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Indie musician Greatsouth incorporates traditional Māori instruments into his work, and it’s finding him an audience all over the world.
A year ago, Payton Taplin AKA Greatsouth put out a video of his song ‘It’s Getting Hotti’ on social media and it changed his life.
The Tāmaki Makaurau indie musician, who incorporates taonga puoro in his music, says the reaction was huge.
“It was just like me playing taonga puoro, singing over the song about Te Manukanuka in front of the moana. And that video really changed my life, really.”
It resonated with people not just in Aotearoa, but around the world, he told RNZ’s Music 101.
“Even indigenous outside of Aotearoa, in Canada, over in the States and all over in South America, really having this visceral reaction to it.
“To the point where I was getting messages like of whanaunga or like Māori over in Australia that hadn’t been home for years, saying they’d listened to the song so much. They loved the video so much that they booked their ticket home for the first time in 10 years.”
The reaction gave him faith that he was on the right musical path, he says.
“And I was like, just more tohu of like, man, just keep on this path and keep releasing music and keep being yourself in a space that indie rock, or this kind of alternative space, doesn’t necessarily see many Māori.”
While the video didn’t have all the production bells and whistles, it did have authenticity, he says.
“Seeing, I think, a traditional taonga puoro, a traditional instrument, a song about traditional ways of being, a song about the moana with sounds of the moana through a video in front of that moana and I was like not done up or anything. I was literally in my hunting and fishing gear.”
The song, which is included on his latest album Hellhole of the Pacific, has brought him connections throughout the world, he says.
“People wanting us to come over, but also just connecting me into that taonga puoro world as well and learning more about the pūrākau and the whakapapa and the tikanga around taonga puoro, whakairo and just giving us more ideas to like, ‘ah, I want to build on this. I want to do this next’.”
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