E Ipo meaning: Prince Tui Teka’s love song

The E Ipo meaning is “O darling”: ipo is Te Aka Māori Dictionary’s “lover, sweetheart, darling, beloved one”, and the e in front of it is the little word Māori puts before someone being spoken to. The song is exactly that, a man calling to the woman he loves: Prince Tui Teka sang it to his wife, Missy, with Māori words written by her aunt, the songwriter and teacher Ngoi Pēwhairangi, to the tune of an Indonesian love song. It greets her, promises to follow her wherever she goes and to love her without wavering, and asks her to turn to him. Released in 1982 and produced by Dalvanius Prime, it was number one in New Zealand for two weeks that July. Below: the title word by word, what each part says with the key words from Te Aka, who Prince Tui Teka was, and where the accounts of the song differ.

Updated 23 October 2026 · 9 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.

Why the full lyrics are not printed here. E Ipo is still in copyright: in New Zealand a song’s words are protected for 50 years after the end of the year their author died, and Ngoi Pēwhairangi died in 1985. A full English translation would reproduce the song too. So this page explains it in its own words and quotes only a word or three at a time. No licensed copy of the full words was found online; to hear it, NZ On Screen has Teka performing it on television, with Pēwhairangi and Missy joining him on stage.

What does “e ipo” mean?

Two words, and Te Aka Māori Dictionary has both:

ipo is a noun, “lover, sweetheart, darling, beloved one”. Te Aka’s own example is a love vow: “E taku ipo, ka mau tonu taku aroha mōu”, which it translates “My beloved, my love for you will remain firm”. As a modifier the same word means “pertaining to love”, as in waiata ipo ‘a love song’.
e is the particle of address. Te Aka says it is used with terms of address and with nouns used as terms of address, which is what ipo is here. It is the same e as in e hine ‘girl!’.

So E Ipo is what you say to the person: “Darling!”, or in older English “O beloved”. Wikipedia’s gloss, “My Darling”, is a fair English equivalent, but there is no word for my in the title; Māori would say taku ipo ‘my darling’ for that, as Te Aka’s example does. Other words for a loved one, from tau to whaiāipo, are in I love you in Māori.

How to say it

Three short syllables, e-i-po, every vowel pure: e as in entry, i as in eat (but short), o as in ordinary. The e and the i are both said; they do not run together into the English sound of eye or ay. NZ Folk Song, which writes out the syllables as Teka sang them, shows the title sung e I-po, and notes that he sang koe ‘you’ sometimes as ko-e and sometimes run together as kwe. The full set of vowel sounds is in the Māori pronunciation guide.

What the song says, part by part

E Ipo is short: a Māori verse, a chorus, a second Māori part, a verse in English, then the chorus again and a closing line, in the order NZ Folk Song prints it. Each part is summarised here, not translated line for line; where an English rendering is quoted, it is NZ Folk Song’s.

The verse: greetings, and a promise to follow

It opens by greeting her: te tau ‘the darling’ is the noun Te Aka gives as “husband, spouse, partner, lover, darling … sweetheart”, and āku mihi ‘my greetings’ is the singer’s greeting, mihi being “to greet, pay tribute, acknowledge”. Then comes the promise: ahakoa ‘no matter, even though’ where she goes, he will follow, whai being “to follow, chase, pursue … court, woo”. The verse ends on his love, which ka ū tonu ‘will stay firm’: ū is “to be firm, fixed, resolute, unyielding”, and tonu the particle that keeps it going, “still, continues, unceasing”.

The chorus: turn to me

The chorus speaks to her directly, e hine ‘girl’, and asks her to turn towards him, huri being “to turn round, turn”. It closes on the title words, e Ipo ‘O darling’. Here NZ Folk Song’s English renders tau as “spouse”: it is a husband singing to his wife.

The second Māori part

The next part begins otirā ‘but indeed’ and speaks of tēnei tinana ‘this body’, tinana being “body … the main part of anything”. NZ Folk Song’s English renders it as the singer’s whole self being at home in her love. It ends on auē, which Te Aka lists as an interjection of astonishment or distress (“heck! oh dear!”) and NZ Folk Song renders, in this song, “Oh yeah!”, then the title once more.

The English verse, and the close

The song is bilingual. Its English verse names her, “My darling Missy”, and tells her she is always on his mind and that his love has no end. The chorus comes back, and the song closes on aroha ‘love’ and the title words.

The key words, from Te Aka

Each meaning is Te Aka Māori Dictionary’s; the right-hand column says where the word comes in the song.

Māori	Te Aka’s meaning	In E Ipo
ipo	lover, sweetheart, darling, beloved one	the title and the end of each chorus
tau	husband, spouse, partner, lover, darling, sweetheart	the first line, and the chorus
mihi	to greet, pay tribute, acknowledge, thank	the first line
ahakoa	although, despite, no matter	the promise to follow
whai	to follow, chase, pursue, court, woo	the promise to follow
aroha	to love, feel pity, feel concern for, feel compassion	the end of the verse, the second part and the closing line
ū	to be firm, fixed, resolute, unyielding	the end of the verse
tonu	still, continues, unceasing	the end of the verse
hine	girl, daughter; a term of address to a girl or younger woman	the chorus
huri	to turn round, turn	the chorus
otirā	but, but indeed	the start of the second part
tinana	body, the main part of anything	the second part
auē	heck! oh dear! (astonishment or distress)	the second part

Several are words a learner meets early, aroha, hine and tinana among them. Our own free te reo Māori course teaches the language one lesson a day, with Papa Reo’s recordings.

