When Byllie-jean (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga, Ngāti Pahauwera) released her debut EP Filter at the beginning of 2024, she was largely unknown. A year on and she’s become one of the most lauded songwriters in Aotearoa, recently picking up a Taite Music Prize (2025) for Best Debut Album. Byllie-jean spent her childhood riding horseback beside the Inangahua River in the north-west of the South Island. The influence of the ngahere (bush) and her capacity to listen deeply brings to mind the work of the great Hirini Melbourne. In this episode, Jen takes a ride in Byllie-jean’s truck, ‘Haumie’, and learns about the wāhine Māori who have shaped her life and songwriting.

Find out more about Byllie-jean:
https://www.instagram.com/byllie_jean/?hl=en

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Narration: Jen: Everybody’s trying to find their way home.

[00:00:10] Byllie Jean: What is happening? Is it a plane? Sounds like a plane, but I can’t see one. Must be behind that tree.

[00:00:19] Jen: Do you reckon? It does sound like a plan, hey?

[00:00:24] Byllie Jean: Or a really full on lawn mower.

[00:00:32] Byllie Jean: Can you just have…Can you just have a plane in your backyard or?

[00:00:37] Jen: I don’t think so. It’s weird, hey? I’m just gonna have a little look.

[00:00:43] Byllie Jean: I think it’s behind that tree, hey? Can you see the plane from where you are?

[00:00:54] Jen: No.

[00:00:55] Byllie Jean: I can see a white thing.

[00:00:56] Jen: Oh, yes. Okay. Now I see the white thing you’re talking about. [00:01:00] It’s just here, this side.

[00:01:03] Byllie Jean: Shit. Weird. He won’t be taking off though, will he? Because, or do you think there’s a runway back there?

[00:01:08] Jen: No. Fuck. Here he goes.

[00:01:10] Byllie Jean: Holy. Oh my God. It’s tiny. Oh, he is. He’s just going for a spin.

[00:01:17] Jen: No, he’s gonna take…

[00:01:17] Byllie Jean: He’s gonna take off. Oh my God. He is going towards a house.

[00:01:23] Jen: What the fuck?

[00:01:27] Byllie Jean: Wow.

[00:01:30] Narration: Jen: I’m riding shotgun in Byllie Jean’s truck. We may be parked in a suburban street near her place in Tauranga Moana, but we’ve just seen someone flying a plane out of their backyard. Just Tuesday afternoon stuff.

[00:01:43] Byllie Jean: I am, uh, kuia and so I have three children and three mokopuna.

[00:01:49] Byllie Jean: When she says she’s a kuia, a grandmother, you might imagine someone older, but Byllie Jean is young. What I really love is that she’s released her debut [00:02:00] solo EP in her forties. As someone who grew up in a similar time being sold all the same shit about what you can and cannot do in the music industry as a wāhine, I just think that’s punk as. And there’s a depth in her lyrics and production choices that only comes with living.

[00:02:23] Byllie Jean: Byllie Jean’s been a part of the music community for years, but it feels like the ‘Filter’ EP is the start of something really special. There’s an elemental witchy wairua to her songwriting, and maybe that’s the influence of her childhood. She grew up near the west coast of the South Island, surrounded by rugged mountain rangers, rivers and lakes. When you see tourist pamphlets of Aotearoa, that’s where she spent her days on horseback.

[00:02:57] Byllie Jean: So I was born, I was born by [00:03:00] the river, I was. Um, by the Inangahua. I was brought up with my cousins as siblings, really. My nan died before I was born, so my aunties were like, my nannies really. And I think that’s where my education has come from, is my cousins and my aunties. Yeah. They just, they taught me how to be in the world and yeah. And still are.

[00:03:28] Byllie Jean: That’s who I’m gonna call. Yeah, they’re, they’re my Ghostbusters for sure. They’re who I’m gonna call. Yeah. And I was homeschooled from maybe the age of 10, which kind of, I was kind of educated, but I spent a lot of time in the hills on horses kind of gone, or just on the river. So yeah, that’s what I mean. My education kind of formally came later. And my education definitely came from within whānau, other than that.

[00:03:59] Jen: You mentioned that [00:04:00] you learned and was schooled by the wāhine in your whānau. And um, it’s a big question, but what did, what were the things they taught you?

[00:04:11] Byllie Jean: They taught me about aroha. Yeah. And always coming back to aroha.

[00:04:17] Byllie Jean: And we saw them, us kids saw them love each other and have each other’s back to the point where they would, well my mom particularly, would have dreams, you know, ‘Go and protect the other one’. Or I guess dream tohu that would give her insights as to what was happening for each other, as siblings. So, yeah, that, and I think wairuatanga and matakite tanga.

