Marlon Williams’ new album was never meant to be political. It is anyway.
In a new album sung entirely in te reo Maori — and a warts-and-all documentary to match — the New Zealand songwriter trades the posturing for something raw, and just a little terrifying.
Marlon Williams is holed up in a roadside motel on the fringes of Los Angeles. The Zoom call is patchy as he ducks out – literally, he’s 190cm tall – for a smoke. He swings the camera around to show off the finery: a sun-blasted chequered floor, peeling paint, a swimming pool with all the charms of a petri dish. “It’s very retro,” he says, smiling, big gnashers flashing.
The New Zealand crooner is deep in the belly of an American tour and the audiences have been harder to win over. “They’re a seasoned crowd. They’re, ah, very confident about what they’re hearing,” he says, wincing playfully. “Everything’s so worn in here, it makes you try different tricks to win them over.” What kind of tricks are we talking? “I’ve got a vocoder. Some crazy autotune. I mean, I’m also doing all the songs in Maori, so that’s going to be interesting …”
Which brings us to Te Whare Tiwekaweka, his fourth studio album and the first written entirely in te reo Maori. It was released in April, just as things were boiling over politically at home. Days before we speak, New Zealand politicians voted down the divisive Treaty Principles Bill, which sought to radically reinterpret the Treaty of Waitangi. The proposal drew more than 300,000 submissions, triggered the largest Maori rights protest in history and a haka in the house.
Into this maelstrom wades Williams with a delicate, thoughtful album now pressed into service as a cultural talking point – unintended but unavoidable.
How has he fared fielding questions more suited to politicians than musicians?
“I had to separate it out internally,” he says. “There’s the album I made, the creative process I always follow … but I knew there’d be that added element. People asking, ‘Why Maori? What does this say about your identity? How does this fit into the national conversation?’ ”
Williams is charming, thoughtful and blessedly unpretentious. When I remark that recording an album in te reo Maori isn’t the most obvious commercial move, he counters with a grin: “On the flip side, indigeneity and anti-colonialism are very in right now.” Fair play.
But does he feel compelled, for want of a better phrase, to speak to the moment?
“I’m pretty suspicious of getting swept up in that kind of political fervour or righteousness,” he says. “I want to stay clear-headed and actually think things through. Even when the questions are heavily framed, I try to pause and go, ‘OK, how do I really feel?’
“It might not be the answer people are looking for but it’s still real.”
Everyone’s trying to get that juicy pull quote out of you, I joke. He sighs.
“I did one interview where I said, ‘It stands against a political backdrop, but I don’t want that to be the main focus.’ And the headline was: It stands against a political backdrop. That was it.”
Williams, who is of Ngai Tahu and Ngai Tai descent, calls his relationship with te reo “touchy”. He spoke it in kohanga reo – preschool immersion – but high school made him choose between the subjects: te reo Maori or music. “Which is a crazy clash. Of course Maori want to learn music.”
Years later, on tour, he stumbled across a hefty anthology of traditional Maori song texts compiled in the early 20th century. “It blew my mind open. Some of these songs are a thousand years old. There’s just such a wealth there, a treasure trove. Most of the melodies have been lost in time, but there’s so much to build on and expand.” That discovery was the catalyst. “This music – it’s too important,” he says. “The idea of making Maori music was compelling enough to get into.”
Te Whare Tiwekaweka – translation A Messy House – was five years in the making, a by-product of returning home to Lyttelton, the tiny South Island port town he once couldn’t wait to leave. Now, he has bought a house there with his dad and spends his time walking and kayaking, which sounds suspiciously like contentment. “It’s the joy that can only come from having left and come back to get a sense of perspective – a specialness about the place where one grows up.”