Who was Prince Tui Teka?

He was born Tumanako Teka on 28 January 1937 at Ruatāhuna, in Te Urewera, the Tūhoe heartland, to two musician parents, and could play guitar and saxophone before he went to school (AudioCulture). At 15 he left for Sydney with a travelling circus, starting out cleaning the elephants’ quarters and ending up on stage.

He became a showband man. In 1958 he formed the group that became the Maori Troubadours, and in 1966 he joined the Māori Volcanics, touring Japan, the Pacific, Europe, Britain and North America (AudioCulture; Te Ara says he spent about eight years with them). The rhinestone jackets and capes date from those years. After the Volcanics broke up he worked the club circuit of Australia and South-East Asia, Te Ara says, and in 1976 he married Missy Kururangi, who joined his band.

In 1981, after almost 30 years abroad, he came home and settled at Tokomaru Bay, Missy’s home town on the East Coast. E Ipo followed, and so did two top-ten albums, a television series of his own in 1982 and parts in the films Came a Hot Friday and Savage Islands (AudioCulture). He was a big man, 140 kilograms by AudioCulture’s count, famous for corny jokes and open sentiment, and he kept taking his show to small towns other performers skipped.

On 23 January 1985, during a break in a show at the Ruawai Tavern in Northland, he had a fatal heart attack in the dressing room, aged 47. Less than a week later, on 29 January, Ngoi Pēwhairangi died at Tokomaru Bay after a long illness. Both are buried in the urupā at Waiparapara Marae, and Missy, who died in a car accident in 2008, lies beside him (AudioCulture; Dictionary of New Zealand Biography).

How E Ipo was made

The tune came first. It is “Mimpi Sedih”, an Indonesian love song; NZ Folk Song names its composer as A. Riyanto, in 1972. Teka wanted Māori words to it, and asked Missy’s aunt, Ngoi Pēwhairangi of Ngāti Porou, a shearer, performer, teacher and songwriter whose biography names E Ipo and Poi E as her best-known songs. She wrote it as a love song from him to Missy. NZ Folk Song adds that Dalvanius Prime, who produced the record, had to obtain permission from the Indonesian embassy and the composer before it could be released.

The record entered the official New Zealand singles chart at number 38 in the week of 28 May 1982 and was number one for the weeks of 16 and 23 July 1982, when Toots and the Maytals took over; it spent 19 weeks in the chart. It earned a gold record for selling 7,500 copies, the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography says, and AudioCulture has the photograph of Teka and Missy presenting Pēwhairangi with her gold disc for the words.

It also led straight to Poi E. Prime told the music paper Rip It Up in 1986 that he came to know Pēwhairangi through Teka, and he visited her at Tokomaru Bay while E Ipo was still riding high in the charts (AudioCulture). What the two of them wrote next, and how a Pātea club took it to number one, is in Poi E: meaning, translation and the Pātea story.

Its place in New Zealand music

A number one in te reo. NZ On Screen counts it among a run of te reo chart-toppers, after Deane Waretini’s “The Bridge” in 1981 and Howard Morrison’s 1982 “How Great Thou Art”, a year before Poi E.
One of the best New Zealand songs. When members of APRA, the songwriters’ rights body, voted for the top 100 New Zealand songs of all time in 2001, E Ipo came 81st (AudioCulture), and it went on the Nature’s Best compilations made from that list.
A love song people still know. NZ On Screen files Teka’s 1983 television performance under its Kiwi Love Songs collection, and calls it his biggest hit. More songs New Zealanders sing in Māori, with what they mean, are in Māori songs everyone knows.

Where the accounts differ

The song’s story is told slightly differently by each source. This page gives them side by side rather than choosing:

Question	What the sources say
When was it recorded?	Te Ara’s “Māori composers” and the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: recorded by Teka in 1981. NZ Folk Song: first recorded in 1982. The official chart: in the chart from late May 1982. Te Ara’s popular-music story and NZ On Screen: a 1982 hit.
Where did Teka find the tune?	NZ Folk Song: New Zealand soldiers stationed in Singapore sang it to him during his 1980–82 tour. AudioCulture: it was Emilia Contessa’s hit in Indonesia, where he toured twice in the 1970s.
When were the words written?	AudioCulture: Teka asked Pēwhairangi during a 1979 visit to Tokomaru Bay (he and Missy had married in 1976). NZ On Screen and NZ Folk Song: when he was courting Missy.
Who wrote it?	The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography and AudioCulture: Pēwhairangi wrote the words. NZ On Screen: Teka with Pēwhairangi. The APRA list: Pēwhairangi, Missy and Prince Tui Teka. Dalvanius Prime was the producer, not a writer.
Was it the first Māori-language number one?	Te Ara: yes. AudioCulture: no, Deane Waretini’s “The Bridge” topped the chart on 3 April 1981, 15 months earlier.