Māori songs everyone knows, and what they mean

The Māori songs everyone knows in New Zealand are a short list: the love song Pōkarekare Ana, the farewell Pō Atarau, the unity song Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi, the four-line Te Aroha sung after speeches, the lullaby Hine e Hine, the hymn Whakaaria Mai, the stick-game song E Papa Waiari, the anthem’s Māori verse and, from the charts, Poi E. Many are learnt in primary school, and you hear them on marae, at funerals and in sports crowds. The table below gives each title’s meaning, who wrote it and where you will hear it; then each song is explained in a paragraph, grouped by what it is for. The lyrics of the older songs are on their own pages; the newer ones are still in copyright, so here they are summarised rather than printed.

Updated 19 October 2026 · 14 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.

Famous Māori songs at a glance

Song	What the title means	Who made it, and when	Where you hear it
Pōkarekare Ana	the waters are stirred up	disputed: Paraire Tomoana, or Northland soldiers in the First World War	everywhere: often called the unofficial national anthem
Pō Atarau	moonlit night	disputed; words by 1915–16, tune 1913	farewells, funerals, the last waltz
Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi	line up together, peoples	Canon Wi Te Tau Huata, 1950s	schools, marae, sports crowds
Te Aroha	love	not recorded	after speeches at a pōwhiri
Hine e Hine	girl, O girl	Fanny Rose Howie (Princess Te Rangi Pai), about 1905–07	lullaby; TV closedown for a generation
Whakaaria Mai	show me	Māori words to the tune of “How Great Thou Art”	church and hui; Howard Morrison’s 1982 number one
He Hōnore	honour	disputed (see below)	church, state occasions
Purea Nei	cleansed	Hirini Melbourne	schools
E Papa Waiari	O Uncle Waiari (NZ Folk Song)	traditional, Whanganui River	stick games, reggae concerts
Ka Pīoioi	swaying	disputed; 1990	welcoming people home, kapa haka
Hoki Mai	come back	Henare Waitoa, 1946	the Māori Battalion’s homecoming; parties
Poi E	“Oh poi”, as NZ Folk Song translates it	Ngoi Pēwhairangi and Dalvanius Prime, 1982	number one in 1984; the film Boy
E Ihowā Atua	O Lord God	Thomas Henry Smith, 1878	the national anthem’s Māori verse

Where a meaning comes from a song’s own published translation rather than Te Aka Māori Dictionary, the paragraph below says so. Dates and names that the sources disagree on are collected in where the accounts differ.

Waiata: the word, and the kinds of Māori song

The Māori word for a song is waiata, which Te Aka gives both as a verb, to sing, and as a noun, song, chant, psalm. It is one of the Māori words used in New Zealand English: a school learns a waiata, a group sings a waiata after a speech. Te Aka lists several kinds, and a few names are worth knowing because they tell you what a song is for:

waiata tangi ‘lament’: a song of mourning with no set actions, sung especially at a tangihanga ‘funeral’. Te Aka calls it the most numerous class of the traditional songs.
waiata aroha ‘song of love’: sung without set actions, to tunes like those of the laments. The phrase for “love song” is explained in I love you in Māori.
oriori ‘lullaby’: in Te Aka’s second sense, a song composed on the birth of a chiefly child about the child’s ancestry and tribal history, which is much more than a song to sleep to.
hīmene ‘hymn’: a loanword from English for a hymn or psalm.
mōteatea and the waiata ā-ringa ‘action song’: the traditional chant and the modern song with set actions, which are two items of a kapa haka performance and are explained in Kapa haka explained.
The waiata tautoko ‘supporting song’: the song a speaker’s group sings after each speech at a welcome, explained in Pōwhiri explained.

Songs of love and farewell

Pōkarekare Ana

Te Ara says it is sometimes called New Zealand’s unofficial national anthem: a love song that opens on stormy water and calls a girl home. Who wrote it is disputed, and the words, a word-for-word reading, the authorship accounts and its journey to Korea are all in Pōkarekare Ana lyrics, translation and story.