[00:04:46] Byllie Jean: My family are really connected into Hahi and Christianity, and also Rātana. Particularly my grandmother was connected to Rātana. And it’s one of those things that Indigenous people do, is [00:05:00] they mix it all up together relatively fluidly, which is what my whānau has, um, has done. And I guess it’s also been a journey. It has, it hasn’t always been fluid, but the wairua stuff I think is what I learned from my mum about, they would sit up at night till late and hushed whispers and sometimes uproars laughter about things from Bible scriptures, to stories about hoodoo that would probably still freak me out to this day. Like I’d be a grown adult at my auntie’s knees, completely grown adult with kids, just shaking in my boots that those kinds of stories, as well as, uh, ones where, you know, we’d be staying somewhere and mum would say things like ‘Oh yeah, there’s a old pākehā lady that lives in the corner of the room’ and I was like, ‘Oh, I sleep there’. And she’d be like, ‘It’s all right. I told her to get’.

[00:05:51] Byllie Jean: And just, to her it was normal, normal things, and she took, she took authority over things. The natural environment as well sometimes. [00:06:00] And so through the pūrākau of inside our own whānau, as well as things that were happening in the present, I guess she taught me that it was a normal part of life. And where my own, I’m trying to think of a word that’s not authority ‘cause that sounds so weird, but where I fit into it and how to use it as a guiding force, and to be able to listen. That’s what it’s, to be able to listen. Yeah.

[00:06:31] Jen: Maybe one of the thoughts or the feelings that I’m having when I’m listening to you speaking is, um, there seems to be a real trust in the listening and the tohu, and I feel like that’s something that I’ve really just been developing over the last few years. Like as I started to go, maybe this is real, this stuff that I’m feeling, these experiences that I’m having, the things that appear in my life that make me cry when I [00:07:00] see like, just collapse, because they feel like such a direct communication, the thin veil that we often speak about in Te Māori. And I guess I just wanted to maybe hear a little bit of, more from you, maybe even if there was a, an experience that you had where you were like, ‘Whoa, this is for me’.

[00:07:20] Byllie Jean: Two things come to mind. One of them was ‘Desperate Fools’, which is on the EP. And that was a time of feeling really lost. And then I had a dream that I met myself on the street. I had a baby in the dream, and I had about five kids. And I walked down the street with my mom afterwards, and I saw a woman coming towards me with, she was wearing a red coat. She had like bobbed hair, kind of thing. I noticed the red coat and she was in a group of people. And as we passed. I looked at her face and it was me. And then there was this moment where I was kind of aware that I was also dreaming. So there was me, the [00:08:00] dreamer, me, the mamae, I guess, and this other person. Who was this whole other person but me. And I had an epiphany or something of like that word, uh, when I woke up both of my insignificance and my significance, ‘cause I was struggling really badly with self-worth. I was coming to that dark night of the soul type shit that they talk about. And I was really questioning certain things that I hadn’t questioned before.

[00:08:27] Byllie Jean: What it did is leveled me up in terms of who me really was and I, and how much I centered myself, and challenged a lot of things of how I viewed the world. But the main thing that I got out of it was such deep aroha for both myself and everyone else that I never, I was never the same again, I guess .

[00:08:49] Jen: When you were just talking then about ‘who I am’, and the centering of self, and this idea of building this sort of image - particularly in the world that we [00:09:00] live in, where so much of it now is visual and scrolling through things and that digital kind of realm - it feels to me that it’s a very colonized way of seeing self, hey?

[00:09:12] Byllie Jean: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:14] Jen: And, and was there an opening perhaps to seeing Te Ao Māori how we might view whatever this idea of self is like, is there anything more that…

[00:09:26] Byllie Jean: Oh

[00:09:26] Jen: …you wanna say about that?

[00:09:28] Byllie Jean: Yeah, and I apologize in advance ‘cause this kind of thing is so difficult to, to have words to. The things that are, they’re knowings, hey? That are so difficult to articulate. And yeah. And they are easier often in Reo Māori, but there was a line that, uh, Te Haumihiata gave me and it was, um, ‘Ko tātou o rātou urupa’ which is basically ‘We are their urupā, and so we are them, and they’re in us all of the time’.

[00:09:57] Narration: Jen: Te Haumihiata Mason is a highly [00:10:00] skilled Māori translator, lecturer, and tutor of Reo Māori. She and Byllie Jean first met at an APRA Te Reo Māori song hubs.