Does he remember why he wanted to leave? “Oh yeah. Pretty severely,” he says. “There’s small-town bullshit that’s always going to be there. I see the kids now, 19 or 20, restless, thinking, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to go or I’ll be stuck here forever.’ It reminds me of myself 15 years ago, going through the same thing.” All roads lead back to Lyttelton, I suggest. “Yeah, and I’ll be able to be the older guy that’s like: ‘You’ll see the world and know this is the best place to be,’ ” he says, laughing.
Helping him along the way was Kommi, a non-binary solo artist and lecturer in Maori and Indigenous studies, who helped with both te reo and – crucially – levity.
“I really relied on Kommi’s sensibilities, especially their sense of humour,” Williams says. “When you’re dealing with potentially sensitive or weighty stuff, being able to laugh is crucial.”
Te Whare Tiwekaweka is not a humourless record but it’s a far cry from the irony-laden charm of some of Williams’s work. Gone is the lounge lizard smoulder, the cockeyed Roy Orbison-esque pastiche and the knowing wink. This is music stripped back to bone and breath – raw, reverent of nature and unmistakably earnest.
“It’s hard to f..k around when it’s not your domain,” he says.
Letting go of his irony shield – was it uncomfortable? “There was something very cathartic, very freeing, about just saying something plainly,” he says. “There were things I didn’t feel I could say in English that felt much more natural in Maori. I can’t quite put my finger on why that is.”
Williams has recorded in te reo before. In 2021 he contributed to Te Ao Marama, pop megastar Lorde’s Maori makeover of her third record, Solar Power. Her decision to release an EP in Maori, despite inevitable controversy, struck Williams.
“She knew it wouldn’t be universally seen as a triumph of Maori renaissance … she did it consciously, knowing that there would be criticism on the other side. I was just really impressed with her composure,” he says.
While he had been toying with the idea of a te reo record for some time, this experience “definitely reinforced something”. In turn, Lorde lent her voice to Kahore He Manu E, a ballad on Williams’s new album.
The recording of Te Whare Tiwekaweka wasn’t exactly conventional. For four years, director Ursula Grace Williams trailed him for Nga Ao E Rua – Two Worlds, a documentary about the making of the album, which is set to premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in June.
Marlon Williams is no stranger to being in front of the camera. He has appeared in the Oscar-winner A Star is Born (the role came after Bradley Cooper heard his song Dark Child while driving) and True History of the Kelly Gang. But this, he says, is different.
“I can’t really watch it with both eyes open,” he says. “It’s confronting. I thought I’d learn something about myself but I didn’t. People who know me say it’s like hanging out with me for two hours, so I guess it’s authentic,” he adds with a shrug. “There were times when I was trying to reach far enough into a private world and it definitely added a bit of angst. But I just came back to the fact that it’s a story worth telling and I’ve got nothing really to hide.”
Across the sea, a parallel can be drawn between Williams’ te reo Maori resurgence in New Zealand and Northern Irish rap trio Kneecap. It’s a surge of creativity from minority languages that has quietly but powerfully taken hold, spurred in part by a generation of young people raised in language-immersion school systems.
Kneecap, with its brash, politically charged Irish rap, has become the face of a new, rebellious wave in Irish culture, flipping the bird to centuries of linguistic and colonial oppression. Williams, too, sees a similar shift in New Zealand, rooted in the 1980s and 90s language revival efforts. “It’s been a bit of a one-step-forward, two-steps-back scenario,” he says. “I think we’re now seeing the results of that global movement from back then.”
“This was always the goal, to use the energy and newness of the younger generation to make the language an undeniable part of the modern world. Throughout history it’s been clear that if you can reach children early, you’re set. Children are literally the future.”
He pauses, then says: “It’s exciting to see because it feels loaded with the fear and excitement of what the next generation is doing. It feels dangerous but in a good way; it’s utterly authentic. This is a world that people have made and are making for themselves.”
Marlon Williams will play the Sydney Opera House on May 29. Nga Ao E Rua – Two Worlds premieres at the Sydney Film Festival, June 4-15.
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