On Foreign Soil: Moana and the Tribe: European Tour 2002
Author: Stuart Page
As a last minute addition to the 10 week 30-gig Moana & The Tribe tour of Europe last summer, I was summoned to produce backdrop videos (NZ scenery, contemporary and traditional Maori Art, and historical footage), in collaboration with Toby Mills of Tawera Productions in Auckland. Three weeks and 22 videos later, my retinas fried from too many all-night crash courses in DVD burning, there I was racing to Auckland International.
I was to be DVD jockey, DVCam shooter and Minister of Transport and Archives. The 12-strong tour party consisted of Moana, two female vocalists, two male guitar/vocalists, a taonga puoro (ancient Maori instruments) expert, three or four haka warriors, a break-dancer/rapper and Toby Mills who kept us all in line.
Our arrival in Zurich, Switzerland 24 hours later coincided with a sweltering heatwave. World Cup fever was also high, the Swiss rooting for Mexico who drew that day with Italy (1-1).
The first gig at avant-garde jazz club Moods im Schiffbau was a harbinger of things to come. Quality sound equipment and technicians, very friendly promoters, heaps of complimentary delicacies and 300 people who were there purely for our show. The box of Europe-only "Moana" CDs sold out and someone dashed back to the hotel for more while the band wondered what to do with all the delicious food and drinks backstage.
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Above: Cadzow jammed with a jazz pianist in Strasbourg while others danced with locals. Below: The audience in Kehl. |
The set up for an evening gig in the main piazza of Valmontone, south of Roma, was interrupted by the Carabinieri shutting down the generator because of the noise and diesel smoke. Enter Angelo the Mayor’s posse of wiseguys who escorted us everywhere. This handful of men were always huddled to one side in an animated group waving their arms around conversing with raised voices.
After an hour of confrontation the power came back online. A happy crowd of hilltop Romans enjoyed the gig despite the pops and bangs in the sound.
It’s a 45 minute drive in an old van over to Albano, along the country roads past wild funghi porcini stalls and Nigerian hookers. Villages of beautiful stone buildings, green trees all the same hue, everything flowering and sneezy. Suddenly our driver Mario stopped the van and got out. He released the van’s handbrake, and it rolled up the slope! The place is called something like the Devil’s Hill.
That night’s venue was built a couple of millennia back in 3 AD, an ancient arena where Christian martyrs were once set upon by lions and bears. By noon when the stage and PA were delivered the Italian crew said it was too hot to work, so we all went to a lakeside ristorante for lunch. The owner plied us with chilled vino rosso, Teina playing requests on guitar. After lunch, a World Cup semi-final and a great old sing along, we were driven back to the coliseum in the owner’s Mercedes, but not before he refilled our water bottles with the ubiquitous rosso. Hospitality Italian style!
At the beautiful Teatro Arena del Sole in Bologne I rearranged the back curtain to allow full-screen rear-projection and the manageress threw a tantrum. I smiled and carried on. It’s our gig! And it was great! The music was beautiful with additional harp, clarinet and keyboards from our Florentine friends. RAI TV filmed it, the video image was big and bright, and the Italians dug it, despite mourning their World Cup loss to South Korea.
After six or seven shows in Italy we headed for Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Leichtenstein, still with more than 20 gigs to go.
In Stüttgart our non air-conditioned sold-out theatre of 400 was stifling hot until sudden simultaneous thunder and lightning directly overhead blew open the electric skylights and rain poured into the theatre! Still the gig was special, very intimate and many people came and talked afterwards, one wanting to buy our DVD.
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Another view of Kehl, Germany; and the Chinese reggae festival. |
München’s very hip and 'hard to please’ Atomic Café gig went down better than expected. 'Mad, obsessed and inspired...’ said one reviewer. The band and video looked really cool surrounded by a sequinned curtain on stage, strobed by a large mirror ball, and lots of freaky lights After the gig we all danced until 5am among glass display cases holding Mexican style painted skulls, the DJ playing 'ethnic lounge’ and old Hawaiian music.
Rügen in the far north of Germany is a popular island resort in the Ost See. It is former GDR with little modernisation evident since reunification, just beautiful agricultural vistas, rolling fields of corn with no fences. An NDR TV crew were shooting us as we arrived down a tree-lined avenue.
The venue was an old stable converted into a theatre and we built a screen from a Luzerne hospital sheet. Most of the audience were from Berlin; not many locals could afford 25 Euros I guess. Afterwards a hearty feed of beef goulash, potato and an unusual pea and chickpea mash!
Next day the promoter, Thorsen, (a motor-biking ex-Berliner) took some of us to Hitler’s never completed 3km wide seaside Prora hotel, built for Third Reich workers. Bleak and minimal, undecorated yet functional – it’s now a Berlin beatnik outpost used as Art Galleries and studios. We hit the beach, which was predominantly nude. Our girls looked over-dressed in t-shirts etc. and we boys kept our shorts on too.
Bochum is set in the middle of the Köln / Düsseldorf industrial sprawl. The venue was an old Bahnhof (railway station) and the unanimously positive smokers loved all of Moana’s sentiments. The gig went out live on radio and Toby was mobbed at the CD and T-shirt stall.
Later Moana received an email that typified the effect of the concerts:
dear moana - dear group
...since long i have not heard such wonderful music—-
i have been touched so deeply by your music and the whole show
... all on my way home in my car (50 km) waterfalls of tears streamed
out of my rigid German iron soul
and the volcano fires of your music made it melt to milk and honey... (abridged)
The last gig of our tour was the famous Chiemsee reggae festival where Moana and the Tribe performed alongside 'new dubby conquerors’ Seeed from East Berlin, Patrice, Luciano and UB40. One of the festival promoters had lived in NZ, so she’d made sure that Moana was booked. A seven-camera Bavarian TV crew shot the set. Not allowed on stage, I wandered around the crowd filming the dreadlocked throngs dancing in the sun.It was hard to leave Chiemsee, we’d all made some great acquaintances and the promoter’s NZ homesickness was re-kindled by our visit. But after a short sleep we were lifting off from Frankfurt flughafen, destination Neuseeland.
The band will spend the 2003 NZ winter performing in the European summer, finishing at the Cultural Olympiad in Athens, and taking in Spain and the UK. A short spring tour of NZ is planned to promote the new Moana & The Tribe CD 'Toru’.