[00:10:08] Byllie Jean: Our Tīpuna, I’m talking about. And also like I just said, you are me and I am you, and if I really own that, then there is no room for some kind of hierarchy, or some kind of made up victim or victor. So yeah, it’s really hard to find language that doesn’t sort of move into some sort of airy fairy sounding, ‘cause it’s hard to find words that aren’t vibration and we are all one and that kind of thing. But yeah, I think, and whakaaro Māori, it’s the whakapapa to me of all things, that everything has a whakapapa to everything. Everything. This kōrero all has its own  whakapapa. And not just human  whakapapa, but our whakapapa to everything. Our tuakana, which are the birds and the animals and the, and the, those are our tuakana, hey?

[00:10:57] Jen: I love that even this kōrero has a  [00:11:00] whakapapa. Like you said, you know, when I sit here, I’m not just sitting alone.

[00:11:05] Byllie Jean: Hmm.

[00:11:06] Jen: And there’s a reason why we’re sitting here.

[00:11:07] Byllie Jean: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:08] Jen: And trusting that as well. Like, you know, it’s weird, I’m just turned up into your lounge room, out of nowhere, a total stranger in some ways.

[00:11:18] Byllie Jean: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:20] Jen: But also maybe we are really meant to be here having this  kōrero, there’s like. Something that needed to happen, you know?

[00:11:27] Byllie Jean: No doubt. Kāore e kore.

[00:11:28] Jen: So that’s kind of what’s random about it. Like when I was riding over the hills to come here over the maunga, huge maunga, um, I was like, this is such a weird thing that I’m doing. It’s so out the gate.

[00:11:43] Byllie Jean: It is.

[00:11:43] Jen: Not many people do it either. Like, I’m like, not many songwriters do this kind of weird shit. And then I’m like, ‘why do I do it?’ And I was like, ‘because it’s so unpredictable’, and I want to have experiences in my life where I don’t [00:12:00] know what’s gonna happen.

[00:12:01] Byllie Jean: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:01] Jen: I don’t wanna live a life that’s really set out. I wanna have a path that feels led by something more.

[00:12:08] Byllie Jean: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:09] Jen: Than my ego.

[00:12:14] Narration: Jen: Byllie Jean has had some pretty significant experiences of being led by tohu. At a big shift in her life, she was guided by a ruru, or owl, and an old blue truck.

[00:12:26] Byllie Jean: When I came up here to Tauranga, I did a similar thing to you, which is where the ducks had aligned where I knew that I had enough money to be able to support myself while studying Te Reo full time.

[00:12:39] Byllie Jean: So I had to also work, but it was sort of like a now or never feeling, which is, thank God I did that because the new kāwanatanga, the government, cut the funding of that job that I previously had. So that was the last year for it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do it. Who knows when. But I was like, ‘right, I’m going to do Te Tohu Paetahi’. And so I bought my truck [00:13:00] Homie, and gutted her out. It was a whānau project. Drove her up. My oldest daughter lived here, but other than that, I knew not a soul. And I had been here maybe twice, so it was a whole new language and a whole new town and a whole just new life. My other daughter came over from Tairāwhiti, and we lived in the truck for a while, just freedom camping around.

[00:13:21] Byllie Jean: We were parked in the truck and it was around, but there wasn’t a lot of other bush. We was suburbia really. And um, I started to hear the ruru come every night. I already had a thing for ruru anyway. Well, ‘cause she is a Kaitiaki of, of my whānau and my hapū. And so I was like, ‘girls, did you hear the ruru?’ Everyone was like, ‘No’.

[00:13:42] Byllie Jean: All the other freedom campers that were by me, um, which were, there was a whole community of people actually often, um, tradies and road workers would live out of their cars. And so we were in our five star truck. So I would hear her every night. I had just recorded ‘E moko’, which is on the EP too. And I [00:14:00] had just finished the mixing of it. And I got my daughter to listen to it that night in the truck, and she had just gotten  hapū. And then we moved sort of inland a bit into real suburbia, and the ruru followed me every night. And so I started to just think about it more and more. And when she first popped up, I was like, and I was so excited to hear her because I knew that it was a tohu, that I was where I was meant to be and things were unfolding, and they did because I’ve been able to be by my daughter’s side as she had her moko.

[00:14:30] Byllie Jean: And she lives in Ngaruawhaia now, but most weekends I’m there with them. And that has been really special. And as that was happening, I now have a whole community of people that I know and love. I don’t even know if I know, I may know one person that doesn’t speak Te Reo, um, that lives here. So I found my Reo and in that I have grown in ways I could never have imagined. But that tohu was, I guess, heralding a new section in my [00:15:00] life. Feeling overwhelmed about how to explain the amazing, but yeah, it’s through the reo eh and my whakaaro changing whakaaro Māori. Yeah.

