Kapa haka explained: poi, haka, waiata-ā-ringa

Kapa haka is the Māori performing art: a group standing in rows to sing, chant and dance, and the name for the group itself. Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, explains that kapa ‘rank, row, line’ means to stand in a row or rank and haka is a dance, so kapa haka ‘Māori performing group’ is people standing in rows to perform traditional Māori dances with sung or chanted words. Haka is only one part of it. In competition a group performs a set bracket: an entry, a traditional chant, an action song, poi, haka and an exit, with an optional choral song before it all. Below is each item and what it is, the kinds of haka, what a poi is, the terms you hear from the stage and the commentary box, and Te Matatini, the national festival that began in 1972.

Updated 19 October 2026 · 12 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.

The items in a kapa haka bracket

Te Matatini’s competition rules require every group at the national festival to perform the same compulsory items, and list them in this order. The rules say the choral song, if a group sings one, comes before the entry, and that the group must leave the stage at the end of the exit; they do not fix the order of the four items in between. Every gloss below is from Te Aka Māori Dictionary.

Item	What Te Aka says it is	In the bracket
waiata tira ‘choral song’	a choral song, sung as a choir without actions	Optional, and sung before the entry. It is judged as a separate prize and does not count towards the overall result.
whakaeke ‘entrance item’	the entrance item, during which the group takes the stage	Opens the bracket. Te Aka’s sense list for the word also includes boarding, climbing on, and going onto a marae.
mōteatea ‘traditional chant’	lament, traditional chant, sung poetry: songs sung in traditional mode	The traditional chant. Te Ara calls this item waiata tawhito ‘traditional song’.
waiata ā-ringa ‘action song’	a popular modern song type with set actions and European-type tunes	The action song; see below.
poi	songs performed, usually by women, in which the poi is swung to accompany the singing	The poi item; see below.
haka	vigorous posture dances with actions and rhythmically shouted words	See the kinds of haka below.
whakawātea ‘exit item’	the final item, during which the group retreats from the stage	Closes the bracket. The everyday verb means to clear or free.

The rest of the rules give a competition bracket its shape. A team has between 24 and 40 performers, each aged 14 or older by their regional competition, and all the compulsory items must be finished within 25 minutes, with points deducted for going over; the optional choral song has four minutes of its own. Five judges mark each item out of 100, and under what the rules call the Olympic system the highest and lowest marks are dropped and the middle three averaged. A group may use no more than two acoustic stringed instruments at a time, which in practice means guitars: Te Ara says the guitar became the favourite instrument of kapa haka because it was the most portable.

Alongside the items, separate prizes go to the male and female leaders, introduced before the performance starts, to costume, to new compositions and to excellence in te reo. The 2026 rules also list a seventh compulsory discipline beside the six items: Te Kairangi o Te Mita o Te Reo, excellence in the language.

Where the accounts differ

Detail	Te Ara (Valance Smith, “Kapa haka”)	Te Matatini’s rules (January 2026)
How many disciplines	six performed disciplines, with the choral song an optional extra	seven compulsory disciplines: the six items plus the judging of the discipline Te Kairangi o Te Mita o Te Reo, with the choral song optional
The traditional chant	waiata tawhito ‘traditional song’	mōteatea ‘traditional chant’
The language prize	te kairangi o te reo, excellence in Māori language, listed among the prizes	both a compulsory discipline and a separate prize for written language, Te Kairangi o Te Reo ā-tuhi

Haka: more than one kind

Te Ara’s story of kapa haka opens its section on haka with “contrary to popular belief, haka is not only a war dance”, and quotes the haka expert Tīmoti Kāretu: haka lets its composer vent his spleen, sing someone’s praises, welcome guests, open a meeting house, pay respects to the dead, honour ancestors and teach traditions to the next generation. In 1975 Arapeta Awatere sorted haka by what they are for, and Te Ara gives his five kinds. The best-known haka of all, Ka Mate, composed by Te Rauparaha of Ngāti Toa Rangatira, has its own guide with the words line by line.

