RERENGĀTAHI

The design of this wooden mouthpiece constructed for Saxophone depicts a Kōauau being carried within a Toroa’s beak. This beak belongs to Wārere; a time travelling Toroa who befriended an Alto Saxophone during his retrospective travels through 1934 Czech Slovakia. Following their promising establishment of firm friendship, the Toroa left the Alto Saxophone and returned to an even more distant past in his homeland of Aotearoa, retrieving a kōauau to take to his Saxophone friend as a symbol of cultural and immaterial exchange. From their successive meeting and intensive wānanga, world-hopping between the realms in and around Kōauau and Saxophone, these two friends plotted an infinite flightpath towards an immeasurable future, binding their worlds in song.

This piece acknowledges the chance arrival of this Alto Saxophone in my life, an instrument which belonged to the late Jim Langabeer, a pioneer Aotearoa saxophonist, improviser, composer and Taonga Puoro player.

RINGATOI/ARTIST: Rāhara Tito-Taylor
HAPŪ: Parawhau, Uriroroi, Ngāti Mahuta
SIZE: H: 155mm D: 50mm
RAUEMI/MATERIALS: Totara wood, Paua inlays