BACK 2 BASICS (Volume 03 Issue 17 JAN-MAR 2009)

UPPER HUTT POSSE "KNOW THE LINKS"

Back in 1985, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, then Minister of Justice, commissioned a special investigation into the Maori perspective of the criminal Justice system. Soon after the investigation had begun, a young Maori musician by the name of Dean Hapeta was brought onboard to act as a research collator.
About six months into the investigation acclaimed Maori lawyer Moana Jackson took over the administration of the project, which lead to Jackson and Hapeta spending the next two years travelling around the country conducting research for what would eventually culminate in Jackson’s now historic 1988 report 'The Maori and the Criminal Justice System: He Whaipaanga Hou - A New Perspective'. At the time, the report was rejected, and heavily criticised in the media for suggesting that Maori should have their own criminal justice system.
While this was going on, Hapeta was playing keyboards in a four-piece reggae band called Upper Hutt Posse (UHP) on the side, and although he didn’t directly know it at the time, internally writing what would become Aotearoa’s first Hip Hop record; ‘E Tu’.
As Hapeta explains to me when we met up on a Friday night in Wellington at Thorndon’s historic Thistle Inn near the central railway station, ‘E Tu’ wasn’t really a new song. “That song was James Brown, ‘Say it Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud’. [It was] Schoolly D, ‘Say it loud, I love rap and I’m proud’. It’s the same thing. When I heard James Brown’s ‘Say it Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud’ I thought, Maori ain’t got a song like that. I mean, we do. We got Kapa Haka songs about self pride, but we ain't got no rap songs about that, and anyway, we ain't got any rap songs at the time. There’s no rap song, so shit, well I'm going to write it then, [and] it’s going to be about leaders of old that inspired me.”
Recorded in 1988 at Writhe Studios, the actual release of ‘E Tu’ came about as the result of Television New Zealand’s popular and alternative music program Radio with Pictures covering Aotearoa’s first ever MC battle, which was held in the Hutt Valley in 1987 with UHP serving as the house backing band. It was here that they caught the ear of local DJ, music manager and OG beat-maker George Hubbard.
“George Hubbard was hustling,” reflects Hapeta. “There was this thing called the Recording Artists Scheme. He said we should apply for that, so we applied for it and got five grand to record the single. Then we had to go and find a record company, and he goes ‘We'll go to Jayrem [Records]’. We knew Jayrem because they were doing Dread, Beat and Blood and that. [We] went out to Jayrem, sat down with Jim and he went, ‘Yep, I'm into it’. [So] Jayrem got on board, and it was probably George Hubbard [working] behind the scenes as well, because we got Radio with Pictures to do the video for ‘E Tu’. They approached us, and were like ‘You've got a song; we'll do the music video’. We were like ‘Hell yeah’.”
Blending a simple militant style old school Hip Hop beat with rapped revolutionary rhetoric with an explicitly Ma¯ori frame of reference, ‘E Tu’ broadcast a clear, focused message to the people of our country and ushered in the real beginning of Hip Hop Aotearoa.
Twenty years on, Upper Hutt Posse have released five full length albums, numerous singles/videos, and performed around the globe, indelibly stamping their mark upon the history and development of modern music within our country and abroad.
Halfway along the journey, Hapeta (nowadays known more commonly as Te Kupu or D-Word) became a film maker and masterminded the critically acclaimed 6 part rapumentary series Ngatahi – Know the Links, which has seen him travel through twenty different countries to document arts and activism amongst native and marginalised people across the planet.
Aside from working on these rapumentaries , 2008 has also found Hapeta and UHP returning to the studio, to record ‘Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou’, a new single celebrating the twentieth anniversary of ‘E Tu’ with renowned sound engineer Mike Gibson at his Trident Audio Studios in Wellington.
“I met Mike, and he was like, ‘Remember me? I drummed for you guys at [The] Cricketers Arms’,” Hapeta laughs. “We had this gig, Dlt was our drummer then, and he didn’t show up, and this guy Mike Gibson was there, and he goes ‘I can drum’, [so I thought] shit, that’s you. He was drumming, and Blue Dread, who was the lead vocalist for the reggae section of our performances; where the fuck is he? It was a Christmas Eve gig, wasn’t many people there, so it didn’t matter so much. Blue Dread didn’t show up until we were on stage, we were like, we’ll just play and jam; and Mike was great. [So] I was like, ‘He runs Trident Studios? He’s the Mike Gibson I’ve been hearing about? Aww, he’s our drummer anyway, sweet as; we’re going to do it there’. I got onto Mike, struck up a good vibe and ended up doing it up there, and he mixed it and mastered it.”
Set for digital release via Loop Recordings (as well as on vinyl in 2009) and translating into ‘We Will Fight on, For Ever and Ever’, ‘Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou’ was first used as a chant at the Battle of Orakau in 1864 by Maori in response to British requests for their surrender, and has since been adopted as a common rallying call during Maori protests against injustice.
Blending powerful funk informed horn lines with deep reggae bass, semi psychedelic guitar lines and a driving drum rhythm, all juxtaposed with impassioned bilingual vocal performances, ‘Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou’is essentially a battle cry. A social and musical battle cry, which twenty years on, simply serves to reaffirm Hapeta and UHP’s significance and relevance within the cultural landscape of Aotearoa.
Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou - we will fight on, for ever and ever.

Martyn Pepperell