“A La Claire” (music video) to celebrate the new ACAPOLLiNATiONS album M/OTHER Tongue

March 5, 2023 / tuimamaki / Leave a comment

When I enter into the process of arranging a traditional song, I take comfort in the lineage, the generations of singers, the hardened, gnarled sinew of the melody, over time… Because the song exists as a living entity of its own, I can literally sit back and listen to the wishes it has for us. Of course, they come through the lens of what I believe to be possible, but most often, the vocal parts present themselves and there is a sensation of revelation – quite the opposite of thinking. Making a moving image for the recording is much the same – while out walking, I can see things unfold in my minds eye, but once it is time for capture and I am with camera in hand, it is an entirely new process, where one follow leads and accept invitations… As if those ideas were just something to leave behind.

This arrangement was made for my grandmother, who taught me this song as a child – with her voice like a flute made of light. I remembered the feelings more than the words. This arrangement is also made for the eternal maiden within, who will always feel things to the fullest, and who enters into communion with the natural world each day – taking delight in the slightest of things.

Nothing purer than dew - 

Dew that does not last,

But refracts a sunlight wonder, 

For those who do attend.

Bird, leaves and promises to the wind!

The capacity to lean into a body-soul encounter,

All the while maintaining a body-soul sovereignty.

The new ACAPOLLiNATiONS album M/OTHER Tongue (2023) is a multi-lingual, compelling collection of colourful folklore songs, where archaic musical systems are reimagined for three vivacious voices. In this recording, Tui Mamaki (French-Kiwi), Chelsea Prastiti (Greek-Kiwi) and Sally Howe (Cook Island-Kiwi) interweave songs from their grandmothers – both genetic and imagined – with a bespoke repertoire issue of Tui Mamaki’s love affair with Bulgarian Folklore. Evocative melodies, stirringly close harmony and stories we all know – of longing, harvest and transcendence – heard anew.

Purchase the M/OTHER Tongue album (physical or digital) here

Get tickets for Sunday 12th March Album Release Concert here

See ACAPOLLiNATiONS @ WOMAD NZ on 18/19 March 2023

M/OTHER TONGUE – Nouvel album du trio néo-zélandais ACAPOLLiNATiONS

March 1, 2023 / tuimamaki / 1 Comment

Beautiful words from Pierre at La Maison Jaune…

La Maison Jaune, le Blog

Album à paraître ce 01/03/2023

La chanteuse TUi Mamaki, rencontrée en 2018 à l’occasion de la parution de son EP Hear My Voice (Beating Drum 2018), est une de ces personnalités singulières qui ne cessent de creuser le sillon d’une poésie unique, empreinte ici d’une forme de sacré connecté aux traditions vocales.

photo © Shannon Aroha

Au sein de son trio vocal a cappella Acapollinations, TUi Mamaki annonce un nouvel album et une série de concerts..

Acapollinations a fait ses débuts en 2014. Partant du principe que les voix, les cultures et les rythmes s’interpénètrent, ce trio réussit des adaptations envoûtantes et impertinentes de la polyphonie balkanique, avec une touche d’improvisation Aotearoa (nom Maori pour désigner la Nouvelle-Zélande). Des rythmes irréguliers, une harmonie émouvante et les voix évocatrices de Tui Mamaki (Franco-Kiwi), Chelsea Prastiti (Grecque-Kiwi) et Sally Howe (Cook-Island-Kiwi) sont les éléments essentiels d’un registre hautement…

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THREADS

October 14, 2022October 21, 2022 / tuimamaki / 2 Comments

When I was in Bulgaria, learning their exquisite songs, I would fill my eyes and mind with the rich colours and patterns of the regional costumes, and I would feel both attracted and dissociated. How could a chujdenka (foreigner) even imagine wearing garments so full of story and nuance, so full of regional roots and affiliation. So, I let it be for them.

Then one day, a woman asked to meet me for coffee. To give me her baba’s saya (grandmother’s costume). Say again?

