Slices of heaven

New Zealanders have always been great songsmiths. But songs are more than just hits that wax then wane. They reflect and help define who we are and who we want to be.

- RUSSELL BROWN

There are many claims to Now is the Hour. On one hand, it is – unlike pavlova, Phar Lap and Split Enz – undeniably Australian. The listed composer of a tune called the Swiss Cradle Song, Clement Scott, is a pseudonym for Albert Saunders, who worked for the Sydney company that published the sheet music in 1913.

But it was New Zealanders who made it a song. There are competing claims over who exactly set the tune in waltz time and added the lyrics that made it the waiata Pō Atarau – let's call it a group effort – but we were singing it to departing soldiers by 1915.

We can be more certain that it was Maewa Kaihau, a gifted musician and poet from Ngāpuhi, who gave Pō Atarau its first English verses, in 1920. The British singer Gracie Fields heard it as Haere Ra on her 1945 tour of New Zealand and adapted Kaihau’s verses, making it Now Is the Hour.

A lifetime or two before Don't Dream it's Over, How Bizarre or Royals, Now Is the Hour became our first global smash, not only for Fields but for Bing Crosby, who took it to No 1 on the US Billboard chart. When rock darlings The 1975 released a version last year, Rolling Stone announced it as “a cover of an early 20th century song with Māori origins”.

Over the decades, Now is the Hour has been both the literal last waltz at dances and a song for both sides to sing after battle is done on the rugby field.

“We sang Now is the Hour with tears in our eyes,” Tony O'Reilly wrote of his experience on the British and Irish Lions rugby tour of 1959, “and we left New Zealand, but New Zealand never left us.”

O'Reilly wrote his recollections ahead of the 2005 Lions tour. But in the stands at that tour's most memorable match, the All Blacks’ symphonic 48-18 victory in Wellington, there were other melodies.