[00:15:21] Narration: Jen: Part of that community is a Whare Reo share house, where only Māori is spoken. When I met Byllie Jean, I was on the cusp of deciding to do the same thing myself. So of course I wanted to hear Byllie Jean and her housemate Miriama’s take on it.

[00:15:35] Byllie Jean: Māori. Yeah.

[00:15:37] Jen: So I should think about living with other students next to you.

[00:15:40] Byllie Jean: Oh, if you can, yeah. Man, yeah hard out. And because they talk about that A, is that if you can get it out of the book and out of the classroom and into the home. That’s where real life is. Right. So then Te Reo is in your real life. Yeah.

[00:15:53] Miriama: Yeah. It’s all well and good to like understand something, but like if you don’t apply it, you know, you lose it, you’re gonna lose it.

[00:15:59] Byllie Jean: [00:16:00] Yeah.

[00:16:00] Miriama: Because last year what I was doing was three hours a week in person. I didn’t have anything outside to apply what I was learning and. Doesn’t matter if I understood it, like asked me in, you know, two weeks, three weeks, let alone six months later and it would just be gone if I wasn’t using it.

[00:16:15] Byllie Jean: And according to some of the other tutors who’ve been tutoring for a long time, and the other kaiako, lots of people come out and within a year it’s gone, ‘cause they haven’t had anyone to speak to perhaps.

[00:16:27] Byllie Jean: I’d have gone back into jobs that don’t speak Te Reo at home. There’s no Reo. So where is Te Reo? Yeah. Which is the beautiful thing about what you’re about to do because this is the community that happened out of me doing Te Tohu Paetahi, and for you too, right?

[00:16:42] Miriama: Mm-hmm. It’s like you start a new job, you’re pretty much there like the majority of the week.

[00:16:46] Byllie Jean: Yeah.

[00:16:46] Miriama: So they become your community

[00:16:48] Byllie Jean: And you’re sweating together, and crying together, and going through the motions together, and studying, and doing heaps of games, and you’re sleeping alongside each other at the end of each paper, and [00:17:00] you’re, you know, eating together a lot. Yeah. The flat I was living in before, we didn’t speak a lot of Reo there and this has definitely helped for me.

[00:17:10] Byllie Jean: I can come outta my bedroom and speak Te Reo and I know that it’s with people who are not going to judge me for getting all mixed up some days and not coming out right some days and yeah.

[00:17:22] Miriama: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:23] Byllie Jean: Yeah. And I think if it’s in the home, then yeah, like just the kōrero in, in Te Kaauta, like in the kitchen. That’s, that’s really where the  kōrero is, ‘Pass me this, thingy that, what happened yesterday? What are…?’ Just the banter-y stuff. Yeah,

[00:17:39] Miriama: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And like another sort of shift in my learning is, um, ‘cause last year I just went into full immersion. We were all lost for about two thirds of the year, completely, just always on our Māori dictionaries. And no one spoke in class really.

[00:17:56] Miriama: And then, um, and then we were at one noho marae and I just, [00:18:00] all of a sudden, like when someone asked me a pātai, I, I just answered them. And I was like, ‘What if I’m there?’ And, and for me that was the…I was finally able to actually get it out. For me, that was a big shift.

[00:18:12] Jen: When I listen to you, I’m just like, fuck. You know? It’s terrifying in a way because so much of my sense of who I am is being able to articulate, and being a good orator, and being a singer and a communi- like that’s been the thing that I’m really good at. And I’ve kind of prided myself on that. So when I hear you talking about this, there’s a humbling that I don’t even think I have any concept of that is coming my way.

[00:18:48] Byllie Jean: Absolutely. You just hit it on the nail. It’s gonna be amazing. You’re gonna be reborn. But yeah, I tell you that’s the hardest thing. And that was the [00:19:00] difference between those that took their Reo to a different level than the ones who kept defaulting to speaking in English because they couldn’t get their point across, if you get what I mean.

[00:19:10] Byllie Jean: And it wasn’t ‘cause they’re arrogant people. It’s just ‘cause I do it sometimes. Sometimes I’m like, oh fuck, I’m just gonna say it how I wanna say it. Yeah. But if you really want to go into a point where you are truly conversating, and it’s the thing that, it’s coming outta your mouth. Then you have to push past that.

[00:19:28] Byllie Jean: If you don’t know how to say it, then you have to figure out how to, it’s humbling, especially at our age when we’ve spent so long learning how to articulate in English. I’m still trying to do it.

