After decades in Australia, musician Jen Cloher finds 'a beautiful healing' in te ao Māori

Six years ago, Jen Cloher was touring Aotearoa when they stepped onto the sometimes "scary" but enriching path of rediscovering their Māori identity.

Music 101
6 min read
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Caption:In the second series of the award-winning podcast Everybody’s Trying To Find Their Way Home, Jen Cloher (Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa, Ngāpuhi) interviews indigenous musicians, including Whirimako Black, Byllie-Jean and Shellie Morris.Photo credit:© Marcelle Bradbeer

Although the musician and podcaster's mother was a proud Māori woman, Jen Cloher says growing up in Australia, they didn't feel the same way.

Now based in the Kāpiti Coast town of Ōtaki, the 51-year-old is studying the intensive year-long immersive te reo Māori course at Te Wānanga o Raukawa.

"Ten years ago, if you'd said to me, 'Oh, you'll be living back in Aotearoa and you'll be doing a full immersion te reo Māori course, I would have laughed at you, like it was literally the last thing on my mind," they tell Music 101.

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In Australia, it's common practice for people speaking or performing to first acknowledge the Aboriginal custodians of the land, Cloher says.

Opening shows for Tiny Ruins six years ago, they decided to acknowledge the tangata whenua at the beginning of each gig here.

Although their mother was a proud Māori woman, Cloher didn't feel the same until visiting the family marae halfway through that tour.

"I know it sounds bizarre, but because I grew up in Australia and I didn't really have any kind of lived idea of what it is to be Māori, to be around the language, to be around your whanau, to be around your culture, I just hadn't thought of myself in that way."

Making the 2023 album I Am The River, The River Is Me / Ko au the awa, Ko te awa ko au was the light to follow and find my way back here.

On it, Cloher honours their "powerful matrilineal line of wāhine Māori" and tells their own personal "story of reconnecting" with language and culture.

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In the podcast Everybody’s Trying To Find Their Way Home, Cloher has a korero with other indigenous wahine artists on that same path, including Aboriginal musician Shelley Morris and Māori performers Whirimako Black, Byllie-jean and Mara TK.

Rather than sitting down in a recording studio, Cloher travels with artists to the place where they have a connection to whenua.

"Our hearts opened up, and you can hear it in the korero. You can hear people just sort of drop in and relax.

"That guard that we normally have up when we're speaking to media, which is a really common thing, you just see that fall away.

"For me, what was really heartening was like, you know, I'm not alone. I'm just at a different stage in my journey, and everyone starts from different places."

In the years before releasing Ko au the awa, Ko te awa ko au - Cloher's fifth album - they were slowly starting to learn te reo Māori. Although drawn to also writing songs in the language, at first, that was a "scary" prospect.

"I thought, 'Do I have the right to be writing in te reo Māori when I know so little and I'm not even conversationally fluent? … I felt really torn, and I'm really grateful that I just kind of kept walking through that whakama that shame, because what I realised was I was just telling my story."

Singing in te reo Māori is such a different experience from singing in te reo Pākehā, Cloher says, and with its beautiful, open vowel sounds, the Māori language is "made to be sung".

"There's something about when we sing our reo that people all over the world connect with, even if they don't understand the words to Kupu, they feel it. That's what makes singing in our reo so beautiful and so special."

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Speaking-wise, Cloher says they could only say 'Kia Ora' and a few other kupu (words) in te reo on arrival in Ōtaki seven months ago, so intensively studying the language has been a steep learning curve.

It was "very humbling" to realise that learning te reo Māori would be a lifetime journey, Cloher says, but they've now made peace with perhaps never becoming a fluent speaker.

"I've come to see it's not actually about learning te reo Māori. It's about absorbing it. It's about taking it in. It's about learning more about who I am and where I come from. It has enriched my world, and really, that's all I'm in it for."

With whanau and friends from the Te Wānanga o Raukawa course, Cloher enjoys using her songwriting skills to write waiata which may never be recorded or released.

"I'm really bad at kapa haka, I'm not great at speaking te reo Māori , either, so it's really good to have a little skill that I can offer to the group. It has actually been a beautiful thing to be able to offer."

On 23 August, Jen Cloher, Mara TK and Mauri Aura perform an alcohol-free afternoon show - "because I'm a Nana these days" - at the Paekakariki Town Hall.

"Bring your tamariki, bring your Koro…. It's a nice little drive from Poneke."

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