Marlon Williams is at a hotel in Binfield Heath, a civil parish near Henley-on-Thames. Neither of us had heard of the place until today. A mutually familiar locale though is Salford Lads Club in Manchester, home to much Smiths-related memorabilia. In a clip for Williams’s new portrait film, Ngā Ao E Rua – Two Worlds, he can be seen wearing a Lads Club tee.
“Well spotted,” he says, via a Zoom link. “I’m a big Smiths fan and got taken on a tour of the Club once, I had a great time. Dad brought me up on a whole bunch of disparate stuff, he was a big fan of 80s English music.”
Williams is on tour in England when we speak, promoting his remarkable new record Te Whare Tīwekaweka, the first album sung in Māori by a solo artist to chart at number one in his native New Zealand. Williams sports a dark t-shirt, plus a grey beanie which he repeatedly tugs and twists as his lively mind pursues the right words.
He was in Christchurch when the city’s earthquake struck fourteen years ago, leaving him with a sense of instability. In the aftermath he joined forces with other local musicians to create charitable projects. Is it possible this new album, wherein he connects with his family’s Māori ancestry, is an attempt to regain stability? Williams says, “In a way every record is an attempt to find solid ground, something permanent. Folk singers are always looking for a practical use in how the world works. The earthquake aftermath allowed and encouraged a sense of communion or togetherness, in a way the covid pandemic didn’t. As a folk music community, it was an obvious means of finding purpose.”
One dominant aspect of the new album is its focus on vocal arrangements, lending a timeless gospel vibe to the contemporary elements. “Well, there’s my own background in a catholic choir, plus the traditional Māori kapa haka element,” says Williams. “Before the European colonisation, things were very microtonal in Māori song, there was no western harmony. When colonisation came along, the diatonic scale came too and Māori latched onto block harmony with ruthless force. Part of my desire and excitement on this record came from wanting to access that world. I’ve long thought about composing classical or choral music in Māori too.”
Williams believes using female backing voices allowed him to take a more feminine perspective as a songwriter, to represent different feelings and nuances. The silky intonations of his own voice, tailor-made for when the lights are low, adapt well to Māori vowel sounds. “All vowels are created equal in Māori in terms of what they do,” Williams explains. “They’re all the same length unless they’ve got a tohutō (macron) over them. Then they’re exactly doubled. There’s a lot of repetition which is great as a singer, as a writer. And there’s the openness of the vowel sounds which lends an open quality to being sung. I’ve never properly learnt another language and I’m still not fully fluent in Māori.”
Williams thinks this latter point was a factor in his lyrical choices. “I’m working within limited means as a Māori speaker. So the same poetic themes were likely to bubble up. There are some strong traditions I was trying to stay within, that are universal to folk music in general. Inhabiting animals, trinities as metaphors for life, flowing water as a symbol. The duet with Lorde (Kāhore He Manu E) is in the bluegrass and country tradition, a song about wishing you were a bird, or identifying with them. That’s a hallmark of Māori music too. So there’s a few thematic threads I leaned into pretty hard. It’s not conceptual as an overall work though.”
Admitting some of the lyrics were written as self-therapy, was Williams using the Māori language as an emotional concealer? Not to hide behind Māori, but to express himself less nakedly to a wide audience? “There was some sort of lensing going on,” he agrees. “On some basic level it feels dishonest or deceitful. Yet it was very helpful to construct things that way, to have that lens on which obfuscated some of the glare. It’s uncomfortable to admit, but this was a means of getting around myself.”
Not that his own emotions aren’t audible on the album. Take current fan favourite Kuru Pounamu wherein Williams gives an astounding vocal turn, ablaze with fervour. He says, “I love finding these different rooms in the house of my voice. I’m a big fan of young singers copying other singers. Our culture fetishises authenticity and originality in a way that doesn’t reflect what’s fundamental about making music. I grew up on Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley and Sam Cooke. I spent my teenage years working out what was happening in their voices. This is also true of writing; if you gather enough influences it becomes a wave. The person you are becomes an amalgam of all these things.”
