Long Cloud Legato

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.

Photo retrieved from https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/discover-collections/read-watch-play/maori/matariki-maori-new-year. Image belongs to its respective owners. No copyright infringement is intended.

Waiata - Greetings and Farewells.

This will be my second to last post, but I feel like it should have been my first. This post will be discussing the Māori tradition of waiata.

Waiata means ‘song’ or ‘singing’ in Te Reo, and a waiata is sung for many reasons. They can be used as a part of powhiri, a formal greeting ceremony performed to visitors to welcome them to a place of significance (like a marae or the burial of an important person), or to support what is said or to punctuate a whaikōrero, a formal speech by an elder.

Traditional waiata are generally grouped into three groups. These are oriori, waiata tangi and waiata aroha (lullabies, laments and love songs respectively). The song ‘Pokarekare ana’ is a waiata aroha, and most people will recognise the version Kiwi songbird Hayley Westenra did in 2001.

The haka is a subclass of waiata. A haka is a war dance that can be used as part of powhiri, or before battle. The most famous haka is Ka Mate, performed by the All Blacks before a game of rugby. If you haven’t seen the All Blacks perform this incredible display of lung power, I suggest you search for some videos online. It’s pretty stunning.

The best band you’ve never heard of - The Prophet Motive

The Prophet Motive is a New Zealand folk-punk band with a heavy dose of politics and humor in their music. And they are amazing. Mitch Cookson is the remaining member as the other half of the acoustic outfit Matt Billington had to say goodbye due to ever-mounting responsibilities, like being a parent.

As the birth of Jacinda Adern’s baby writes a new page on New Zealand identity, and the nation questions once again how if feels about mixing the personal and political, let’s take a look at what bubbles under the surface like the mud pools of Rotorua.

The Prophet Motive does this in a way that is distinctly authentic, bouncing from songs about Temeura Morrison being a bad actor and a poor representative of Rotorua (the hometown of Cookson), songs about depression and anxiety and songs about New Zealand’s refusal to acknowledge its violent colonial past and the popular myth of egalitarianism. That’s a pretty rich discography.

The track that summaries this sociopolitical thesis is ‘Being Pākehā’. The Prophet Motive doesn’t have a YouTube page so I will link their bandcamps below.

Being Pākehā’s chorus goes like this:

 We trample any outsiders in the blind haste to define ourselves Kororāreka left behind - axe blades on flag poles swing through time To the ship's hold where we cower on water that is eating at the hull In our blindness we'll define our own hell 

Kororāreka is the old Māori name for Russel, a town in the Bay of Islands. It is a place of cultural significance because it briefly had the title of the biggest whaling port in the South Pacific in the 1820s. It was a place of exchange between Māori and Europeans, mostly merchants and whalers. The place had a horrendous reputation as neither European law or Maori law was enforced, but still managed to function as a melting pot for the two cultures.

The point of the song Being Pākehā is that the European members of Aotearoa have abandoned their sense of cultural exchange in an attempt to create a seamless and homogeneous  cultural identity. The bridge of the song states that “culture is something to sell”, a stark criticism of how NZ markets itself.

Other artists I’ve discussed in this blog have put themselves forward as cultural representatives, and have done so successfully. But the band points out we, as a country, are still scarred from our colonial past and drag our feet when it comes any attempt at reconciliation (the treaty settlements, for example), as most Pākehā understand very little about the Māori ontology. 

I would be arrogant to try and answer the questions put forward here without doing more intensive research, but it’s fantastic that someone is asking these questions. While music is a medium for self-expression and celebration, it is an equally powerful tool for reflection and criticism. And The Prophet Motive do this extremely well.

They have other songs. Happy ones too. “Baxter, Bark Twice If You're In Milwaukee” is about enjoying your time of Earth and filling it with live music performances because music is a transcendent evocation of emotion and far exceeds the limitations of mortal flesh because we are all going to die someday. It’s a happy song. Trust me.