Kind	What it is (Awatere, in Te Ara)	Te Aka adds
haka taparahi ‘ceremonial haka’	a ceremonial dance performed without weapons	At some stage during it the men descend to the ground.
tūtūngārahu (also ngārahu, whakatūtū-waewae, whakarewarewa)	a divinatory dance by a war party with weapons, watched by elders and experienced warriors who judged from it whether the party was ready for battle	—
ngeri ‘short haka’	an exhortation to rouse a group to achieve its objective, performed without weapons	a short haka with no set movements
peruperu ‘war dance’	the true war dance, performed with weapons when warriors come face to face with the enemy	the men leap off the ground in unison
puha ‘war dance’	a kind of peruperu used to call kin to arms in their pā and homes rather than on the battlefield	similar to a peruperu, used to call kinsmen to arms

A sixth name you will hear is haka pōwhiri ‘welcome haka’, which Te Ara describes as haka performed during a welcome and Te Aka as a ceremonial dance to welcome visitors. Te Ara notes that the haka pōwhiri of the women of Ngāti Porou and Te Whānau-a-Apanui appear to have no counterpart elsewhere. The welcome they belong to, with its calls, speeches and songs, is in pōwhiri explained. Awatere himself noted that the names vary between iwi: for Te Arawa, for example, the peruperu can also be called the puha.

What is a poi?

A poi is a light ball on a string, swung and twirled in time to a song. Te Aka defines poi as “a light ball on a string of varying length which is swung or twirled rhythmically to sung accompaniment”, adding that the ball was traditionally made of raupō leaves; Te Ara’s history of Māori instruments calls it “a ball of dried flax on a string, swung and tapped by hand to make rhythmic patterns and sounds”, and the most common rhythmic Māori instrument. The same word names the dance: a waiata poi ‘song performed with a poi’ is the song, and Te Aka says poi are usually performed by women.

Te Ara traces the poi’s whakapapa to Tānemahuta, god of the forest, whose children include raupō ‘bulrush’ and harakeke ‘flax’, the two main traditional materials, and names Hineteiwaiwa as the goddess of women’s arts, the poi among them. Te Ara’s accounts give several pictures of what poi were once for. One says men used them to train warriors’ wrists for their weapons, and women to keep their hands and arms strong and flexible for tasks such as weaving. Another says that in earlier times poi were juggled, thrown and caught between players, and quotes the missionary William Yate describing “a ball about the size of a good cricket ball”. A third describes poi swung to a chant that takes the listeners on a journey, as in Erenora Taratoa’s famous “Poia atu taku poi”.

Two modern landmarks are Te Ara’s too. The canoe poi, in which women sit in a line as if paddling a waka, is thought to have been invented by Guide Bella of Te Arawa, who led one at the Christchurch Exhibition in 1906–7. And the song “Poi E”, with words by Ngoingoi Pēwhairangi and music by Dalvanius Prime, sung by the Pātea Māori Club, brought kapa haka into the mainstream. Te Ara’s kapa haka story calls it a huge hit in 1983 and its page on Pātea a 1984 hit; NZ History says it was recorded late in 1983 and reached number one in March 1984, spending four weeks there.

Waiata-ā-ringa: the action song

In a waiata ā-ringa ‘action song’ the actions go with the words: Te Ara says the form emerged in the early 20th century, combining European tunes with traditional actions and Māori stories, and that unlike older haka and waiata it uses a wide range of actions to complement the words and music. The earliest published reference Te Ara cites is the programme of the 1908 Young Maori Party conference, and it credits the form’s spread above all to Apirana Ngata, who also published the classic collection of traditional songs, Ngā mōteatea, in 1929.

Te Aka’s own example for the word, quoted from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography’s entry on Paraire Tomoana, calls him a pioneer of the action song, writing words to fit harmonised tunes generally taken from European songs. He is one of the men credited with Pōkarekare Ana, whose authorship that guide sets out. Another action song of the period, “Pō atarau” (“Now is the hour”), was composed around 1918 and later recorded by Bing Crosby, Te Ara says; it has its own guide, Pō Atarau. Later composers such as Tuini Ngāwai of Ngāti Porou set Māori words to the popular tunes of the day so that young people would listen to the message, Te Ara says.

The words you hear at kapa haka

These are the terms a commentator, a tutor or a programme will use. Each meaning is Te Aka’s unless another source is named.

Word	Te Aka’s meaning	On stage
kaea ‘leader of a haka’	leader of a haka or waiata; as a verb, to lead a haka	Te Aka’s example: the leader of Ngāti Porou’s haka group. Te Ara says the leader must be an expert who shapes the performance by the timing of voice and movement.
kaitātaki ‘leader’	leader, often used of the leader of a haka	Te Aka lists it as a related word to kaea.
manukura ‘leader’	person held in high esteem, leader	Te Matatini’s prizes for the male and female leaders are the manukura tāne and manukura wahine.
wiri ‘tremble’ or wiriwiri ‘quiver’	to tremble, shiver, shake, quiver	The trembling of the hands. Te Ara explains it as the dance of Tānerore, the shimmering air of a hot day.
pūkana ‘stare wildly’	to stare wildly, dilate the eyes, done by both genders in haka and waiata to emphasise words and add excitement	The wide-eyed stare.
whētero ‘poke out the tongue’	to protrude the tongue	Te Ara says performers in wartime used pūkana and whētero to intimidate their opponents.
ihi ‘power, thrill’	essential force, excitement, thrill, power, personal magnetism	Ngāti Toa Rangatira name ihi, wehi and wana together as values of performing Ka Mate.
wehi ‘awe’	dread, something awesome, a response of awe in reaction to ihi	Te Aka ties it to ihi directly.
wana ‘excitement’	excitement, thrill, fervour, zeal, passion, energy	Te Aka’s example calls it the feelings that rise in you from something another person does.
piupiu ‘flax skirt’	a waist-to-knees flax garment used in modern times for kapa haka	Te Ara says its strands make a distinctive sound as the performers move.
tū kapa ‘haka stance’	an upright stance in haka with the feet side by side, slightly apart	Te Aka’s example calls it the female stance.

