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The late Tama Huata will be remembered with a special honour at the event he founded.
Next month's Waiata Maori Music Awards will give the performing arts pioneer a posthumous Lifetime Contribution to Maori Music Award.
Mr Huata, from Ngati Kahungunu, died in February at the age of 64.
In 1983 he set up the Kahurangi Maori Dance Theatre in Hastings and trained up performers to take Maori culture to the world, which the group has done successfully for more than 30 years.
He also set up Te Wananga Whare Tapere o Takitimu, which in 1991 became the first institution to offer a degree course in traditional MaÂori performing arts.
The Waiata Maori Music Awards were launched by Mr Huata in 2007 to recognise Maori music and performers.
The September 11 event at the Hastings Sports Centre will also give a posthumous Keeper of Traditions Award to Mauriiora Kingi of Te Arawa and Tainui, who died in June at the age of 53.
The Quin Tikis showband, whose recodings from the 1960s and early 1970s topped the New Zealand album charts last month, will receive the supreme Maori Music Industry Award.
Copyright © 2015, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com
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