Pō Atarau (Now Is the Hour)

The farewell song, sung on wharves as troopships and liners left, and used in 2026 in the film Project Hail Mary. Its Māori and English verses, the tune’s Australian origin and the long argument over who wrote it are in Pō Atarau lyrics and story.

Hine e Hine

A lullaby by Fanny Rose Howie, who sang as Princess Te Rangi Pai. The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography says she was born at Tokomaru Bay in 1868, of Te Whānau-ā-Apanui and Ngāti Porou descent, trained and sang in Britain from 1901 until ill health brought her home in 1905, and in her last years taught singing and composed songs, of which “Hine e hine” is the most famous; she died in 1916. It opens E tangi ana koe, hine e hine ‘you are crying, little girl’: hine is Te Aka’s girl, daughter, the word for addressing a girl or young woman, and e tangi ana is “is crying”. The verse NZ Folk Song prints goes on to tell the child to be sad no longer, because there is love for the child in the heart of the Father.

Many New Zealanders know the tune without the words. NZ On Screen says it played under Goodnight Kiwi, the cartoon in which a kiwi shut down the television station each night and went to sleep with his cat, in the version broadcast from 1981 to 1994; NZ Folk Song says it was the closing-down song on TV2 from 1979. Kiri Te Kanawa recorded it, and NZ Folk Song found it on about twice as many CDs as Pōkarekare Ana.

Popular Māori songs for school and gatherings

These are the songs children learn first and adults reach for when a group has to sing something together. Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, the Māori Language Commission, suggests two of them by name, Tūtira Mai and Te Aroha, as easy waiata for a group to sing during Māori Language Week. For classroom use, see also te reo for teachers and Māori for kids.

Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi

The title is a call to stand together: Te Aka gives tūtira ‘to line up, form a file’ as to line up, form a file or queue, mai points the movement towards the speaker, and ngā iwi ‘the peoples’ are the people or tribes being called. The rest of the song asks everyone to seek understanding and love and to be united, with the refrain tātou tātou e ‘all of us’.

It was written by Canon Wiremu (Wi) Te Tau Huata of Ngāti Kahungunu, an Anglican priest who had been chaplain to the 28th Māori Battalion. His daughter Ngatai Huata told Te Ao Māori News in 2017 that he made it up on a drive past Lake Tūtira, north of Napier, after a meeting in Wairoa, singing each line for his children in the back seat to repeat, so that they knew it by the time they reached Napier. He was involved in Moral Re-Armament, a movement for reconciliation, and she said the song was for all people, regardless of race, creed or politics. The song spread through churches and, from the 1960s, through schoolbooks published by the Ministry of Education, which 1News reports never asked his permission or credited him. You now hear it in classrooms, on marae, and from crowds at sports grounds.

Te Aroha

The shortest of them all: four lines, each naming a value. Massey University, which prints the words on its page about pōwhiri, glosses them as te aroha ‘love’, te whakapono ‘faith’, me te rangimārie ‘and peace’ and tātou tātou e ‘to all’, and calls it a simple waiata that is appropriate at any pōwhiri. That is how it is used: as the waiata tautoko for a group that has no song of its own. It is so familiar that The Spinoff, reviewing the waiata politicians sang at Waitangi in 2026, said a group that only knows Te Aroha needs to expand its song book. No source found records who wrote it.

Purea Nei

A song by Hirini Melbourne of Ngāi Tūhoe (died 2003), the composer who, with Richard Nunns, led the revival of traditional Māori instruments. Te Ara says he first became known through the many songs he wrote for schools, which are still sung, and names “Pūrea nei” (Cleansing) first among the favourites. In NZ Folk Song’s translation it pictures someone cleansed by the wind, washed by the rain and warmed by the sun, their troubles cleared away. Its opening draws on the proverb about returning to your mountains kia purea ‘to be cleansed’ by the winds, which is explained in Māori proverbs; NZ Folk Song says Melbourne wrote it in memory of a student who had died after great adversity. Te Ara writes the title with a long ū, NZ Folk Song and Te Aka’s proverb without one.