I sat across the little table, listening to the family stories and their wider political implications, feeling that the simple paper bag lying there, between our cups, held some kind of bomb or treasure, like a home-fire, like a message from another place, like a leaping and joining of hands between generations, cultures and languages.

This costume had been made by hand, for a life time of wearing, and for generations to come. Now it was leaving the family fold to follow the thread of song…. A chujdenka had come, with her passions and admirations, with her devoted study and shortcomings, and had started to carry old song in a new way. The costume came into the picture like armour, like a blessing, like a cheeky, irreverent door into the yes-ness of transmission. See it for yourself!

Stanislavka Barbutska (1915-1997). Here at the age of 30, and mother of three, pictured with her husband, parents and siblings, wearing the saya (costume) that she made with wool from her own sheep, and cotton from her own yards. Raised in Egalnitsa, a small village 35km North-East of Kyustendil, Stanislavka was the 2nd of 4 children to survive – born to Kostadinka and Simeon.

In this picture (1945), Simeon, her father, has just had his factory nationalised, and communism will begin to separate people from their gardens, and songs from daily life. The greatest choirs on earth will be created – with singers from all around the country – and will make Bulgarian Folk Song famous around the world, but at a cost. Many will lose touch with the practice of song in their own lives, in *sedyanki* (working bees) and harvest, and it will be relegated to the stage for, albeit stunning, demonstration by professional ensembles. Photo courtesy of Slavka Kukova.

Stanislavka wanted her granddaughter to be free from the power of men, and encouraged her to become a lawyer. Still, the memory of fertile summers in the countryside were strong for a child otherwise raised in the town of Plovdiv.

Slavka gifted me her grandmother’s saya in 2016, after discovering the music of my trio Acapollinations and feeling it that was something novel, yet honouring of the energy and lineage of Bulgarian Folk Song.

It was 6 years before I found an appropriate occasion to perform wearing it. Here singing the slow song “Gyuro Dobwr Yunak” from Trakiya (taught to me by Svetla Stanilova in Plovdiv) at “The 2nd United Concert of Bulgarian Folk Groups of Australia & New Zealand” in Melbourne, 2022. Photo by Radost Ratcheva.

The traditional technique of *swrma* – the fine, golden embroidery on the shoulders – is a lost art, and modern replicas pale in comparison. The strength and energy of this costume is testament to its slow, hand-made nature and integrated function – where songs were literally sewn into the costume, over the long winter *sedyanki* (working bees). Photo by Radost Ratcheva.

It is an honour to take care of this saya, currently in Aotearoa/NZ – so far from its land of origin, but hopefully close to its original intent – that of reverence and the celebration of life’s beauty through collective dances and vibrant song.

A L’Aube _ Music Video

February 2, 2022February 2, 2022 / tuimamaki / Leave a comment

Life has it that we dropped into Arthur’s Pass (South Island of Aotearoa/NZ) for 10 days recently. We, meaning my partner, my son and I. The big guy was training on the Coast to Coast course – a daily adventure into stunning mountains and rivers. This left the little one and I some time to explore. Thanks to a visiting grandmother, some outings became veritably zen, solo windows, where the silence grew around me like a cloak and revealed many colours. I’d like to share with you some images of the process of shooting the music video for “A L’Aube” – the title track of my new EP. I had some nebulous visions forming somewhere in the wings of my mind, but these images actually found their form in the land at foot, at hand, at heart. Working only with found materials and letting chance be the guide, it is my delight to share with you… (see below for full video and link to the music)

The deep valley of Arthur’s Pass at nightfall.
A veritable sun catchment during the day.

