Pātea Māori Club are helping honour a promise made more than 30 years ago by one of their famed composers.
The group have cult status since their song and album Poi E hit number one on the New Zealand charts back in 1984.
It made the New Zealand charts again in 2009 and Pātea Māori Club made another comeback in 2010 when it was featured in Taika Waititi's film Boy.
Written by Ngoi Pēwhairangi and scored by Dalvanius Prime in 1983, 'Poi E' and the Pātea Māori Club became well loved in the United Kingdom, where they performed at the London Palladium, the Edinburgh Festival, and for Queen Elizabeth II at a Royal Command Performance at the Royal Albert Hall.
On Friday night, they are performing at the Embassy Theatre in Wellington for the opening of the film Taki Rua - Breaking Barriers, to honour a promise made by the late great Dalvanius to film-maker Whetū Fala more than 30 years ago.
Whetū Fala told Checkpoint Prime promised her if she ever made a feature film, Pātea Māori Club would travel and sing for her.
"It's taken me this long, but I'm really happy that Pātea Māori Club are still raging it up and are still here."
Her film, Taki Rua - Breaking Barriers, was a story about hope, and what people could achieve when they were passionate, she said.
"In this case, about the performing arts and what better way to start a film than to have a live performance of Pātea Māori Club," she said.
"We're a screen and we're a movie. But no, we started right here with Kapa Haka with Māori language with culture and what better ambassadors than the Pātea Māori Club?"
The film celebrates the legacies of actors Wi Kuki Kaa, Tungia Baker, Rona Bailey, Keri Kaa, Nancy Brunning, and Prime, who Whetū Fala said were her trusted mentors.
"We had the privilege to work with the talented Nancy Brunning and all of the other rangatahi, just like the rangatahi here today at Taki Rua that will be present," she said.
"Because what's the point of doing all our wonderful stories if our own people are unable to share those stories with te ao?"
Maryanne Broughton, who has been a perfomer with Pātea Māori Club since 1967, said the group was family.
"I think because we're family, we have to get on. We kind of we have our moments, of course, like every family, but because we are family, we stick," she said.
She believed 'Poi E' connected with people because of the words and music.
"I think Del's idea of reaching out to the young people with not even so much words as with the music, and Aunty Ngoi wrote the perfect words to go with his music."
Broughton said they had just had a group of six come back from China a couple of months ago.
"So still getting out internationally and locally as well as around the country as much as we can."