[00:19:43] MUSIC:  They’re running amuck in town. That’s what Uncle reckons. When nobody listens ‘cause, when he drunk, he a clown. Somebody stole [00:20:00] his land. And everyone knows who did it.

[00:20:14] Narration: Jen: My first encounter with Byllie Jean’s music was through a video that a friend sent me about a year ago. In the clip, she stands in a strikingly long red dress set amongst Cora-Allan’s encountering Aotearoa exhibition at the Christchurch Art Gallery. On the walls, there are reviews of the land from the perspective of the Moana, painted in whenua pigment. Next to Byllie Jean and her cellist and viola player, there’s a flag that says ‘Toitū te Tiriti’. And another one that says, ‘Proud to be Māori.

[00:20:48] Narration: Jen: The installation is a perfect match for her waiata ‘Running Amuck’. The song tells the story of the Māori land confiscations through the eyes of a disenfranchised Uncle, [00:21:00] who’s become the town drunk. As Byllie Jean’s slender ensemble brings the song to a crescendo of staccato strings, her grotesque facial expressions recall Kapa Haka, or Kabuki Theater.

[00:21:12] MUSIC: Somebody,

[00:21:13] Jen: This heightened theatricality really works as a storytelling device. More performance art, than a set from a singer songwriter.

[00:21:20] MUSIC: And everyone knows who did it.

[00:21:27] Byllie Jean: Thanks for saying performance art, because sometimes people say, ‘Oh, you’re a, you know, a wāhine and Māori singer. Oh my God, you’ll sing reggae or Kapa Haka or R&B. And then when they see some of my music videos or whatever, they’re like, ‘What the hell is this?’

[00:21:42] Jen: I’m gonna bring up the lyrics because what I love about this song is the way you’ve taken something, that we were saying before, that is so complex, and you’ve, you’ve kind of put it into this very metaphorical - if that’s the right word for it - [00:22:00] tale of this Uncle. And I just wanted to read those first lyrics that we just heard then.

[00:22:08] Jen: Um, they’re running amuck in town. That’s what Uncle reckons. When he drunk, he a clown. Somebody stole his land and everyone knows who did it.

[00:22:23] Jen: For me, anyway, hearing that, I was like, oh, it’s really speaking to how alcohol was used as a tool by colonizing forces to weaken…

[00:22:35] Byllie Jean: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:35] Jen: …The Māori resistance. And yeah, you’ve got this foolish clown now.

[00:22:41] Byllie Jean: Mm.

[00:22:42] Jen: Who knows that something’s going on.

[00:22:44] Byllie Jean: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:45] Jen: It just nails the whole energy of colonization, particularly when you are watching Palestine.

[00:22:51] Byllie Jean: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:51] Jen: Watching what’s happening in Gaza at the moment, where you’re just like, everyone knows…

[00:22:56] MUSIC: And everyone knows who did it.

[00:22:59] Jen: …Who’s [00:23:00] doing it.

[00:23:00] Byllie Jean: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:01] Jen: But the empire keeps empowering, like nothing’s gonna stop it.

[00:23:05] Byllie Jean: So true. Watching it live.

[00:23:07] Jen: Where did that come from? That inspiration to go, I’m not gonna write a really literal political song, you know, and there’s room for all of that, but this feels like a very gentle, little kind of fairy tale that is really actually very hard hitting.

[00:23:22] Byllie Jean: Mm. I think for a long time I had wanted to write the things that I was feeling politically, but I kept doing this annoying thing where it would end up being a little bit sorta, I don’t know, over melancholy or to me overly direct. I couldn’t get it around my style or get it to fit right with me. This had been in my thoughts for a while that wouldn’t it be cool to be able to pull that off?

[00:23:54] Byllie Jean: There were obviously conversations and things that were going on around close to that time, that [00:24:00] sparked the different inspiration for the kupu. But yeah, I don’t really know what happened. But it definitely came in sort of all at once, like a download really, because it was just sort of in there and coming and, yeah, and the kapu are really simple.

[00:24:15] Byllie Jean: In a way, it was easier to deconstruct the idea by putting it to something like a jig. Because there was less pressure on this big kaupapa, this big topic. Which a lot of nursery rhyme type of jiggy songs are like that, aren’t they? They have these big, massive topics underneath. Yeah, and it reminded me of who stole the cookie from the cookie jar, that type of thing.

[00:24:41] Byllie Jean: Except we all know who actually did it. And it’s funny ‘cause kids are the ones who go, you know, ‘Was it the Pākehā who did it?’ And I’m like, well, it was actually the crown, but it’s the kids who will actually go, you know, ‘Well, who actually did it?’ You know? [00:25:00] And I know that there are a lot of adults going, ‘Whoa, well, well, was it, was it me who did it? Was it my family? Was it, was it, who was it?’ Yeah.