FOLLOW

May 25, 2018May 25, 2018 / tuimamaki / 1 Comment

30 April – Tonight I had a conversation, with a man I’ve never met. Him a stone, and I a bird. Pierre. Tui. We stood upside down from each other, on either side of the planet. Wood was the language in common. The resonance of it. The way it carries music. The calm it harbours. The way it is both permeable and protective…

Apparently we spoke for his (beautiful!) blog piece @ La Maison Jaune concerning the release of my new record with Beating Drum. But in truth, we spoke for the life altering properties of listening. For the way strangers can meet in intimacy, through art. For the alchemic wonder of surrendering our lives to the riddle of colour, shape and frequency, where ideas echo our impermanence, and in doing so, confirm our belonging, to the great wheel.

20 May – Oh, what happens when you let the music lead! I confess I started playing the guitar when my heart broke. It was a physical consolation. And a revelation. I started writing from a new silence. The one that came after. After my Bulgarian Folklore studies in Plovdiv – where I soaked in odd-meters, crumbled beneath the beauty of the timbre (vocal that is) and was securely wrapped in ornaments. I wrote armfuls of songs into that silence, and a handful made it through. To a recording…

In following the incandescent (or is it indecent!) “why not” protocol, I hunted out the sound engineer, who, in the world, had captured my favourite female vocal recording – Rokia Traore’s Tchamantché. Yep, internet. I found him, and his microphones. Patrick Jauneaud. We agreed. And so, tucked away in resonant mountains in the south of France, some delicate, ardourful songs were stitched to light.

I wanted to do it all alone, you know, and with just one voice and one small guitar. To . render . complete . justice . to . the . silence. Patrick suggested that this was ambitious – that artists usually do such a thing in their masterful age! He coaxed me into playing around with a few layers. Relaxing the rules a little, I allowed myself to some sing harmonies on the record. And. Patrick passed the tunes onto someone I’d never met – but had admired the music of – Piers Faccini.

Piers heard something of himself in this music. And his delve into my online presence confirmed our common love for quiet spaces. He offered to collaborate on a record. We took an EP worth of my songs and let his expert ears/hands influence their body.

I was scared. Scared of not being strong enough in my vision. Scared of failing in my new found independence, by letting another artist alter my babies. Temperaments shuffled. We braved it for the love of music, for loyalty to the unknown, and to let the colours in. Because none of it belongs to us anyway. And they were beautiful.

The way I see it, Piers bought the village, dancing, to my hermits cave.

These arrangements feature layers of tender instrumentation, including slide guitar, harmonica, voice, piano, gembri and an evocative selection of percussion. Much of it was played by Piers himself, with spirited interventions by Malik Ziad and Tunji Beier.

Stills taken from FOLLOW. Underwater capture by Monty Bevins, thank you!

The tune I’ve made a film for first, travels for 6 minutes of 11/16 time, looping around our hearts, the globe and back. With footage from Bulgaria, France and Aotearoa/NZ – this is a song for the first smile, for the last sigh, and for all the gratitude in between.

WATCH [FOLLOW by TUi MAMAKi] HERE

The RECORD from which this song is takeN, TUi MAMAKi “Hear My Voice” (Beating DRum RECORDS 2018), is available in limited edition vinyl – with artwork by Piers Faccini – and/or download HERE

Capture

January 3, 2018 / tuimamaki / 1 Comment

This one… what is in a raw capture?

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when a storm strikes, we don’t sleep but we play. And the audio captured there has all the traits of befriending chance: the swells of wind rocking the hut like a small boat, the lashings of rain on the corrugated iron mingling with the breath, the proximity of the fingers that blur the lines, the turning, the hisses and the crackles of a voice telling a story… once. This is what I wanted to share with you! Not the studio control, not the pristine malleability of elements, but an actual living moment = a moment I loved and the imperfect traces of which, are perfect.

We made a moving image to expand on this capture. The women I worked with brought their eye, their imagination, their emotional response to the sound, to the one day we had together, to the gear we borrowed and to the spirit of improvisation-collaboration we claimed as our own… It is my genuine pleasure to share with you “Between Storms”.

