommi about helping me write songs in Māori. We took this song out on the road with us five years ago and it just felt so damn good to play. I'm proud of it for reasons deeper than I've felt as a songwriter before. This song acted as a guiding light for the rest of the album to follow.”
Marlon Williams has been working on his new album for five years. The album takes inspiration from the Māori proverb “Ko te reo Māori, he matapihi ki Te Ao Māori,” meaning “The Māori language is a window to the Māori world.”
Marlon Williams said, “I hope that music may do the mahi (work) that conversation cannot, and that it may broaden and deepen our sense of interconnectedness.” -
He said of the album cover artwork, “The beautiful artwork on the cover of Te Whare Tīwekaweka is a charcoal sketch my mother Jennifer Rendall drew in the months before I was born. The worldly slender man of business loping back home from afar in the night with a suitcase stuffed full of pounds sterling. The ladder leading up to the top bedroom. It makes me think of The BFG trumpeting dreams into windows. It makes me think of coming home late, post tour, and not wanting to disturb the domestic serenity of the lived in living room. To bed, to sleep. Everything's more gentle after a good sleep. Ahhhh the privilege of a relievable homesickness.”
Photo by Ian Laidlaw - source : Apple Music
