Reo Ora waiata 

Produced for The Ministry of Education to celebrate 50 Years of the Te Reo Māori petition with the official ‘Tama Tū, Reo Ora’ campaign. This waiata by award winning artist PERE, commemorates the visionaries and disrupters of Te Reo Māori who’ve reinstated the mana of Te Reo Māori as an official language of Aotearoa.

Using nuances of the late Hirini Melbourne classic ‘Ngā Iwi E’, a composition used widely for protest marches for Māori rights. The slogan uses a play on words made famous by the group Ngā Tamatoa ‘Tama tū, Tama ora, Tama moe, Tama mate’ - This slogan references the whakatauki and honours the collaborate efforts of language revitalisation with the phrase ‘Reo Ora’.

Waiatatia tēnei waiata nā Pere Wihongi rāua ko Hirini Melbourne i tito. E wātea ana ngā kupu hei whai māu.