E Papa Waiari

The song for tī rākau ‘stick game’, Te Aka’s name for the game in which players sitting or kneeling in a circle swing and throw wooden sticks to each other in time to a song, which gives the cues. Its chorus shares a line with Pōkarekare Ana: E hine, hoki mai rā ‘girl, come back’. NZ Folk Song translates the title “O Uncle Waiari” and says it is an old Whanganui River song, to which each marae up the river would write its own words for local competitions.

Liam Rātana, writing in The Spinoff, says some accounts make it a lament for Waiari Te Patu, a Whanganui chief killed in the battle at Moutoa Island in 1864, and that its oldest written mention is a radio programme of June 1934. The Pātea Māori Club released it as a single in 1985, Herbs opened their 1987 album Sensitive to a Smile with it, and the Fijian reggae singer George Veikoso made it a concert singalong across the Pacific, which is why crowds at reggae concerts still sing it.

Ka Pīoioi

A lively song of welcome for people coming home. Pīoioi is Te Aka’s to shake, wave or sway, and the song, as NZ Folk Song translates it, is about the swaying dance with which the haukāinga ‘home people’ show their love for those who return. NZ Folk Song says Kereopa Ratapu wrote it in 1990 at teachers’ college in Palmerston North, about coming home to his family after serving with the army in Singapore, and that the first line was later changed; it also says APRA, the music-rights body, now lists Charles Tamai Nicholson as the composer, which Ratapu’s family dispute.

Hymns and sacred songs

E Ihowā Atua: the anthem

The Māori verse of the national anthem is a hymn too, a prayer opening E Ihowā Atua ‘O Lord God’. It is sung before the English verse at rugby tests and ceremonies, and has its own page: the New Zealand national anthem in Māori.

Whakaaria Mai

Sung to the tune of “How Great Thou Art”, the Swedish hymn of 1886, but its Māori words, NZ Folk Song says, are a loose version of the fifth verse of Henry Lyte’s “Abide with Me”: a prayer to be shown the cross through the darkness, in life and in death. The title is whakaaria mai ‘show me’: Te Aka’s whakaari is to show or display, with the passive ending, and mai turns it towards the singer. NZ Folk Song says Howard Morrison first heard it sung during the opening prayers of a hui in Auckland, and suggests singing the verse in English and the chorus in Māori when a gathering is mixed.

NZ History says Howard Morrison sang it for the Queen at a Royal Command Performance in 1981, and that after a 1982 television special his single “How Great Thou Art/Whakaaria Mai” spent five weeks at number one; for many New Zealanders, it says, Morrison became synonymous with the song as Sinatra did with “My Way”.

He Hōnore

A short sung prayer of praise. The Spinoff says many people remember it from church and that it is often heard on state occasions; NZ Folk Song traces it to an opening prayer used by the language school Te Ataarangi. Its first words, he hōnore, he korōria ‘honour, glory’, come from the angels’ words to the shepherds in Luke 2:14; Te Aka marks both hōnore and korōria as loanwords from English. Its roots are in the Ringatū faith, but who made the song is disputed: see below.

Te Harinui

A New Zealand Christmas carol in English, by Willow Macky in 1957, with a Māori refrain, Te Harinui, which the carol itself translates as glad tidings of great joy. NZ Folk Song says it tells of Samuel Marsden preaching at the Bay of Islands on Christmas Day 1814, on a summer day instead of a snowy night.

Songs of the world wars

Many of the songs older people know were made to send soldiers away or welcome them back. Pō Atarau was one of them, and Te Ara’s history of Māori composers says Tuini Ngāwai’s group Te Hokowhitu-a-Tū sang her songs at training camps and when farewelling troops or welcoming them home during the Second World War.

Hoki Mai. Hoki mai ‘come back’. NZ Folk Song says Henare Waitoa wrote it in Ruatōria in 1946, at Apirana Ngata’s request, to welcome home C Company of the 28th Māori Battalion, to the tune of “Goldmine in the Sky” (1938). A happier party version grew up in Rotorua, and the Howard Morrison Quartet made it popular.
Pā Mai. NZ Folk Song says it comes from the Hastings area early in the Second World War, as a song encouraging the tribes to send their sons to enlist, and that it is performed as an action song.

