Herbs frontman and founding member Dilworth Karaka has died.
Prominent throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Herbs’ politically inspired music reached a wide audience, and the band opened for international stars such as Stevie Wonder and Tina Turner.
Herbs was inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame in September 2012.
At the time, Karaka’s cousin and fellow band member, Thom Nepia told Stuff Karaka grew up in Glen Innes and the band often rehearsed in his back yard.
Causes such as Bastion Point were important to band members, and especially Karaka, Nepia said.
“...he and his family went down there and were on the front line too. It was important to us to keep our music happy, but with a strong meaning which I think is lacking in some of the music today. We weren't singing about dancing and parties. We kept our feet on the ground and our whanau close," Nepia said.
A 1995 track, French Letter, challenged the French government to stop nuclear testing in the Pacific.
In the same year, Nelson Mandela asked to meet the band when he visited
Karaka’s whānau has posted on social media that it is “with deep sorrow” that they share the news of his passing.
“Dilworth will be taken to Ōrākei Marae on Monday 9th of March where he will lie for one night with whānau and loved ones. He will then be taken to Whaatapaka Marae, where he will lie for two nights.”
New Zealand music centre, Audioculture posted: “We are beyond sad to acknowledge the passing of Herbs rangatira Dilworth Karaka.
“Already a highly regarded musician playing venues such as the Great Northern Hotel with Papa in the 1970s, Dilworth joined an embryonic Herbs when they were starting out at the Trident Tavern in Onehunga.
“In the decades since, as members came and went, Dilworth came to be not just the leader of the band but a mentor to Māori and Pacific Islander music makers throughout the region.”
“He helmed the Herbs waka while it created the Pacific reggae that condemned the Crown’s treatment of Māori land rights protesters and so-called Pacific Island overstayers, organised religion, French nuclear testing and Japanese drift-net fishing in the Pacific, even South Africa’s apartheid system.”