I mean that happened in Spain
on our most recent tour.
We were playing Kai Tangata
and it was the same deal,
15-20,000 people.
And we have those in-ear monitors in.
And I was like,
‘Can I hear what I think I can hear?’
And so I like popped it out...
Everyone in the crowd
just ‘Anei Rā’.
Singing their absolute hearts
out in Māori.
And then,
and then they come and talk to you
afterwards and are like ‘that was...’.
Like they can hardly
speak a word of English,
but they can sit down
and learn the Māori words,
pronunciation and all.
And it's like,
why can't people in New Zealand
fucking do that?
Yeah, it was real powerful stuff.
It's pretty hard to put into words
when you see like,
a bunch of
people that are on the complete
opposite side of the world
singing, connecting with, you know,
Māori lyrics and Māori
kind of stories and ideals.
The only reason that
is ever happening as well is
because we're
there, it’s like there
wouldn't be that many people
singing in Māori anywhere in the world.
I think people usually don't
even realise that Māori exist
in the rest of the world.
And that's one thing
that I think for me personally,
it's like you go over there
and you play to 20,000 Spanish people
who are going to sing in Māori back
to show the people here that it's okay.
That this is, this is dope.
You can do it too.
You all can do it.
You can be a part of it,
you can embrace it
and then hopefully start bringing back
a bit of positive conversation
in the homeland, you know.
There’s definitely
that that culture over here
that’s like ‘if it's not big overseas,
we don't care’.
Yeah.
Where was it?
The, the haka.
Oh, Denmark!
Denmark!
You’re going, ‘Man! You’ve got a crowd
of 10-15,000 people’.
You know, and you're like, man,
we can't get that here.
We can't even get that
in our own country, you know?
I feel like there is
still a very big culture of
‘Oh it’s Wangarei, not Whanga-bloody-rei’.
You know,
that kind of whole, you know, ‘why should
I have to put in effort?’
kind of culture.
It's, it's
showing people
that if
people halfway over
the world can put effort in,
they can at least start to try,
you know?
It's, it's
almost like it's
almost like ‘my mates will laugh at me
if I pronounce it right’ kind of culture,
which is, it's, it's toxic,
but it's one of the hardest cultures
to change
because people don't like feeling...
Left out.
Outside their,
outside their little circle.
Which I mean,
some of those circles are racist.
A lot of them are.
There’s I guess a certain
amount of what's happening here
with Māori
that is happening in
a lot of places in the world.
Institutionalised
racism is like massive, you know?
We’ve got a lot of fans over in the US
that are Navajo and First Nations
and so they feel this strong connection
with what we're talking about.
And I think that's
one of the things that takes
the power of what Alien Weaponry does up
another level is yes,
we can relate it to Māori,
but because of the international
Indigenous struggles around the world,
you get these moments where
other indigenous are like, ‘Oh!’.
And so even though
we're talking about our history,
they have their own
and you can inspire them
to just do it with their own people,
reconnect with their own people,
you know,
start to be, ‘oh man,
these guys are comfortable enough to,
you know, fight the fight’, so to speak.
Let's do it ourselves.