Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change
Editors: Prof. Mike Robinson (Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change, Leeds Metropolitan University) and Dr Alison Phipps (University of Glasgow)
|
Volume: 2 Number: 2 Page: 94–117
|
|
|
|
|
The Aotearoa Traditional Maori Performing Arts Festival 1972–2000. A Case Study of Cultural Event Maturation
|
|
Parehau Richards and Chris Ryan
|
|
This article describes the history of the Aotearoa Traditional Maori Performing Arts Festival between the years of 1972–2000. It reveals a series of tensions between a need to express a cultural identity and financial constraint, between a wish for expressing independence, and
a subsequent dependency upon state grants, between the traditional and the contemporary in performance. The history also shows the significance of key personalities. Yet through these discourses has emerged a successful and important Festival that attracts increasing numbers of participants
and which is a dynamic component of Maori culture in contemporary New Zealand. A significant tourism event, by reason of primarily appealing to Maori it still, to a large extent, lies outside of the conventional tourism structures of New Zealand, dominated as these are by overseas visitors
and non-Maori New Zealand domestic demand. Yet its very success is bringing it to the attention of a wider market, with all that implies for possible future development. The article also proposes dimensions of festival evolution and maturation.
Keywords: CULTURAL TOURISM, FESTIVAL TOURISM, MAORI CULTURE, FESTIVAL MATURATION, NEW ZEALAND
© 2004 Channel View Publications
Full text PDF
|