Te Ara quotes the Ngāti Porou haka master Henare Teowai, asked to explain the art: Kia kōrero te katoa o te tinana ‘the whole body should speak’. Every word of that is in the course, and so is mauri ‘life force’, which Te Ara says is what every kind of haka has in common.

Te Matatini, the national kapa haka festival

Te Matatini is the national kapa haka competition, held every two years, which its organisers call the largest celebration of traditional Māori performing arts in the world. Te Ara says the name, meaning “many faces”, was coined by Wharehuia Milroy of Ngāi Tūhoe for the number and diversity of the people who take part; Te Aka glosses matatini as having many parts. Teams qualify through regional competitions. Its history, from Te Ara and Te Matatini’s own account:

Before 1972. One of the earliest competitions was at the 1934 Waitangi Day celebrations, and by 1972 at least 13 regional competitions were held regularly (Te Ara). A national committee was set up in 1970 and the Māori Purposes Fund Board gave $5,000 for a first festival (Te Matatini).
1972. The first New Zealand Polynesian Festival was held at Whakarewarewa in Rotorua, with 17 groups and 5,000 spectators. Waihīrere Māori Club won.
1983. It became the Aotearoa Traditional Māori Performing Arts Festival, and teams from other Pacific nations were no longer eligible.
2004. It was renamed Te Matatini.
2010. It became international again when Manawa Mai Tawhiti, from Perth in Western Australia, took part.
2019. Te Matatini ki Te Ao in Wellington had about 40 teams, some 2,000 performers, and reached almost 1.4 million people, most of them online (Te Ara).
2020–2022. Competitive kapa haka paused for two years from 2020 because of COVID-19, and the festival due in 2021 was postponed (Te Ara).
2025. Te Matatini o Te Kāhui Maunga, at Ngāmotu New Plymouth from 25 February to 1 March, was the biggest yet, with 55 teams. Te Kapa Haka o Ngāti Whakaue won, ahead of Ngāti Rangiwewehi and Ngā Tūmanako.
2027. Te Matatini o Ngā Taniwha is to be held at Hopuhopu, near Ngāruawāhia, from 22 to 27 February 2027, hosted by Tainui, with 57 groups, the most in its history.

At the 2027 festival the groups perform in four pools over four days, and the top three from each go through to a final on day five, Te Matangirua, where they are judged afresh. The overall winner is the Toa Whakaihuwaka, the overall aggregate champion.

Kapa haka in schools

Kapa haka is not only for adult competition teams. Te Ara lists regional and national competitions for primary, intermediate and secondary schools: Te Mana Kuratahi is the national primary schools competition, and Te Ahurea Tino Rangatiratanga, the Auckland secondary schools competition, has been held every year since 2000. Te Ara adds that kapa haka is a field of academic study with degree courses at several universities, and the Ministry of Education’s NCEA site sets out Te Ao Haka, Māori performing arts, as a school subject.

The best-known school festival is Polyfest in Auckland. The University of Auckland records that it began in 1976 at Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate in Ōtara with four high schools, as the Māori and Pacific Schools Festival, and that by 2025 just under 300 groups from 77 schools took part, making it the largest Polynesian secondary schools cultural festival in the world. TVNZ’s history of the festival says the idea came from a student, Te Manaaroha Rollo, because at her school the only cultural group that competed against other schools was kapa haka.

Going further

Te Ara records that tradition and innovation are argued over in kapa haka, from whether women should perform haka to how far groups should borrow from other iwi and other Pacific styles, and that groups were once clearly identified with one iwi. The language is at the centre of all of it: Te Matatini says the festival plays a key role in revitalising te reo Māori. Most of the words on this page, from waiata and haka to wehi and tinana, are in our own free te reo Māori course, which teaches the grammar around them one lesson a day.