Musician Moone composed and performed her first song when she was five years old. This month, she's turning 50 and is celebrating by recording a new single and co-producing her own album.
Known offstage as Marama Rice, of Tapuika iwi in the Bay of Plenty, she is beautiful, snazzy and a woman who knows just how to belt out a tune.
“I've actually spent 20 years really trying to find the right combination. And you know it's something that you forever try to make it better and you try to make it bigger and you progress and you move with it,” she says.
Moone will release her new song, Rockstar Mum on Mother's Day this year.
The single follows many years in Sydney, helping others record their own albums in a studio she owned.
But now she's home in Te Puke, doing it for herself and is planning to follow the single release with her own album.
"Rockstar Mum is really about the empowerment of women, empowering women … The album is very different. It's different from Rockstar Mum."
It's a little bit dark … I am quite eclectic, but at the same time, I would say that my album is real old school.”
Inspired by mum and aunt
Moone says her inspiration to sing came from two special women - her mother Alison and her late aunt Irihapeti Morehu.
“She actually was a kaikaranga (ceremonial caller) and she had taken me under her wing. And she was actually teaching me karanga … I'm certainly not really for that sort of thing.”
“I would really like to just mention my mum, she's really been a big inspiration to me. I really hope that I can be a role model for my daughter the way she's been a really huge influence on me and a role model for me.”
Moone says she hopes to inspire and encourage other wāhine with her music by proving that age is just a number and people never too old to express themselves.
“More women start getting to a certain age where they just feel really invisible and they don't feel heard and I don't believe that it needs to be like that. Not at all. I'm actually doing it so on I'm really I'm loving it. Love menopause.”
Moone will also tour Aotearoa to promote her album once Covid restrictions ease.