It speaks to the slice of silence between great changes, departures, transitions. To the sanctuary of intimacy – which for a moment feels like a kind of eternity. To the solitude we choose, like a position on the edge of the world, on the edge of ourselves, on the edge of each other… it is a tender piece of attention to our transience and mortality.

BETWEEN STORMS

I let you in
Just enough to feel the breath between us
I let you in, just enough to be known
Put me to sleep between the sheets of our ice and snow
Willing to meet between the words where the silence grows

Two thousand years
Just enough to feel the breath between us
Two thousand years, just enough to be known
Put me to sleep between the roots and the earth around
Willing to meet upon the leaves where the light is found

дай ми да спя
между теб и снега
дай ми да летя
в ръцете ти, да видя

че,
луничките ти са звезди
на бели равни ливади
на чаршафа

там се срещат сънищата ни
и между тях се движи душата
на зората…

Translation:
Let me sleep between you and the snow
Let me fly in your hands, to see
That your freckles are constellations
On the pale, even fields of the linen
There meet our dreams
And between them moves
The soul of the dawn…

*Thank you Iliana Tabor for helping me with my first ever Bulgarian language lyrics!

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

“Between Storms” composed & performed by TUi MAMAKi.
Audio captured on a ZoomHn4 on a stormy night in a hut…
Moving image directed by Meg Perrott & Margaret Gordon.

Direction of Photography – Meg Perrot
Editing – Margaret Gordon
Costume – Rochelle Beaty

Still from “Between Storms” https://youtu.be/itAGDk5aBeo

MOVING IMAGE

September 17, 2017 / tuimamaki / Leave a comment

I started out as a visual artist. Or was that simply being a child?

I grew up in a remote, wonderfully isolated valley, without streetlights or tar-seal, or television. The endless wonders of a blank page were akin to the endless aural spaces one could interact with: to sing-talk with the birds or the ocean, to build huts and stories in the bush, or to draw boundless imaginings in colour, on the kitchen floor or table. Long intimate conversations unfolded between me and perhaps, pure potential. It was thanks to kind and creative teachers that dance, song and art were valued in the curriculum. The focus sharpened when I met Mr Harris at Tikipunga High School and embarked on a painting, sculpture and photography odyssey, and never looked back… not until I reached Elam Art School that is, where I found myself longing for happenings. I wanted to see things in motion! If there had been a Performance Art Department there at the time, I might have stayed, but the roads called me out of school – into the world of fire-dancing, street-performance, theatre and ultimately, song.

Still taken from RiUWAKA by TUi MAMAKi

These days I hardly put a pencil to the page, save for designing concert posters or occasional album artwork… but the SOUNDS I get to make are colours, and the words that come conjure images… and then there are the opportunities to collaborate:

When I met Shannon Aroha on Takaka Hill, at Luminate Festival 2017, we found ourselves brainstorming a collaboration just a few sentences into the conversation. Let’s do something! A few months later, equipped with a zero budget and a common love for improvisation, we found ourselves filming in the limpid lights of the Raglan area, where she is based.

The theme of clear water kind of hurts these days, given that intensive dairy farming in New Zealand has polluted so many of our rivers… (time to turn that around!!) And so, potently, a song about clear water – as a reality and a metaphor – is the one to start with. RiUWAKA (Riwaka) is a sacred place at the foot of Takaka Hill, that many visit for it’s healing waters – waters distilled by the crystal mountain labyrinth through which they pass, before springing back up at the resurgence. Raglan, where we actually filmed, is on the other island. A journey from Te Wai Pounamu to Te Ika a Maui is but a small hop, given the international fabric of this project:

The instrumentation is inspired by my love affair with Bulgarian Folklore rhythms, intricately irregular, but played on my Little Martin guitar, like a harp. The story is one of reaching beyond the feeling of fracture in intimacy, through into the inevitable wholeness of surrender. The vocal lines, though steeped in the ornaments of Bulgarian songs, are delivered like a delicate prayer. My parts, on voice and guitar, were recorded in an old silk-worm incubator: a beautiful stone-floored, high-ceiling, luminous music studio, in the Cevennes mountains, in the south of France. (How I found that place and the magical engineer, Patrick Jauneaud, within it, is another story for another time). Add to that a serendipitous meeting with Australian percussionist Tunji Beier, on a festival stage. Tunji here plays the Kanjira, a South Indian frame drum, with both subtlety and spirit.

