From garage to charts: how Māori strum helped shape the sound of New Zealand
The distinctive guitar pattern informs many of the country’s biggest hits, and remains an enduring cultural touchstone
In late 2021, a series of videos started circulating social media: a gifted singer belting out R&B and hip-hop tunes with a uniquely New Zealand take. The songs were stripped back to their barest guitar basics, peppered with Māori words and New Zealand in-jokes. Behind the renditions, there was something deeply, immediately recognisable: a guitar sound musicians call the “Māori strum”.
It is perhaps New Zealand’s most distinctive and enduring musical sound, strummed on guitars across the country and often nicknamed jing-a-jik or rakuraku, after the cadence it produces. It is a strum heard not only at marae (meeting houses), family gatherings and competitive kapa haka (action dance) performances, but in some of the country’s most beloved hits, including OMC’s How Bizarre and Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over.
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