29-06-2025
Keeping Pūhoi Bohemia alive through song and dance
history life and society 36 minutes ago
There are small pockets globally where descendants of 19th century immigrants are working to retain the distinctive culture, heritage and language of the small European regions their ancestors came from. They don't come much smaller than the village of Puhoi, north of Tamaki Makaurau Auckland. It was here in 1863, 83 immigrants from Bohemia, in the now-Czech Republic, established a community. They endured much hardship, but they also seemed to know how to party. Song, rhyme and dance have been key to their cultural preservation. A treasury of unique folk songs sung in the Deitsch language has been gathered together, in the Massey University Press published book After Winter Comes Summer. The songs have been painstakingly rebuilt through interviews with descendants, research into European folk song and transcriptions of varied recordings. Packed full of photographs and characters, the book is described as a case study of the development and growth of a small colonial New Zealand village. After Winter Comes Summer is the work of the late Judith Williams, Dr Ralf Heimrath and our guest on Culture 101 Dr Roger Buckton. Roger Buckton has been a Puhoi resident and a professor of music at the University of Canterbury, lecturing in ethno-music. An even better qualification for the job is that Roger plays the medieval Bohemian bagpipes. He plays for us in Otautahi Christchurch on Culture 101.
