The Silence is Over - Taonga Pūoro Treasured Sounds

I've noticed a lot of people getting into taonga pūoro now and that kōauau and pūrerehua is often defining a 'Māori moment' in a film or something, and I'm finding that a bit tedious. 'We're having a spooky moment here...'

– Performer Moana Maniapoto on the overuse of some taonga pūoro in popular culture

The day that Japan decided it was going to resume whaling I suddenly thought 'yes I want to write a piece where all the instruments are made from whale bone . . . almost all of them — two of them are wing bones of albatross.

– Gillian Whitehead on her 2021 composition 'Puhake ki te Rangi'

I've had a wonderful last few years. I've had the opportunity and the honour — and even now, working alongside my mentors — one in the spiritual realm and the other two still here with me...giving me heaps.

– Horomona Horo on his mentors Richard Nunns, Hirini Melbourne and master carver Brian Flintoff

Museums may think they're preserving the life of these, but in another way they are in fact presiding over their death, their musical death. They become mute.

– Richard Nunns on the many taonga pūoro residing in museums

To me sound and music it exists in an abstract world, You can talk about spirits and soul and all those things, but I haven't met anybody who can tell me what that is.

– Jazz musician Jeff Henderson

Hirini [Melbourne] and Richard [Nunns], they played to the whales early in the morning on the inside of the spit. We came off on the Sunday, and two days later five sperm whales stranded up. And it wasn't until after we'd finished all the organising of dealing to the whales that I realised that Hirini had actually asked to come to play to the whales. And about two years later he rings me up again and asks if he can come back down and play to the whales. I said 'no, come and play to the eels.'

– Barney Thomas from the Department of Conservation describes a visit to Onetahua (Farewell Spit), early in this documentary