A final Korero.
Music is a difficult topic to write about. Unlike politics or the economy, it refuses succinct definition. Attempting to objectively qualify a piece of music as good or bad is a moot point, because the criteria by which it is judged is so varied for many people.
I undertook this topic because I am passionate about music. While I lack the talent to make it a career, it has been a therapeutic outlet and a way to express emotions that otherwise couldn’t be articulated.
Despite listening to music actively since my early teens, I knew there was a gap in my knowledge of music from other culture. My own bias was geared towards punk and rap, musical genres that America dominates. As a bicultural New Zealander (I’m technically half-American), I was aware of a gaping hole in my knowledge of Te Reo and the surrounding culture.
What I discovered was a culture that heavily relied on singing and music to express itself. The waiata and taonga pūoro, song and musical instruments, were a part of daily life for Māori (1). They were part of agriculture and worship, and very important as objects. However, Western influences had transformed these basic structures into an ability to represent a culture which could have been smothered by the European invasion.
But Māori resisted this change. New Zealand’s culture is enriched by that resistance, and the music I discovered is reflective of that.
Poi E is a song everybody knows, but may not understand what the song is about. According to Taania Ka’ai (2002), Poi E was about controlling tempestuous emotions with rhythm and dance. The emerging interest in hip-hop inspired the choreography, but the idea of controlling emotions through music spills over into hip-hop as well. The genre is a bastion for expressing feelings of disenfranchisement but also a way of expressing power and bravado, which we saw from SWIDT and their track “No more parties in Stoneyhunga.”
The dominant narrative throughout my blog was New Zealand artists connecting or reconnecting with their cultural roots. The most successful demonstrated an ability to represent New Zealand on the international stage. For example, Neil Finn, an established artist and household name who teamed up with Fleetwood Mac earlier this year, and Lorde, who smashed US pop chart records with her song “Royals.” Lorde proved that breaking away from musical formula could garner massive success. Royals was instrumentally bare, but still hooked an audience of millions of people.
But these artists are Pākehā. Maori and Polynesian culture is slower to achieve access to the mainstream international stage. Opetaia Foa’i, one of the creative minds behind Disney’s Moana had been performing for years, but I doubt many had heard his music before the release of the film.
The greatest discoveries were blends of Te Reo and genres I was already familiar with. Alien Weaponry, for example, have had immense success by approaching Te Reo as a means of accessing their ancestral history and channelling it through the energy of heavy metal. Their song “Rū Ana Te Whenua” references Pukehinahina, a site of conflict during the New Zealand Wars. The song also gives details of the battle, like the network of underground trenches the Māori used to fire on the British (Keenan, D. 2012).
Another example is Rei, who produced an album done entirely in Te Reo. Poi E took hip-hop choreography and repackaged it. Rei took a genre that is dominated by American artists and used it to express himself and his cultural roots. While most probably can’t understand the lyrics because our education system doesn’t emphasise Te Reo, the music is still worth listening to because of Rei’s performance.
I thought it was fortunate that my blogging activity coincided with New Zealand Music Month. I expected to find a lot of information about New Zealand Music being published and discover some new artists. What I actually found was more celebrations/commemorations of artists who weren’t really relevant anymore, like the Headless Chickens, an eclectic post-punk band who were active between 1985 and 1999. While revisiting old artists is a good thing, I was disappointed that an entire month dedicated to New Zealand music hadn’t actively developed my understanding of it.
New Zealand has two major awards ceremonies, the New Zealand Music Awards and the Silver Scrolls. The NZMAs are for a range of achievements and genres, while the Silver Scrolls are for song writing specifically. Both award ceremonies are directed by organisations constituted by artists, producers and publishers. The ceremonies recognise multicultural artists, with figures like Scribe and SWIDT taking awards home.
The industry is making a profit, with the relatively recent technology of music streaming being a dominant source of income. According to Alice Webb-Liddall (2018), a journalist from the Spinoff, the New Zealand music industry grew by 14.6% between 2016 and 2017. 2016’s profit was $86.2 million and 2017’s was $98.8 million, which equals a profit increase of 12.6 million dollars. Unfortunately, Webb-Liddall was unable to discern how much of that stays in New Zealand.
My research has uncovered artists that explore their cultural identities through music. As New Zealand continues to grow as a nation, it is faced with the task of developing its identity as a nation. We are a post-colonial society, and that comes with a unique set of challenges to be faced. Music is an important facet of that development, being placed as not just a capitalistic industry, but also as a means of exploring identity.
There are artists in this blog I will endeavour to add to my listening habits, Alien Weaponry and Rei being the artists I want to watch develop. But to the rest of them, both established and upcoming, I wish them luck. The global industry is massive and viciously competitive. New Zealand, small jewel of the Pacific, has demonstrated an ability to represent itself on the international stage. We just need to remember that, unlike the criticism levelled in The Prophet Motive’s song “Being Pākehā”, culture isn’t something you sell. It’s something you cherish and nurture. If Aotearoa can remember that going forward, we can forge a cultural identity that can withstand time, the global music industry and internet bloggers.
E noho rā. Farewell.
Bibliography:
APA Referencing format
Taonga pūoro. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20110309210911/http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/Education/OnlineResources/Matariki/Matarikimusic/Pages/overview.aspx. Accessed 28/06/18.
Ka’ai, T. (2002) Poi E. Retrieved from http://folksong.org.nz/poi_e/. Accessed 8/04/18
Keenan, D. (2012). New Zealand Wars - Gate Pā, Tauranga. Te Ara - the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand. Retrieved from https://teara.govt.nz/en/new-zealand-wars/page-7. Accessed 28/06/18.
Webb-Liddall, A. (2018). Cheat Sheet: New Zealand music’s making money. The Spinoff. Retrieved from https://thespinoff.co.nz/music/21-04-2018/cheat-sheet-new-zealand-musics-making-money/. Accessed 28/06/18
Prime, D. (1983). Poi E. On Patea Māori Club [CD]. New Zealand: Maui Records.
Larkin, T. (2017). Rū Ana Te Whenua. On Tū [Digital release]. Austria: Napalm Records
Libeau, I. (2016). No More Parties In Stoneyhunga. [Digital Release]. New Zealand/Australia: Universal Music New Zealand Limited/ Universal Music Australia Pty. Ltd./ SWIDT Music Ltd./ 3D/ SWIDT Ltd.
Hine, D. (2017). Being Pākehā. On Atlas Shrugged [Digital Release]. New Zealand.
Little, J. (2013). Royals. On The Love Club EP and Pure Heroine [CD/Digital Release]. New Zealand: Lava/ Republic/Universal/Virgin.