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KIKIKI FOR SCHOOLS
Kikiki Kakaka is the old chant from which the Ngati Toa version of Ka Mate has been derived. A song celebating sexual union, it was chanted on occasions of of peace-making and at wedding feasts, long before Te Rauparaha's time.
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Kikiki
kakaka!
Kikiki kakaka kau ana!
Kei waniwania taku tara,
Kei tara wahia
kei te rua i te kerokero.
He pounga rahui te uira ka rarapa;
Ketekete, kau ana, to peru kairiri:
Mau au e koro e.
Ka wehi au ka matakana.
Ko wai te tangata kia rere ure
Tirohanga nga rua rerarera,
Nga rua kuri kakanui i raro?
Ka mate! Ka mate!
Ka ora! Ka ora!
Tenei te tangata puhuruhuru
Nana nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te ra!
Upane, ka upane!
Whiti te ra!
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Murmuring within bracken walls,
Closeted love-talk, baring all.
When my pubic mound is brushed,
then the mound divides
and the pit starts blinking.
Forbidden mysteries are revealed in a flash;
surprise, nakedness, your features flushed with passion:
I am caught by desire,
I'm scared but fully alert.
Who is this person with upthrust shaft
investigating the thigh-girt depths,
the musky hairy depths below?
Oh! Oh! I'm dying, dying
No, I'm alive, fully alive!
This is a virile man
who is bringing harmony and peace!
Together, side by side,
we can make the sun shine!
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Kikiki = indistinct, murmuring, an idiot, stuttering => love-talk.
Kakaka = bracken stalks, or a wall made from them.
Kau ana = alone, quite bare, naked.
Tara = mountain peak => genitals, pubic mound, spike, penis.
Pounga = eclipse => hidden => mysteries.
Te uira ka rarapa = the lightning flashes => revealed in a flash of light.
Peru kairiri = "fullness of eyes and lips when angry." But the emotion here is lust, which produces the same facial expression as anger.
Mau au e koro could mean I'm caught up by desire, a noose, or an old man. In the context the first seems the only choice.
Rerarera is in no dictionary, but is presumably an adjective from rera = thighs. So "nga rua rerarera" = the thigh-enclosed cavities?
Kuri (adj.)= musty => musky. Not Kuri (noun) a dog.
Kakanui = an inferior fern-root. Instead of being floury when cooked, it
is fibrous and bristly, rather like coarse pubic hair.
Ka mate, ka mate; in the context here it seems to refer to the loss of bodily control at sexual climax, scary when it happens the first time. "Oh I'm dying..."
Ka ora, ka ora. In this context, post-coital bliss.
Two
written sources have been found for this haka. James
Cowan (1926) mentions that
"Ka mate, ka mate, etc.",
is only a portion of a very ancient Maori chant. The original
song begins, "Kikiki, kakaka, kikiki, kakaka. Kei waniwania
taku aro."
And
Tuwharetoa historian Sir John Grace (1959) quotes a slightly garbled
version of "Kikiki" in a humorous account of Te Rauparaha's
humiliating experience when he revisited the Taupo district.
Home
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Patricia
Burns, Te Rauparaha, A New Perspective (Penguin,
1983) pp 44-48.
James
Cowan,
The
Maoris in the Great War: (Maori Regimental Committee,
Auckland, 1926)
p 181.
Ka
Mate, Ka Mate, (NZ Railways Magazine, February 1, 1935)
John
Te H Grace,
Tuwharetoa : the history of the Maori people of the Taupo
district. (Reed, 1959)
Mervyn
McLean, Maori Music (University of Auckland Press 1996)
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Published on Folksong.org.nz in Sept 2008
© 2008 by John Archer
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