Te Whare Tīwekaweka translates as “the messy house” from te reo Māori, the native Māori language in which Aotearoa artist Marlon Williams sings on his fourth solo album. It describes his headspace going into making the record: “The seed of creativity can be very confusing until it turns into something, then things start to make their own mark on the world and the chaos gets put into some sort of orderly life,” he tells Apple Music. “That speaks to that first inception of creativity that comes out of absolute disorder.” The album is the realization of Williams’ long-held desire to write and sing in te reo Māori. Though he learned the language in school, his proficiency declined over the years. “I couldn’t have done this without a really good mentor and collaborator and co-writer in my friend KOMMI [Kommi Tamati-Elliffe], who’s a lecturer in te reo Māori, and a fluent speaker and songwriter,” he says. “I’m still very humbly at the beginning of the hill.” Writing in te reo Māori opened new creative avenues for the singer-songwriter. “It allowed me to talk about place in a way that was very difficult to do in English,” he offers. “When you use a place name in a song in English it’s got this weird weight to it. Whereas talking about place is so central to Māori music, so it was great to start rattling off names of places in songs.” While the album offered Williams the opportunity to incorporate traditional te reo Māori elements such as kapa haka group singing, he was careful not to stray too far from his trademark mix of country, soul, bluegrass, and pop. “I just wanted to follow my natural musical nose and not try and necessarily exist in a Māori musical space, but just make a record that spoke to me musically,” he says. “I wanted it to just be a Marlon Williams record that happened to be in Māori.” Here, Williams walks Apple Music through Te Whare Tīwekaweka, track by track. “E Mawehe Ana Au” “A real drawcard of singing in Māori is that it’s a really beautiful language to sing in. I knew that however this album was going to turn out, it was going to be led by the vocals. I vomited a lot of ideas and anxieties out into that song lyrically—it’s a very confessional and, in a classical sense, apologetic song. An apology and an explanation in the old sense of just getting something out there that felt necessary.” “Kei Te Mārama” “It’s a breakup song—that thing with a relationship where you can throw it all on the other person, no matter the complexity of the situation. You’re like, ‘Well, if that’s the way you feel...’ It’s a way of escaping your own need to make any decisions in some sense.” “Aua Atu Rā” “There’s a saying in Māori: ‘We’re all in the same boat.’ Communalism and being bound to the people around you is very central to the Māori world, which is something I love about Māori culture. But it’s something I find terrifying as a sort of existentially suffering artist. I feel very much an individual alone in the world a lot of the time, so it’s just acknowledging that we owe to each other a terrible loyalty, but at the same time, it’s hard to feel that you can rely on the existence of other people.” “Me Uaua Kē” “This is the song I was really thinking about in terms of using geography strongly. It’s talking about the backdrop to some missed illicit liaison, referring to the island in the middle of Banks Peninsula. It’s also a nod to the earthquakes. Te Poho o Tamatea is the mountain that sits behind the town, and it starts talking about Tamatea’s chest trembling, and the crying of the mountain, and how it’s a rare thing to see Tamatea crying. It’s quite a dense song. But it’s also a silly love song.” “Korero Māori” “Another thread of traditional Māori music is women using music to address social issues—music was a structure on which they were able to express themselves emotionally. I wanted to write a tongue-in-cheek song to myself on some level and be able to use kapa haka as this driving force to give myself a slap around the head and come back into the fold in some way.” “Ko Tēnā Ua” “One thing I love about Māori is there’s lots of subtle variations and terms for natural events in nature. Ko tēnā ua is a light drizzle, so the song is saying the rain that you’re standing in is not a light drizzle, it’s the kind that’s going to do you some damage. Then it talks about a pou, which is a carved figure that stands sentry outside a village. So it’s just saying, ‘You don’t have to stand out there, you’re not a pou, come back in from the rain.’ It’s a loving song.” “Whakamaettia Mai” “This was written as a nod to a thread of wartime battalion singing. The Māori battalion were a very famed and feared battalion in the Second World War. But they wrote a lot of incredible songs, making fun of Hitler or full of Māori humor. That song is written in the spirit of those old songs.” “Ngā Ara Aroha” “This is an out and out love song. The first line [translates to], ‘You don’t want to stand in the way of a mountain on the move,’ and that’s a nod to Mount Taranaki, which is one of our biggest mountains in New Zealand. Taranaki wandered around the landscape looking for its lover before it finally ended up where it’s resting now, so that’s a nod to that. In the sweeping tradition of Leonard Cohen love songs it makes a grand statement, but in the end it’s just a song about the difficulties of the compelling nature of love.” “Huri te Whenua” (feat. KOMMI) “‘Huri te Whenua’ is a song that I didn’t contribute any of the lyrics to, it’s all KOMMI. It started off as a full rap for KOMMI, and when they gave it to me I was like, ‘What if we turn it into this sort of gospel song?’ so it ended up where it ended up. I haven’t fully squared with KOMMI what the intentionality of the lyrics is, but for me it’s a song about race relations in New Zealand. There’s a real thread of bitter sarcasm throughout, especially that rap.” “Kuru Pounamu” “My interpretation is that KOMMI is addressing themselves. Something in KOMMI’s writing that I really like is the god figure sort of castigating the mortal and holding them to account in this song. There’s a sarcastic god looking down on its frail creation and offering, by way of hollow congratulations, a reprimand. I feel that in this song.” “Kāhore He Manu E” (feat. Lorde) “I love singing with Ella [Yelich-O’Connor, aka Lorde]. I’d sung on her EP Te Ao Mārama, which is all in te reo Māori, so it was only fitting she join me on this record. Her voice really wrote the song, there was something in the qualities of how she sings that pushed the melody around just so. It was one of those songs that fell out very naturally. I then took it to KOMMI and they helped me shape the te reo a little better, but it was a very easy labor.” “Pānaki” “This is a personal favorite. It’s another where I didn’t write any of the lyrics, KOMMI gave them to me. It’s a personal love song I think for KOMMI. It’s a song addressing certain regional words for wind, talking about different types of wind and hinting at who the song’s for using geography and regional dialect. Without wanting to speak out of turn for KOMMI there’s some very signaling language in that song.” “Rere Mai Ngā Rau” “It’s a song about intergenerational relationships and the importance of children and grandparents and parents having understanding and charity towards each other. Another hallmark of Māori culture is that you’re around many generations at once, and I think it’s something we’ve managed to pay off in the Western world, expecting children to go out into the world and just work things out for themselves. Whereas in Māori culture that’s a fool’s errand. The song is really using the tree as a metaphor: to the grandparents, be the pool that fosters the roots that make the branches grow that make the leaves fall that foster the pool. The cycle.” “Pōkaia Rā te Marama” “Julian [Wilcox, lyricist] is an incredible broadcaster and proponent of Māori language, and it turns out an incredible lyric writer. I wasn’t fully across his creative talents until he, unprompted, sent me these lyrics. The poeticism of it and the strength of the message in the song made sense to have it be the closing statement on the record. I’m paraphrasing, but it’s a song about being in a state of darkness so that new knowledge can be gathered before the light comes back. It’s making a stand for grabbing hold of Māori language and going back out into the light with new creations.”