Haka and action songs

A haka is not a song in the usual sense, but it is the Māori performance most people know, and the Ka Mate haka has its words and story. Some of the songs above, Pā Mai among them, are performed as action songs, with set hand movements; how those, the poi and the haka fit together in a performance is in Kapa haka explained.

Modern Māori hits

Poi E (1982–84). Written by the linguist Ngoi Pēwhairangi with music by Dalvanius Prime as, in NZ History’s words, a way to encourage young Māori to be proud of being Māori, in a format young people were comfortable with. No record company would take it, so Prime started his own label; the Pātea Māori Club’s recording reached number one in March 1984 and stayed in the charts for 22 weeks, and it returned to the charts in 2010 after Taika Waititi used it in Boy. NZ Folk Song reports Pēwhairangi likening the poi, which flits like a fantail, to young Māori finding their way through the city.
E Ipo (1981). Te Ara names it as one of Pēwhairangi’s best-known songs, recorded by Prince Tui Teka. Ipo is a sweetheart.
How Great Thou Art/Whakaaria Mai (1982). Howard Morrison’s five weeks at number one, above.
Waiata Anthems (2019 onward). AudioCulture says Hinewehi Mohi set out to have New Zealand’s biggest acts re-record their hits in te reo Māori. Six60’s “Don’t Forget Your Roots” became “Kia Mau Ki Tō Ūkaipō” and reached the top 10, and the first album, released for Māori Language Week in September 2019, debuted at number one. Lorde followed in 2023 with a five-song EP in Māori, Te Ao Mārama.

Where the accounts differ

Song histories are often oral, and the published sources do not always agree. Where they differ, this page gives both.

Question	One account	Another account
When Tūtira Mai was written	1950 (The Spinoff, 2026)	the late 1950s (the composer’s daughter, to 1News and Te Ao Māori News, 2017); NZ Folk Song says the 1950s
Who made He Hōnore	composed by Piwai Te Morehu Tuhua of Ngāi Tūhoe, with roots in the Ringatū church, though others have claimed it (The Spinoff)	words from a Ringatū prayer based on Luke 2:14, tune by Taina Piripi Ngarimu, first sung in her home on the West Coast in 1992 and taken to Te Ataarangi’s summer schools (NZ Folk Song)
Who wrote Ka Pīoioi	Kereopa Ratapu, 1990 (NZ Folk Song, and his family)	Charles Tamai Nicholson, as APRA lists it (reported by NZ Folk Song)
When Poi E was a hit	1982 (Te Ara, “Māori composers”)	recorded late 1983, number one in March 1984 (NZ History)
When Hine e Hine was written	1907 (the heading of NZ Folk Song’s page)	a London score of it is catalogued by the British Library as [1905] (listed by NZ Folk Song)
When Goodnight Kiwi played it	1979 to 1994 (NZ Folk Song)	this version 1981 to 1994, with earlier versions from 1974 to 1980 (NZ On Screen)

Where to hear and learn Māori songs

NZ Folk Song (folksong.org.nz) prints the words, translations and guitar chords of most of the songs above, with notes on where each came from. Its words are a starting point; where a song has its own guide here, that guide gives the text line by line.
Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori keeps a list of ways to join in during Māori Language Week, including easy waiata for groups, its own playlist and the Waiata Anthems playlist.
Universities publish the waiata their staff and students sing at a pōwhiri: Massey University’s page on pōwhiri prints Te Aroha. If you are going to a welcome with a group, learn the song your hosts or your organisation already use.
NZ History and AudioCulture have the stories behind the recordings, and NZ History has audio or video of some of them.
Kapa haka festivals, above all Te Matatini, are where the newest action songs are first heard; see Kapa haka explained.

To learn a song, learn what each line means first: a song sung with understanding is easier to remember and to pronounce. The words in most of these songs are everyday ones, aroha ‘love’, hoki mai ‘come back’, tātou ‘all of us’, iwi ‘people’, tangi ‘cry’, and they are taught in Verbavia’s free te reo Māori course, with recordings in a native te reo voice. For the sounds, the Māori pronunciation guide covers the vowels and the tapped r that every song depends on.