According to Music Therapy NZ, “Music Therapy is the planned use of music to assist with the healing and personal growth of people with identified emotional, intellectual, physical or social needs.”
A champion of music therapy is “Hawke’s Bay girl” Dame Hinewehi Mohi, who with her husband George Bradfield founded the Raukatauri Music Therapy Trust, headquartered in Auckland, but providing service in the Bay of Plenty, Northland and Hawke’s Bay.
Hinewehi Mohi has always been a trailblazer. Her father, Mike, spoke with pride of how, in 1985, she defied Waikato University protocol to graduate in a piupiu. She famously started a nationwide conversation when she sang the national anthem in te reo at the 1999 Rugby World Cup. So when her daughter, Hineraukatauri, was born with severe cerebral palsy, she was unwilling to accept the limitations of her condition.
She discovered music therapy while on tour in London when Hineraukatauri was just three. Though she had been told all her movements were involuntary, she was amazed to see her begin to play, to engage with the music.
On their return to Aotearoa, Mohi and George were determined to continue the therapy that had given them a window to their daughter’s world. Finding no resource in Auckland, in typical pioneering fashion, they created their own. Thus Raukatauri Music Therapy Centre was born. When they moved closer to whanau, to Hawke’s Bay, they established their first regional centre. Today they have expanded with a thousand clients and twenty three on the team.
While the Trust has been offering music therapy previously in the Bay (earlier BayBuzz article here), last weekend saw the opening of a new spacious Hawke’s Bay Regional Centre, located in Taikura House in Hastings.
The Centre itself is expanding. They started with one therapist, Will Derbyshire, of Revolutionary Arts Ensemble fame. In 2021 he was replaced by current centre manager and prolific horn player of almost too many local musical projects to mention, Ella Polczyk-Przybyla. With demand for their services increasing, a second therapist, Matt Carroll, and second year master’s student, Sinead Hegarty of The Cellars, joined the team, along with two community volunteers.
BayBuzz videographer Patrick O’Sullivan covered the celebration, producing this video.