Maaka Phat

A speaker of both Māori & English, Maaka Phat is an internationally renowned multiple award-winning composer, musician, engineer, producer, and artist who specializes in creating original musical works that fuse the Māori language, traditional Māori instruments and pre European Māori song structures and philosophy with contemporary sounds, technology, and musical styles. Maaka Phat is best known internationally for his work with the groundbreaking Māori electronica duo 'WAI' who worked out of London for 10 years. WAI performed in over 25 countries including gigs at Central Park NYC, Hyde Park London, and Riddu Riddu in the Arctic Circle. WAI went on to be the 1st Māori language electronica group ever to be nominated in 2 out of 7 awards at the BBC World Music Awards. Their most recent performance was at the Rainforest World Music Festival in 2019 in Borneo. In 2018 Maaka was inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame with hip hop pioneers Upper Hutt Posse. Maaka has engineered and produced numerous productions and artists that have won and been finalists in many NZMA, MMA, and APRA award ceremonies. At 19 years of age, he recorded Hirini Melbourne's 1st Tāonga Pūoro Māori Music album “Toi Apiapi’. He has gone on to produce numerous projects including themes, titles, music, educational resources, and audio post productions for many private companies and government departments including Huia, Te Amokura, TV1, TV2, TV3, Prime, Sky, Nickelodeon, MSD, MOE, MMN, and RNZ.