With Shannon’s eye, and Andy’s flying captures, the visual flair this time is not mine. Shannon’s musical sensitivity translated seamlessly and it was a joy to let her lead. Somehow, playing a character in the moving image was an experience between dance and meditation: attuning to the light, the bush, the water, to the dreams that turn our eyes into windows, where imaginings can impart tranquility, and somehow bridge our mortal separations.

I hope you will enjoy the viewing as much as we have the process!

Please share/embed the video freely, and do leave your impressions in the youtube comments + touch that thumbs up thing – it all helps to gather kin energy and to celebrate this piece of quiet, in a loud world.

WATCH RiUWAKA HERE

KAMWA FESTIVAL

August 7, 2017August 7, 2017 / tuimamaki / 4 Comments

KAMWA, the mythological name of the Kama River, brings together the elements of KAM (human or shaman) and WA (water). A privilege it was to be invited to sing at this multi-faceted, soul stirring, Ethno-Futurist festival, 40km out of Perm, in Russia…

Notes along the way:

20 hour journey from Sofia. The world is my bedroom. Startling ability developed – to be able to sleep upright and anywhere – even on the bumpy bus ride out to the festival site, as a blood-red sun rises over the damp fields. Gravel roads and a million wild flowers. Log homes. I mean, whole trees. A people living in the embrace of sleeping trees… and who tend to their windows.

Tents, sculptures and stages nest in the ample fields of Khokhlova Architectural Museum. Art-full installations: a forest of bird houses, a grand piano made of willow, a giant boar and his piglets in perpetual trot, as tall as a man and made of driftwood.

Bejeweling the plateau, the 300 year old Church of Transfiguration. I fell in love with this building. The spirit of the wood captured me. Or was it the scent engulfing my body. Or was it the light shafts, so magnetic. Or the silence of a naturally breathing protection. Or the sound of the wind through the gaps – a faint allusion to the bright world outside… Home, as if in a timeless ship, a loft, a womb – the skin of the wood worn smooth by human touch. Grace energy is stored in this place. I couldn’t tear myself away. Hours.

These beaming grannies teach me how to say spasibo(a). How far can my Bulgarian language carry me in Russia? Some words in common. But a lot not. Good will and gestures do the rest.

Festival goers wade chest-high into the fields of flowers, and emerge crowned in colour. Summer time praises. We are amongst the earthly delights, while giant kites keep watch from above.

Break-though learning: Inna makes me cry with the raw and true spirit of her calling. Luiza bewitches me with the refinement of her vocal ornaments. I realize these are the two qualities I seek in my vocal practice. I get the chance to try the blend out on stage, not once, but 5 times over the festival days. How to craft but surrender. How to be wild but reassuring. How to lead but follow. How to raise the dead and soothe the living? How to serve the timeless laws of the water and the sun. In song. Ambitious. Devotional.

A compliment that lands deep: “I really like your voice. It’s like the sound of whales and birds gathered together.” Conversation leads to ancient symbols, where a fish carries the human and upon the human, is perched a bird. Being bridges between earth and sky.

An invitation to Moscow. You will have everything you need if you come to play there – food, drink, striptease… !¿ Explanation: “A musician takes everything off, until there is nothing left but the soul. I don’t know of any more complete striptease than this.”

Beautiful encounters. Luiza. Mario. Dmitri. Oleg. Inna. Singing through the night. Through. The songs we belong to. Not the ones that belong to us. Traditional vessels. Such magnitude. Space to bloom. Singing songs from my grandmothers, and from others’ grandmothers, imbued with today’s finest heart flavors.

