When the Haka Became Boogie - The Musos (Episode Four)

It's a wonderful outlet to have when you have problems or you're uptight or tense ... If I play the cello...it's all gone, it's very soothing, it's good for the soul.

– Accomplished classical musician Sally-Anne Brown on the emotional power of playing

The Centre was like the main marae of Auckland. If you wanted to find any Māori in Auckland you'd find them here every Sunday, basically.

– Dilworth Karaka on the importance of Auckland Māori Community Centre as a venue for music

We're in the 'good time' business.

– Dilworth Karaka from Herbs sums up his line of work

When I'm onstage and I look out there, and it doesn't matter whether it's six people, or 60 people or sixty thousand people...you just get this rapport going...and you usually basically start it from the front 'cause that's as far as you can see, and then you just feel this intensity coming from the people, and it grows and goes back ... I don't know what it is you know, you feel like you're floating on a cushion...like 'woooow'! Is this what it is? You know money doesn't mean anything, the limousines don't mean anything, the aeroplane ride doesn't mean anything. It's just right here and now this thing going on between you and the audience...

– Charlie Tumahai from Herbs on the magic of performing

Oh Weasel! Weasel was...one of the finest musicians ever to come out of New Zealand. He was the only ... New Zealand musician to appear onstage with a little pocket radio that he'd plug into his ear and...to those of you who don't understand, when you're doing an hour floor show with a seven or eight-piece group, that whole group is working, right from go to whoa, virtually doesn't ever stop. For an hour they're doing so much variety, vocal, instrumental, comedy, dance routines, you name it they're doing it...and there's this guy in the middle of the stage, moving back and forth ... playing his guitar, and he's listening to the Top Twenty, because he wants to get the latest number out for their cabaret next week! He's actually listening to the Top Twenty while he's playing onstage, incredible....

– Barney Erickson on legendary showband guitarist Weasel Taiaroa

Tommy, Mark, and Alec Kahi, too – I’ve got a little 78 of myself with Alex Kahi and Nick Nicholson [playing tin whistle on the Robbins Recordings label]. Tommy, Nick and Alec Kahi, the elder brother of the three Kahi brothers, all of whom came from Rawene. They were naturals also. I think there are groups of families who have a pretty big gene pool. There were the Campbells in Auckland – Lou, George and Phil Campbell – and they were remarkably capable musicians, because some ancestor or other was loaded musically. Tommy was a very good entrepreneur. He could put a band together and take it to Temuka or Stoke or Picton and clean up.

– Legendary saxonophist Stu Buchanan on the talented Kahi family, AudioCulture, 8 February 2018

That was great fun, I've enjoyed every minute of it, it's good...'cos we think different, you know? It's a different idiom and yet we feel the same about music, irrespective. He can feel what I'm getting at and I can feel what he's...[getting at]...

– Mark Kahi enjoys a jam with fellow guitarist Tama Renata