A CHANCE TO DREAM

PAUL DIAMOND

DESCRIPTION Tina Cross performing at the National Library, 2019

MAKER / ARTIST Kristin de Sousa

REFERENCE Courtesy of Kristin de Sousa

Growing up in Ōtara, South Auckland, in the 1970s, a certain young schoolgirl planned to study social sciences at university and become a social worker. That all changed when she was given a role in a television music show while in the seventh form at Penrose High School.

Tina Cross (Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Porou; b. 1959) became a household name after winning the 1979 Pacific Song Contest, singing Carl Doy’s ‘Nothing but Dreams’. At a time when light entertainment was huge in this country, the competition was also notable as the first time singers actually sang live on New Zealand television. Until then, vocal tracks were recorded beforehand, and broadcast as if live while singers lip-synced on stage.

Keen to gain more experience, Cross moved to Sydney in 1981 and spent nearly a decade in Australia, singing in cabarets, on television shows and as part of the pop group Koo Dé Tah. After returning to New Zealand with her family in 1990, she transitioned into musical theatre, taking on lead roles in productions such as Cats, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Chicago. In 1992, she voiced the theme song that introduced New Zealand’s longestrunning soap, Shortland Street.

To the surprise of her family, Cross took on the role of Beth Heke in the 2004 stage production of Once Were Warriors. This brought her more into the Māori performing world, and she learnt how to perform kapa haka and hold a patu.

In 2008, Cross was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit. In an interview in Plenty magazine at that time, she spoke about moving into another chapter of her career: ‘I’ve done the early days on New Zealand television, been in a pop band in Australia, had children, done musical theatre and now it’s time for the next phase. I need to go back to my roots. I need to fulfil the Māori in me.’ Cross began learning te reo Māori when she was in her fifties, and has also helped run workshops with Māori inmates in prison.

Although not known as a Māori performer until later in her career (overseas audiences thought she was Eurasian), Cross is clear about the grounding her Māori background gave her as a musician. ‘We as a people are really natural musicians, natural singers,’ she said in an oral history interview for the Turnbull. ‘Everybody in our family was musical,’ she told Mana magazine in 2002. ‘We could all hold a tune and harmonise.’

On the fortieth anniversary of her Pacific Song Contest win, Cross performed at the National Library with Carl Doy, and completed an interview about her life and career for the Oral History Archive.