HE KOHA MA BOB MARLEY – A GIFT TO BOB MARLEY

4 June 2009

When reggae artist Ruia Aperahama first heard Bob Marley’s music, like many Maori in the 1970’s, he was hooked – and his life path was changed forever.

HE KOHA MA BOB MARLEY is a documentary that follows the award-winning musician as he travels to Jamaica, to give back to Marley’s family some of the music the immortal Jamaican helped inspire and shape.  It screens on Maori Television on June 24 at 8.30 PM.

When reggae first exploded on the international scene, it coincided with the early stages of cultural revival among Maori, of reo and tikanga – language and cultural practices. The great Bob Marley’s lyrics were not just from another brown man. They also spoke of the oppression of indigenous people, and articulated what many Maori were feeling as they discovered more about the injustices their people had suffered during the colonisation of Aotearoa.

Today, over thirty years later, Maori love of reggae continues, from Jamaica, the birth-place of reggae, to other international reggae artists, and just as significantly, many homegrown acts as well, from Herbs to12 Tribes, Katchafire, Kora and Aperahama himself.

Ruia Aperahama is a Maori reggae musician who sings in te reo, and he has released two albums of Bob Marley songs in Maori. His hope has always been to one day return the albums as a koha to the Marley family, in Jamaica.

This documentary follows the New Zealander as he visits Nine Mile, Bob Marley’s birth and resting place.  He goes to Trenchtown, the Kingston slum of Marley’s songs, and to Hope Road to see the original Tuff Gong recording studio where the legend began.

A moving documentary of a Maori musician’s journey to gift his albums to Bob Marley’s whanau, HE KOHA MA BOB MARLEY screens on Maori Television on Wednesday June 24 at 8.30 PM.

Presenter/Talent: Ruia Aperahama

Hareruia ‘RUIA’ Aperahama is a Maori composer and recording artist. His brand music is a roots / world cross-over, sung in a Maori/English bilingual mix (Ruia is a native speaker of the Maori language). Ruia is adept on a variety of musical instruments - saxophone, keyboard and guitar – as well as a superb and passionate vocalist.

Ends

 

Merilee Andrews
Publicist
Māori Television
 
Phone     +64 9 539 7000
 
PO Box 113-017, Newmarket, Auckland 1149, New Zealand
9-15 Davis Crescent, Newmarket, Auckland 1023, New Zealand
http://www.maoritelevision.com/