Everything is Exciting
I’m about to drop a new song (6 June)
Urban Planning will be my maiden 2025 release for the upcoming album Pikipiki (which will be here in August!).
It’s coming out this Friday (06.06.25) and you can presave the link here <3.
I’ve been feeling really good about the album, I like how it makes me feel.
Alrighty, shameless self promotion over. Let’s talk about the back story of the upcoming single, Urban Planning.
The past 5 or 6 years have been completely transformational, there have been so many things happening to each and every one of us. We lost people, we gained new friends and some of us even made new humans!
Urban Planning is about my relationship to whakapapa. As someone who did not grow up on their whenua, I would be classified as an ‘Urban Māori’. It’s not a particularly negative term but it does pang a mamae that has settled right between my bones. Like many city kids, I only knew how to live in amongst the concrete slabs. I had no proper understanding of how there could be somewhere else that my whole family are connected to. For those formative years, Grey Lynn was all I needed.
Generations of Māori kids have been and continue to be displaced by state care. I can’t speak to everyone’s story but I’ll tell you a little bit of what I learned from my father.
After my grandmother died and the school my father attended kicked him out. One way or another he found himself living on the streets as a youth. From his upbringing, he learned how to become incredibly resourceful and independent.
When I came along it was a bit of a shock. At 25 years old, I don’t think I would’ve been ready to be a parent either.
So I mainly grew up with my artist mother in a quirked up house in a whacky neighbourhood in a buzzy city called Auckland. Nobody in the rest of the country are ever happy to hear that you’re an Aucklander, it’s a trigger for small town NZ to automatically make you feel… Unwelcome. It wasn’t like I was going to fit in anyway and it totally backfired because I proudly wear the JAFFA title. Haha.
I hung out with my Pakeha family for Christmas in places like Whangamata, Hamilton or Tauranga. I stood out a lot.
But yeah, people would ask me ‘Ko wai koe/Who are you?’ and I would say, ‘I’m Kahungunu but I grew up in Grey Lynn’... and that was my pepeha for decades!
I didn’t have one and on top of that I was constantly reminded that I was not mana whenua. Blood quantum is weird, especially if you have a bit of everything.
‘Ko wai koe?’
None of these grey areas stopped my mum putting me in a Māori education.
It didn’t stop me from learning Te Reo Māori, or participating in Kapa Haka competitions.
It didn’t stop us from discussing politics or going to various noho marae.
This constant need for people to ask me who I am taught me how to reply bravely.
I would start reeling them all off ‘Well, I’m Māori, Cook Is, Tahitian, Irish, French, Scottish, English…”
After a DNA test I found out there are additional tipuna - Chinese, Indian, Icelandic and even Samoan.
So, Talofa.
After all these years speaking broadly about my incredibly far flung genealogy it always came back to my pepeha.
Being ‘Kahungunu’ is almost too vague because it’s such a large area of Aotearoa.
Throughout my life and even now, my father will materialise in front of me at the most auspicious times to offer nuggets from his archive of family knowledge. I remember when he told me we were Indian ‘from your great great grandmother’ and then he disappeared for a year or two and showed up again with something else. “Your grandfather had 60 kids to different women and named all of the boys after himself”.
… The crazy part is? He was always telling the truth!
One day, he wrote my pepeha on a lotto ticket. It wasn’t complete but it was the first time I’d ever seen something written down and I couldn’t quite comprehend if it was real or not. That’s Daniel Marsters, the self proclaimed Anti-Christ.
I always told him if that’s what he wants to call himself, then I’m an enigma. In many ways, we’re all a mass of twisting Rubiks cubes, formulating new algorithms and sometimes landing a matching row of data.
Like all good mysteries, one piece of evidence can lead to a range of new questions.
Now that I had a clue, I have a lead to a set of coordinates to a place I had never been before. I needed to find more information. In 2019, I was doing research on my whakapapa for a podcast called He Kākano Ahau on RNZ.
Finally, I called Uncle William to see what he knew.
Turns out, after all these years he had been working on finding his Pepeha and learning Te Reo Māori in a class. He had quite a lot of information! He even knew where my grandmother was buried. It was a total breakthrough moment.
Like all good families, there are always the reliable ones. Whenever I needed to find my father I would call my Uncle William and Aunty Mandy. They were there at every family celebration, Uncle would always have a camcorder strapped to his hand. He worked at the Steel Works until he passed away in 2022. They nicknamed him ‘Da Masta’.
My dad’s side is huge. We’re (mainly) cook islanders and our family name ‘Marsters’ comes from a long line of charismatic, suave individuals who made it their mission to meet women and evidently make babies, (I’m the first girl in my fathers line, whoopsie!). So if you know one of us, they’re probably related.
I like to call it the Rock Star gene. It’s hectic, fun and every time we get together there is always a lot going on.
At the time of the Tangi, I had a 5 month old baby and my partner had to meet the whole family for the first time in the most full on Tangi buzz ever. He won everyone's hearts by bringing a big feed of fish. I couldn’t have been more proud.
My Uncle would have really liked him, but instead my darling got to know Uncle through the people who came to mourn him as he lay in his coffin in his brand new garage. He’d only just purchased his first home and it was all brand new. He still had a lot of life to give, but I’m thankful we got to have the time that we had with him.
Over that week, there were about 40-50 people around the house. People stopping in or staying the night. Cousins, kids, family friends… more cousins. People making yummy food. It was nice to bring the baby along, kids always make sad occasions way better. My dad stayed up all night and ate all the fish heads which was a disappointment because they are considered a prize meal amongst my whanau.
About 500+ people showed up to the day of his formal farewell. People from the steel mill in high vis, the league boys wearing their jersey, most of the large mass of people wearing black was just our relatives. There were all of the ones with babies (like me) who were running up and down the isles and taking their kids outside while each group stood up to speak. He even had the kaiako and some of his peers from Māori class. I sung E Te Atua and messed up all the lyrics because WHO on Earth can sing properly at a funeral!? Of course, I was very honoured to be asked.
As we said our final goodbyes outside the church, our cousin took his shirt off to do a haka and then stayed topless as he marched around the carpark. As the hearse pulled away, there was a mean burnout from a black car with tinted windows and a number plate that read ‘SHM0KE’. We loved it.
And then he was gone.
Just like everyone before us, he became another star in the sky.
I like to think that our loved ones come visiting on a summer breeze or even stand with me as I navigate this world. Every time someone passes away I add them to the army of tipuna who are supporting me.
Perhaps that’s why I wrote this song? For him? For all of us left behind? For all of the ones who watch over us? I wanted to memorise the Pepeha he gifted to us, the younger generation. This knowledge is something that took his entire lifetime to procure.
Now that we are all becoming parents, I want to broadcast to our tamariki that they’ll never have to deal with the same grey areas I had to tolerate. I also want to connect with my Iwi, so if you’re Ngāti Ruapani mai Waikaremoana or Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairoa - HMU!
So yeah, I can’t wait for you to hear this waiata on Friday, I am looking forward to sharing this body of work with you all in August. It’s supposed to be for all of us out there, stitching together the stars. If you haven’t started this ongoing Pepeha saga, there is no shame - it’ll be there when you’re ready.
Mauri Ora.
!!!I Have Tickets and Vinyl Pre-Order!!!!
