Finding Time To Reflect

After a very big year, soul man Teeks is facing the challenge of a debut album.

- James Belfield

As Te Karehana Gardiner-Toi walked off stage at the Silver Scroll awards in Auckland in October, he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d underperformed, let his nerves get the better of him, not quite hit the notes the way he wanted.

He’d walked off while the lights were still down, while pianist Nick Dow and the Ng Tmanako kapa haka group were still on the stage, while the last booming lines of Te Ahi Kai P resounded around Spark Arena.

So he missed the standing ovation he had earned for probably the most powerful Kiwi musical moment of 2018. The applause was both for his emotionally charged performance and for the song (co-written by Ria Hall, Te Ori Paki and Tiki Taane) about an 1864 battle in Tauranga in which more than 100 Mori died at the hands of British soldiers. Hall and her co-writers won the Maioha Award for best song in te reo Mori.