The bulk of the album was recorded live in a hundred-year-old wooden structure, made from native timber, in Haast Pass, seven hours’ drive from the nearest city. “In obvious ways it’s my most New Zealand-sounding record,” says Williams. “I wanted to access the methodology of Māori music that makes it inseparable from nature. The west coast of the South Island where we recorded is probably my favourite natural place. There’s the quality of air and how the oxygen from mossy trees feels very wet. I recorded this album mostly live so the songs might be accessible and playable for Māori, drinking beers and having guitar parties in their garages. There’s also bird song on this record.”
Another beautiful element of Māori music, Williams says, is that it addresses dark content – whether grief, dispossession or loss – in a loving or embracing way. “There’s a universality of warmth no matter what the content. An ability to smile and cry at the same time which I find very heartening. My song Whakamaettia Mai is musically upbeat with a stormy lyric, influenced by Second World War songwriting from Māori battalions, a feared fighting force in North Africa. They wrote songs so worldly in scope that were often like a call to arms. This song is a spiritual call to arms in that way too.”
Williams stays keenly aware that his new music is being heard amid cultural turmoil in New Zealand. The move from a liberal government respecting Māori rights, to a conservative coalition denying them, has caused concern. “It’s a true dynamic around the world,” says Williams. “I was a huge fan of Jacinda Ardern’s government, she made brave and difficult decisions. She was a populist leader, people had photos of her on their fridges. When you lean that hard into emotionality in politics, it can swing back brutally the other way. The pendulum swing is getting frantic worldwide and is no different in New Zealand.”
Late last year, Māori warriors and their supporters went on a nine-day hikoi, or march of defiance. Driving this protest were government moves to end certain indigenous-specific rights. A prominent force behind this Treaty Principles Bill was David Seymour, leader of the right-wing libertarian ACT party. Seymour claims support should be given based on need not heritage. Opponents point to data proving social outcomes for Māori, from employment to imprisonment, are worse than for any other ethnic grouping.
Williams says, “The thing that’s galling is the Bill says it’s racist to have people start life on an uneven footing. It’s cynical and infuriating. As if people didn’t start on an uneven footing for historical reasons in the first place. That’s where libertarianism becomes right wing. As if there weren’t economic and genetic factors going into who you are. The original 1840 Treaty of Waitangi was a contract between the Crown and Māori. It’s not up for debate in terms of your rights as a citizen.”
Williams outlines how until colonisation there was no such thing as Māori. “It was a collection of indigenous tribes and sub-tribes engaged in internecine conflicts. Ironically, part of the reason for Māori survival and resistance was its unification. In the early twentieth century, one Māori politician had all the Meeting Houses in New Zealand painted the same reddish brown colour to give them a clear identity. That’s part of the Catch 22 of indigenous cultures, they have to simplify and homogenise their signal or face extinction.”
When filming Ngā Ao E Rua – Two Worlds, Williams went to his father’s ancestral village on the North Island’s remote Eastern Cape. “It was an overwhelming thing,” he recalls. “There I was – a white, city-raised, Māori boy from an artistic family trying to make some reconnection with language and home. Going there with a documentary crew to relate my spiritual journey felt strange. Māori kids would say, you’re out here on a reclamation journey while we’re living the reality. It was humbling, daunting and rewarding. That’s what I was seeking.”
Away from music, Williams plays a lot of basketball and recently started kayaking. “I also like going for a drive listening to podcasts and audio books. I’m a big fan of Sam Harris’s pods Making Sense, plus I’m enjoying The History Of The English Language which has about two hundred episodes starting from the Proto-Indo-European up until today. In the same way every song has an identity, every language has an identity too.”
Te Whare Tīwekaweka (April 4th, 2025) Self Released
Bandcamp: https://marlonwilliams.bandcamp.com/album/te-whare-t-wekaweka
Marlon Williams plays his final UK date at St. Pancras Old Church today (Sold Out) with an extensive New Zealand tour to follow.
Full tour details can be found here: https://www.marlonwilliams.co.nz/live