The last night, a stage to ourselves. I mean, to all the brilliant musicians from eclectic places who have colored the stages over 3 days. An open minded audience. Who wants to play? The capacity to begin, without knowing where we will go… One time. Present. Lose yourself. Win each other. Somewhat possessed. We all rode it home.

A stealthy lioness of a humble woman runs this festival. She says she hopes we will leave with a little piece of their heart in us. That despite the darkness and difficulty to imagine a future sometimes, these 3 days give her an annual experience of freedom. Liyon. Len. Linen. Gifts. Of ancient grasses grown onsite. And traditional bread.

4am departure to fly back to Sofia with the Kottarashky crew. Others will take the 30hr train ride to Moscow/Moskva. Humbled.

A spontaneous audio capture of Andrey Vinogradov’s exquisite Vielle a Roue play is accompanied below by some images gleened along the way. Unseen are the thousands of punters and most of the bigger stage shows, as my favorite time to contemplate (and take pictures) was in those quieter moments…

BEFRIENDING CHANCE

April 23, 2017April 26, 2017 / tuimamaki / Leave a comment

C.H.A.N.C.E = Cosmic Heart-full Alignment (with) Non-linear Creative Energy/Engagement

If anything, I mean anything, was possible, if you could live out your dream, what would it look like, in the detail? What small gestures would populate your days, what behaviors would you engage in, in the small ways, if you were, in fact, your idols? Assuming we are made for this. Participation. Gratitude action. To befriend chance we have to be fit with our craft, alert + actually willing to receive.

Having a solo set (album is on its way) has been more than giving myself wings. It has been a make-over of my fundamental beliefs about how things function. Having this vessel built, and available for adventure, has me being able to say… YES!

YES to collaborating with a collection of such fine Australian musicians at UNwind Festival this May, thanks to a chance conversation and spontaneous collaboration with the phenomenal percussionist Ben Walsh on a festival stage this summer.

YES to collaborating with the enchanting minstrel Piers Faccini in his exquisite acoustic series La Route de La Voix (entirely human-amplified intimate concerts in old stone chapels in the South of France), this thanks to following my curiosity re microphones down the rabbit hole of Rokia Traore’s Tchamantché album, finding engineer Patrick Jauneaud in the mountains, honoring our subsequent collaboration with all the musical love I could muster, and to his sharing those mixes with someone he knew…

(Stay tuned for the release of FLY, taster HERE)

And YES to the privilege/challenge of performing our own arrangements of traditional Balkan folklore with my sassy acapella trio ACAPOLLiNATiONS this Sunday, just because we loved it at Te Uru Gallery last time (another entirely human-amplified concert).

UPCOMING SHOWS
30th April – ACAPOLLiNATiONS @ Te Uru Gallery, Titirangi, Auckland, Aotearoa/NZ
5-7th May – UNwind Festival @ Paradise One, Byron Bay, AUSTRALIA
9th May – Tui Mamaki & Encuentro Dos @ Open Studio, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
20th May – Tui Mamaki & Piers Faccini @ La Route de La Voix, Issensac, FRANCE

And to finish, some stills from an upcoming music video RIWAKA, born of a chance conversation with Shannon Schnittker from Traveling Filmmakers at Luminate Festival this year, and the synchronized map movements that followed. Definitely a fan of following up on crazy ideas, and in doing so, allowing the paths of grace to collide…

Between Storms

January 22, 2017June 25, 2018 / tuimamaki / Leave a comment

Composed on the flights between Bulgaria and Aotearoa/NZ, my first ever bi-lingual (English/Bulgarian) tune – a musing on meetings, between cultures and generations, between souls and skins, and on the instrument of language. (Recorded spontaneously during a midnight storm, in a little hut, on a hill, somewhere in the South Pacific.)

How it came to be?

