Mara TK: Te Kete Aronui
From his debut solo album Bad Meditation, Mara TK’s “Te Kete Aronui” is a divinely slow-burning and soulful work. The Māori-Scottish singer (once the frontman for New Zealand outfit Electric Wire Hustle) wrote and produced the entire album and says, “Writing this album has been a form of therapy over the last few years trying to figure out what kind of music I wanted to make next.” The song’s Māori title references one of the three baskets of knowledge retrieved by the god Tāne; te kete aronui being the basket of love, peace and art. “Growing up poor, everything goes through our indigenous lens,” TK says. “Here in Aotearoa we have our own Gods, our own values our own ways of speaking that are different to the colonial/capitalist culture.”