[00:25:11] MUSIC: They emptied out the pantry and picnic on his bones.

[00:25:18] Byllie Jean: Yeah, well I was living in Lyttelton at the time, and across the harbor, there was a raru I guess with an old urupa where people, the bones were starting to wash away, as the sea ate into the land. And people were getting hōhā with not being allowed to picnic there. And I remember thinking about, oh yeah, well now that the land has been taken, people are doing whatever they want on it. And also feeling like there was a lot of arguments about, you know, well I’ve lived here for 20 years or whatever. So yeah, that’s what made me think of both picnicking on the flesh of the resources and that [00:26:00] kind of metaphor, but also literally picnicking on, on bones.

[00:26:07] MUSIC: …To the table, but all the seats were taken. Sacrifice the mountain, pronouncing his damnation. Congregation…

[00:26:24] Byllie Jean: Yeah, references to not getting seats at tables, in terms of positions of power. Seats of power, which is a good thing to bring up in the times of the Kīngitanga. And our new Queenie, attempts where Māori have tried to get seats at tables and make decision-making, and all those kinds of things. And the imaginary Uncle figure of not having any agency in his own life as well. And because I was living in Ōhinehou, in  Lyttelton, was the Pātaka, is what they called that little harbor, which is the pantry.

[00:26:56] Byllie Jean: Yeah. And now it’s turned into a port [00:27:00] and yeah, so there wasn’t obviously the rich kai source that it once was, and it’s been deforested and all of that kind of thing, which is obviously that story rolls out across the country, right? Of the emptying of pantries, and generally into specific stomachs. References to the missionaries role in the land grabs, and also, uh, definitely not something anti-church or religious beliefs, because obviously that’s in my family. However, also acknowledging that it wasn’t actually Māori that had a problem anyway with Christianity. It was the other way round. Yeah. Christianity had a problem with Tanga Māori ways of being. And that we were innately unworthy. Smooth, the pillow of the dying race. Our ways are better, our ideas are better. All that stuff.

[00:27:51] Jen: I love that you have, is it a viola solo in there?

[00:27:56] Byllie Jean: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:56] Jen: This is the thing I love e hoa and a big reason why I wanted to meet with you and [00:28:00] talk to you, even though I’m, you know, only found out about you this year. Often I’ve felt like I sit outside what Māori music is meant to sound like or look like, or be like.

[00:28:10] Byllie Jean: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:10] Jen: And I’ve really had to kind of do the work to know that what I’m doing is Māori music, because I am Māori.

[00:28:19] Byllie Jean: Mm.

[00:28:19] Jen: And what I’m saying is coming from a Māori place, it may not sound like other music that’s out there.

[00:28:25] Byllie Jean: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:26] Jen: And actually Hirini Melbourne was someone that really helped me to see that I wasn’t alone.

[00:28:30] Byllie Jean: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:31] Jen: Because the way that he wrote felt very in line with my approach of probably a more sort of folk based, gentler way of telling a story.

[00:28:43] Byllie Jean: Cool.

[00:28:43] Jen: And yet he wrote some of our most iconic.

[00:28:46] Byllie Jean: So true.

[00:28:47] Jen: I was just curious to hear, how’s that been for you?

[00:28:51] Byllie Jean: Good question because yeah, the same. In fact, I’ve had to ask myself several times, where do I fit? What am I [00:29:00] doing? And like I said, sometimes there’s an expectation when people find out that I am a singer that, oh my God, you’re a singer. Which then often will mean, okay, we’ll play us a reggae song, or get up and do karaoke, or you know, you must be good at all these other things. But actually I’m just like a weird performance artist that only can really sing the sort of stuff that I sing.

[00:29:21] Byllie Jean: And for a while I used to feel occasionally whakama about that. Yeah. And wonder where the other weirdos kind of were, or if this music was actually Māori music. Particularly also because it’s not something that you can sing at a guitar party, which is what, you know, I was brought up around. Or you can’t sing it as a congregation or a Kapa Haka group, or it’s not a collective participation. Like reggae plays everyone knows what to do, everyone will go with the vibe and, and we, we know it. But when I play live, often people dunno what the hell to do or what they’re listening to. So their reaction to it is [00:30:00] like, whoa, good and bad. And so, yeah, it’s been a journey to really be able to sit with it. I definitely, by the time this EP came out, I was definitely very particular and confident about the decisions I wanted to make creatively within my work. Which is why, yeah, this Hinekoukou one is also out the gate, is because I, I have the confidence now to be like, actually, yeah, I’m a Māori artist, so this is Māori work. And I love that you ask that question because my hope in doing that too is that others will hear it and go, ah I can now be whatever I want to be. All of these things rather than just fit certain boxes. Almost like giving other people courage and permission to just be, be, and create and tell the stories how they want to. We’ve boxed in what being a Māori looks like and is and feels like and things like that, but it’s too late. You are already Māori.

