I live roughly 18,000km from my family, from all I love and hold dear, and yet I rarely find myself nostalgic for the crisply manicured streets of Cambridge or the gouged goldfields surrounding Waihi.
But the other night, in a dark basement under an old church in Glasgow, I found myself feeling profoundly homesick for Aotearoa. And yet I also felt at home, in a sense.
I was at the Oran Mor, a church-turned-pub in Glasgow’s West End on Sunday night, listening to a fellow Kiwi — Christchurch-born Marlon Williams — crooning in te reo Māori, backed by his band The Yarra Benders.
Williams opened with the a cappella E Mawehe Ana Au, a haunting meditation on the experience of being suspended between worlds, at once intimate and disorienting. The same track introduces his latest album, Te Whare Tīwekaweka, which I have found myself returning to again and again since its release last April.
Composed entirely in te reo Māori, Te Whare Tīwekaweka marks a definite shift in Williams’ artistic and cultural trajectory, shaped by his own experience of disconnection from the language and his gradual return to it.
In an interview with The Guardian, he admitted ‘‘there’s shame in not knowing the language already, and pain in my own family of not knowing it’’.
Understandably therefore, writing an album entirely in te reo Māori filled him with ‘‘whakamā [self-doubt]’’.
Indeed, Te Whare Tīwekaweka translates as ‘‘The Messy House’’ — Williams’ acknowledgement that his use of the language may be imperfect.
I’m no expert in te reo Māori so I cannot comment on Williams’ grammar or phrasing, but I can attest to the richness and beauty of the album. At the gig on Sunday night, Williams spoke about the strangeness and the privilege of being on the other side of the world, singing in te reo Māori.
At a time when the place of te reo Māori in public life in New Zealand feels increasingly contested, this album is a vehicle for cultural affirmation and linguistic revival.
Moreover, by taking the album abroad with gigs in far-flung places like Glasgow and Groningen, Williams not only normalises te reo but elevates it, framing the language not as something peripheral or ceremonial, but as a living, expressive medium capable of carrying modern stories, emotions, and artistic ambition around the globe.
Williams moved between new material and beloved earlier songs, weaving tracks from Te Whare Tīwekaweka alongside fan favourites like My Boy, Easy Does It, and Dark Child. I particularly liked hearing Kōrero Māori — its call-and-response vocals and buoyant rhythm rippled through the church basement in an unmistakably joyful way.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear my Scottish friend Calum — a recent fan of Williams’ music — singing along with enthusiasm beside me, pronouncing all the te reo with ease.
Williams and the band, he admitted, were exhausted from travelling from Dublin earlier that day, but any sense of fatigue did not mar the performance; rather, it transmuted into something softer and looser, more relaxed and reciprocal.
Williams and his band seemed to draw energy from the room itself. As the evening unfolded, Williams took requests and bantered with the crowd, calling us ‘‘wee bobby dazzlers’’ and gleefully showing off his (questionable) Scottish accent. I was struck by the intimacy of it all.
Only a few weeks earlier I had attended a rather different concert in Glasgow. I was seated high in the cheap seats, in the cavernous expanse of the OVO Hydro arena, one amongst thousands gathered to see Ke$ha.
That night had felt immense, even overwhelming; I was part of an ocean of bodies, the music amplified to a scale that bordered on the impersonal. Ke$ha herself was a little speck on a vast stage — I felt very far away from her.
Here at Oran Mor however, this performance felt close enough to touch. There was a distinctly unhurried quality to it all, as though the music was being shaped collaboratively in real time — as though we, the audience, were creative partners, too.
There are some artists, some musicians, who carry a place with them. I don’t mean something tangible, something concrete — like a vial of soil or a pounamu earring — or even necessarily something in their lyrics, language or accent.
Rather, there’s something in the atmosphere such a musician creates — something subtle and unnameable, a feeling that you have briefly stepped into another landscape.
Seeing Marlon Williams live is like that. For a couple of hours in Oran Mor, Glasgow tilted gently toward Aotearoa.
- Jean Balchin is an ODT columnist who has started a new life in Edinburgh.