Kilometers above the clouds, in a great bird of steel, packed neatly in rows, with hundreds of other souls, it is easy to blur the sense of belonging – in terms of location, climate and fragrance that is – but we cannot escape our histories and our imaginings. The question of cultural identity begs for detail – these traditions, so rich, have been forged through repetition, through an age old distill, whereby exotic influence meets the ferment of isolation. We need the cross-pollination for energy, but we need the hermetic aspect for quality. Each in their own time? Is it a process we can guide?

In Bulgaria I have witnessed a divide between those who reject the said Folklore Music as a pure product of the communist era, as a distortion and appropriation of village song for the representation of the party, as a practice now stuck in time and no longer of any use to the Bulgaria that must catch up for lost (iron curtain) time… And then there are the others. Others, who rejoice in the vibrant, profound, nuanced and unparalleled prowess of the rhythms, the ornaments and the unique arrangements. Others, who delight in the lush colors and sacred patterns, through which they breathe the mojo of their ancestors. Others, who vow to guide a spirited, thriving art-form into a healthy future.

I came here because of it. This Folklore. And the most improbable spirits gather to it from all around the world, like moths to a light. Some of the most bewitching singers I have met in Bulgaria exude a devotion to spread this musical richness globally, naturally, and preferably, person to person. When they come to understand the work I am doing, they generally tell me they are thrilled that I am helping to share their culture. I do, however, fear my own ignorance and feel a duty to honor the quality of the work by continually seeking to deepen my understanding and my own practice. Ironically, it is through sharing it that parts of it get integrated or understood – through performing it with my vocal trio ACAPOLLiNATiONS, through teaching aspects of it in my World of Voice Workshops in NZ, and through composing and recording original works inspired by it, as I am doing for my upcoming album.

Some Westerners, blown away by the power of the traditional Bulgarian song (which has undeniably been forged through generations of passionate, war fraught, tough mountain people), and intrigued by the timbre and spirit that it solicits in my voice, have encouraged me to record some… to be able share it further than in my live gigs… I feel awkward about this. It doesn’t belong to me. But perhaps I belong to it. And so my whole perspective on cultural belonging begins to shift – as I feel words coming out first in Bulgarian (followed by the curious need to translate them back into English!), as I effortlessly shake my head to agree, as I hear new song ideas in 7 or 11 or 13, and as I write my first lyrics in this new ancient tongue… smalls steps on a long loving road.

The Bulgarians colleagues I have played my new tunes to, relate to them, tap along and feel reflected, yet are taken elsewhere. The feedback has been luminous. But the road is treacherous. Do we protect, preserve, guard the authentic forms? Do we share, morph, re-interpret and speak through them, with our own accent? Or is there a way to make a savvy, sacred blend of both schools?

An accent. We all have. But we only hear it when we’ve been away, when we meet another, different. And this is the beauty of our motion – to reach out to each other and be changed for it, but simultaneously to dig deep and slow and to pay our dues to the ancestors – for without their breath, we are nothing, and without our song, they are gone.

On so, on that great steel bird, between Bulgaria to Aotearoa, I watched ‘El Olivo’, the beautiful story of a 2000 year old olive tree and the wound that its sale creates in a Spanish family, and their soul journey to try to bring it home. All these musings interwove, and I heard something, kilometers above the clouds…

BETWEEN STORMS

I let you in, just enough to feel the breath between us
I let you in, just enough to be known
Put me to sleep between the sheets of our ice and snow
I’m willing to meet between the words where the silence grows

Two thousand years, just enough to feel the breath between us
Two thousand years, just enough to be known
Put me to sleep between the roots and the earth around
I’m willing to meet upon the leaves where the light is found

дай ми да спя
между теб и снега
дай ми да летя
в ръцете ти, да видя

че, луничките ти са звезди
на бели равни ливади
на чаршафа …

там се срещат сънищата ни
и между тях се движи душата
на зората …

Listen to BETWEEN STORMS and other musings: www.soundcloud.com/tui-mamaki

TUi MAMAKi

What makes your heart sing?

Author: tuimamaki