Lorde just dropped a te reo Māori EP titled ‘Te Ao Mārama’

Publish Date
Thursday, 9 September 2021, 5:11PM

Lorde fans we are being fed today!

If a new Vogue spread, a Britney Spears cover, and a new Onion Rings post weren't enough today, we now have a brand new EP!

Ahead of Te Wiko o Te Reo, the EP titled Te Ao Mārama consists of 5 tracks from her latest album Solar Power, all sung in te reo Māori.

In a new e-mail newsletter accompanying the announcement, Lorde said, "Many things revealed themselves slowly to me while I was making this album, but the main realisation by far was that much of my value system around caring for and listening to the natural world comes from traditional Māori principles. There’s a word for it in te reo: kaitiakitanga, meaning ‘guardianship or caregiving for the sky, sea and land’.

She continued, "I’m not Māori, but all New Zealanders grow up with elements of this worldview. Te ao Māori and tikanga Māori are a big part of why people who aren’t from here intuit our country to be kind of ‘magical’, I think. I know I’m someone who represents New Zealand globally in a way, and in making an album about where I’m from, it was important to me to be able to say: this makes us who we are down here. It’s also just a crazy beautiful language— I loved singing in it. Even if you don’t understand te reo, I think you’ll get a kick out of how elegant my words sound in it."

We highly recommend listening to the gorgeous new EP whilst looking at all of the amazing photos from her Vogue shoot below. 

All proceeds from TE AO MĀRAMA will go to two amazing NZ-based charities — Forest and Bird and Te Hua Kawariki Charitable Trust.

 

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