[00:30:59] Narration: Jen: A few years [00:31:00] ago, while being Māori wasn’t a question, Byllie Jean’s drive to be an artist was. One of the people that helped lift her out of that uncertainty was the Pōneke based songwriter Aja Ropata.

[00:31:12] Byllie Jean: I was like, right, I’m done with it. I’m not doing any more music. And then kind of got all these jobs and then of course my soul died, or, well, you know, my soul was struggling for life. And so then I did a reach out, which is really unusual for me ‘cause I’m so private and so pretending to be all together and then, not really, but maybe more back then.

[00:31:31] Byllie Jean: And so I reached out to a few people and she was one of them basically like a, throw me a lifeline, give me anything. I need to create something. And one of them was the producer I’m working with now. And so he gave me beats to write to and I was like, ‘Oh, cool’. There was funding to write a - must have been after the lockdowns or during or something - to write like a bilingual Te Reo Māori song.

[00:31:56] Byllie Jean: So we used one of the beats that came from Chris, the producer. [00:32:00] And wrote ‘Te Iho’ together. It was a real breakthrough in my life for me. Both a wairua and almost like a coming back to making things.

[00:32:17] Narration: Jen: ‘Te Iho’ went on to win a Maioha Silver Scroll Award, aotearoa’s highest songwriting honour.

[00:32:23] Byllie Jean:  Te Iho’ was about wāhine. It was all about where our Whakapapa comes from. From Hine Titama, Hineahuone was all about those ancestral lines and the Whakaaro around it was, the wānanga we initially have was the feeling that you get when a  wāhine walks in the room. As opposed to what she looks like, as opposed to who, you know, like what she’s done in her life. Whether she has children or doesn’t have children, or she just, all the trappings of the thing around the  wāhine. Just the feeling when she walks into the room of her own essence, which is what Te Iho means, is [00:33:00] the essence. Yeah.

[00:33:02] Byllie Jean: So it’s a beautiful Wānanga around that. It was, yeah, it was a wonderful journey. And for it to win a Silver Scroll was just like, I was bewildered. But because Chris, the producer, entered it and I didn’t even, I didn’t really pay that much attention. I was doing other things and he was like, oh, by the way, that song got shortlisted. And I was like, ‘Oh, cool’.

[00:33:23] Narration: Jen: For  Wāhine Māori, it’s taken a long time to go from being purposely overlooked, to being seen clearly, but it’s being seen by other  Wāhine Māori that’s freeing.

[00:33:34] Byllie Jean: I mean, I think as  Wāhine Māori, it’s such a big question because the imagery that we see is not generally us. More now, more so now, but as I was growing up and figuring out what a  Wāhine Māori was. Yeah, the imagery wasn’t us.

[00:33:53] Byllie Jean: And like I said, I was fortunate to have older cousins. I’m the pōtiki of the whānau, the youngest. And my [00:34:00] mom is the youngest as well, so i’m like the youngest of the youngest. Which is why I got to observe so much of what the old ones were doing. And I was fortunate to have trailblazers and people who valued other things other than just image or accolades or things like that.

[00:34:17] Byllie Jean: So I know how much of a struggle it is to be in a world where it values not looking like a Māori anyway, not looking like a  Wāhine Māori or sounding like a  Wāhine Māori. And I think the challenges that I’ve had in grappling with that journey have often come back at me with accusations of the angry brown woman thing, or that I’m racist towards either one, Pākehā Māori.

[00:34:46] Byllie Jean: Things that have attempted to really affect my life, actually. Cut me off from loved ones and, and work opportunities and things like that. So yeah, I think on the one hand underneath it there is that violence that has [00:35:00] been very real for  Wāhine Māori, both physical and spiritually. And I see it play out in the music industry still with the boys club things. From both, uh, non-Māori and Māori. In terms of support sometimes I’ll see people encouraging my producer, who’s a wonderful, beautiful person, but a Pākehā male, they will encourage him, without encouraging me, and I’m the one who put the songs out. And I know that it’s because it’s male to male and that’s what they’re used to.

