Māori waiata is the umbrella term for the Indigenous song tradition of Aotearoa / New Zealand. It splits into functional sub-forms: waiata-ā-ringa (action song with hand and body gestures, central to kapa haka performance), waiata poi (women's song accompanied by twirled woven balls on cords), waiata tangi (laments for the dead, sung at tangihanga funeral rites), waiata aroha (love songs), and karakia (prayer chants). Performance is typically unaccompanied group singing, though guitar and ukulele have entered the tradition in the twentieth century. The melodic vocabulary is close to pentatonic, and ornamentation is not the clean grace notes of Western training — vowels are stretched and pitched inflection is used in the technique called moteatea.

Māori ancestors reached Aotearoa around the fourteenth century in seven great migration canoes (waka) from tropical Polynesia — mostly Tahiti and the Cook Islands. After the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, Māori language was progressively excluded from schools during British colonisation, and by the mid-twentieth century speaker numbers had halved. The 1970s Māori renaissance — the language movement and the broader cultural revival — set the political groundwork; the 1987 Māori Language Act and the establishment of Māori Television (2004) restored institutional space for the tradition. Key pivots were the 1972 language petition and the 1975 Māori Land March.

In moteatea (the traditional chant form), listen for vowel duration rather than pitch contour. When singing 'Aotearoa' the initial A can stretch to three seconds, and that breath-length is the tradition's fundamental time-sense. In waiata poi, the twirled ball adds tambourine-like percussion inside the vocal texture. Hirini Melbourne (1949–2003) was central to the revival of traditional Māori instruments, including the bone flute rauremoko; his recordings preserve instrumental sounds that had almost disappeared by the mid-twentieth century.

The Sir Kīngi Īhaka choral arrangement of 'Pōkarekare Ana,' or Moana & The Tribe's Ancestors album, is a strong entry. Whirimako Black's Whirimako Sings... presents traditional chant in a contemporary studio setting. Hirini Melbourne and Richard Nunns' Te Ku Te Whe (1994) is the definitive documentation of restored traditional instruments. Evening or early morning, quiet room.

'Pōkarekare Ana' — the most widely known Māori song — is actually of unknown authorship, first documented in around 1912 as a song sung by soldiers on New Zealand's East Coast during the First World War. Air New Zealand later used it in commercials, and the Korean film The Chaser (2008) used it on its soundtrack, spreading the song across East Asia. The Te Matatini national kapa haka festival, held since 1972, now draws over forty groups nationally and audiences over 400,000 — the largest cultural event in the country. Waiata is compulsory in New Zealand schools, and most New Zealanders can sing basic waiata at some level.