Te Ao Mārama

by 
EPSep 09 / 20215 songs, 21m 56s87%
Indie Pop Contemporary Folk
Noteable

In te reo Māori (the Māori language), “waiata” is the word for song. And in celebration of Waiata Anthems Week, which coincides with New Zealand’s annual Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week), Lorde has re-recorded five songs from her third album, *Solar Power* (*Te Ao Mārama*), in te reo Māori. She’s one of many artists from New Zealand (Aotearoa), including Stan Walker, SIX60 and Ria Hall, to re-record tracks as part of an initiative to celebrate and honour the language of her country’s Indigenous people, and to revitalise public learning and awareness. “I wanted to make something that people from New Zealand would hear and would feel like, ‘Oh, I’m this. That\'s where I’m from,’” the pop titan tells Apple Music about the song “Oceanic Feeling”, re-recorded here as “Hine-i-te-Awatea”. “I was thinking a lot about my parents and this deep connection we have to our land.” Revisit these five *Solar Power* tracks and discover them in an all-new light—and language.