[00:35:30] Byllie Jean: But on the other hand, I’ve also seen recently, particularly both Māori and  non-Māori males go out of their way to encourage me and support me, and I think that’s what it takes, is to go out of your way because the norm is to support the patriarchy really. And the norm is to go with capitalism. And so it takes going out of your way.

[00:35:53] Byllie Jean: And I think that every single day, Wāhine Māori inspire me. Look, here you are in front of me, inspiring [00:36:00] me. And yeah, every day,  Wāhine Māori inspire me in a million different ways. And every day I am reminded of how much we shapeshift constantly to fit into a thousand different roles. And I watch my daughters grow up and I think how absolutely incredible we are as  Wāhine Māori.

[00:36:20] Byllie Jean: And it is why one of my deepest passions is to create spaces and opportunities and stages for  Wāhine Māori, particularly Indigenous women as well, to tell their stories how they want to tell them. And every single story is worth it and fabulous. Even the ones where, I mean like me and you, I didn’t grow up next to my marae. You grew up overseas. All the different shapes and sizes and colors and things of  Wāhine Māori, fuck, man. We are just astounding. Despite it all, congratulations  Wāhine Māori because you are doing [00:37:00] it. And creating every single day, making babies and songs and freaking podcasts, and I love  Wāhine.

[00:37:09] MUSIC: Mommy, can you teach me how to fly?

[00:37:25] Jen: The closing track on Byllie Jean’s ‘Filter’ EP is a powerful duet with Marlon Williams, and making it happen was surprisingly low.

[00:37:32] Byllie Jean: Key. So the melody was written and I would be singing it and I was like, Ugh, I don’t really like how I sound singing it. I want it to sound like Pavarotti, but also sort of Kapa Haka. And so I was like, I need, perhaps it’s a male voice. And then I was like, oh, actually I know who can do Pavarotti that lives on the road. Old mate Marlon. So, not that I’m particularly close to him or anything, but I knew that he was, you know, local.

[00:37:58] Jen: So you went out, [00:38:00] uh, onto the streets of Lyttelton and you kidnapped Marlon Williams.

[00:38:04] Byllie Jean: Well, I didn’t, I’ve got my thugs to do for me. Well, I was in the comfort of my own home.

[00:38:11] Jen: I like the way you work gangster.

[00:38:15] Byllie Jean: Yeah, totally…

[00:38:16] Jen: It is beautiful though, hearing, you know, I mean, Marlon’s just such a incredible singer.

[00:38:24] Byllie Jean: Yeah, and I mean, he turned up after, you know, a night out and did it, and then went off on tour the next day. Like, I don’t think I could have pulled off someone else’s melody and smashed it out. And they’re kind of, they’re phrasing. He did say that it was a challenge, but he did it and it was in Te Reo Māori. And yeah, I think it was in quite an amazing feat, now that I look back on it.

[00:38:45] Jen: I’m feeling the Pavarotti.

[00:38:47] Byllie Jean: Pavarotti, but Māori.

[00:38:57] Jen: I think that’s one of my favorite parts of the album [00:39:00] is that, is that outro, like it’s ,so beautiful and epic and…

[00:39:05] Byllie Jean: Oh, thank you.

[00:39:06] Jen: …It’s, it’s, this waiata is really for, for me, like very moving, you know.

[00:39:11] Byllie Jean: Yeah. Yeah. Well, to me too. And to me it was also my own Nan speaking to me. Like, go for it moho. Just fly. Just go for it. Just be, be Māori.

[00:39:22] Byllie Jean: If you’re Māori, be Māori. Don’t waste your Whakapapa by being something that you aren’t. Just be Māori. And it’s right, whatever it looks like. Yeah. And I think that that’s what I want for my mokopuna. Because one day I’ll be a Tīpuna as well, and that’s what I want for them is, how do I be a good  Tīpuna? And so I want them to just do what it is that makes them feel connected, and in their belonging and, and be able to stand in their mana and be who they are.[00:40:00]

[00:40:00] Byllie Jean: And by accident they will flourish and fly.[00:41:00]

[00:41:02] Narration: Jen: Everybody’s Trying To Find Their Way home is made by me, Jen Cloher, with Bez Zewdie and Jon Tjhia.

[00:41:14] Narration: Jen: Ngā mihi nui to Byllie Jean for taking me for a spin in her truck Haumie. And legend housemate Miama for sharing her experience of living in a whare reo.

[00:41:25] Narration: Jen: This show is made with support from Creative Australia and Three Triple R 102.7FM. You can find more information about this episode, and listen to season one, at everybodys trying podcast dot com. And if you like this episode, share it with someone who needs to hear [00:42:00] it.