Music: ancient and modern

I was reading a fascinating article in The Listener today about Richard Nunns: a musician and researcher who unlocked the secrets of playing ancient Maori musical instruments. Apparently, European missionaries were so successful in discouraging Maori people from playing these taonga puoro (singing treasures) that all indigenous knowledge about how to play them was lost. Nunns taught himself how to play the instruments and has, for many years, given that knowledge back to the community.

He's also played the instruments on scores of musical tracks both modern and classical. I'd love to be able to blip some of the instruments (I know they have some in Te Papa so will try to do so). For now this blip celebrates the fact that within minutes of reading an article I can download some music and start listening to it on my iPhone (the wonders of electrickery and the interwebs). The other relevance of the blip is that Nunns describes the spiritual use of taonga puoro as cellphones to communicate with the ancient ones.

The NZ Arts Foundation have a website dedicated to the work of Richard Nunns.