Please check them out. They are like fish and chips and L & P on the beach. Incredibly Kiwi, and damn good.

https://theprophetmotive.bandcamp.com/releases

Awarded Artists:

It is impossible to have a discussion about New Zealand music without mentioning Lorde. You know who she is. I know you haven’t been hiding under a rock.

But just in case you only listen to Ukranian black metal, let’s go over the basics.

Lorde is the stage name of Ella Marija Lani Yellich-O’Connor. I can see why she shortened it. Born and raised on the North Shore in Auckland, Lorde started displaying a passion and talent for music in her early teens. After a friend’s dad sent a home recording of her playing covers, Universal Music Group (one of the Big Three in global music) signed her so they could keep an eye on her development. That’s a massive step for a teenager.

In 2011, Universal Music Group hired a vocal coach for the young songstress, but it wasn’t until she started writing her own original lyrics that she came into her own. And exploded.

“Royals” was minimalistic, simple and was number one on the US Billboard hot 100 chart for nine consecutive weeks, won her two Grammys and a Silver Scroll. It also made her the youngest solo artist to achieve a number one since 1987.

Lorde is a good singer/songwriter, but the message of this song and the wider context it arrived in from a musical standpoint, I believe, did contribute to its success.

The song is about rejecting the excess and glamour marketed to teenagers in music for a more authentic experience with good friends and the idea that your hometown might be shit but it’s yours,dammit (a sentiment that also pops up in Lorde’s song Team. Isn’t North Auckland supposed to be pretty flash?). It was also released at a time where pop songs were overloaded with bombast and musical gimmicks like autotune and a famous gangster rapper over the second verse or bridge. Royals strips back its instrumentation to the point where it’s almost a punk aesthetic.

The discography Lorde has developed doesn’t follow this mold. The majority of her music possesses a heady energy and bouncy vocal lines that weaves into ethereal instrumentation. The term I’ve seen used to describe this style is dream-pop. It is apt.

But the song I’ve linked above is more interesting, not only musically, but going with a theme that I’ve only just developed in the last few posts.

Homemade Dynamite features SZA, Khalif and Post Malone. SZA is extremely talented and has collaborated with hit makers like Kendrick Lamar, Khalid is very similar to Lorde in terms of a young successful artist exploding into the mainstream, and Post Malone seems to be developing a new genre of trap-rock hybrid music with a hard i-eat-pills-i-find-on-the-floor aesthetic, but the point is this: Lorde is capable of working with established and upcoming artists that have succeeded on an international level. That’s fantastic. It also links in with my next point.

New Zealand’s music industry, along with its film industry, has managed to engage with and attract the international market. As a country, we are proving that we can play with the big boys, but it’s going to take time to fully explore how we present ourselves on an international level. Aotearoa is becoming part of the global musical discourse and that’s something that should be fully embraced.

Video taken from DisneyMusicVevo’s YouTube page. Video belongs to its respective owners. Copyright infringement not intended.

Awarded Artists - Opetaia Foa’i

By now you should have seen Moana, the Disney musical about a Polynesian girl discovering her identity in a culture that has neglected its seafaring roots. It is a fantastic representation of Polynesia on the big screen, and the research process for the film involved an extensive consultation with representatives and elders from the cultures depicted.

The reason I preface with this point is the that singer/songwriter Opetaia Foa’i was a major force behind the music team for Moana, which has allowed fans of the movie to discover his music.

Foa’i’s music blends the rich cultures of the various Polynesian cultures together in engaging songwriting, traditional drumming rhythms and some excellent cinematography in their music videos.

Opetaia Foa’i moved to New Zealand from Samoa at age 9 but grew up listening to both the traditional music of Samoa and Tokelau and Jimi Hendrix. 

His debut album Te Vaka met with great success, leading to a 3 month European tour with a band going by the same name as the album and snowballing into international acclaim around the world, with the band receiving much praise from attendees of festivals like WOMAD.

Foa’i has received four Tui awards from the VNZMAs and an award for international achievement over the years. 

He was approached by Disney to write some of the music during the development process and these two interviews Stuff and the Spinoff with Foa’i make it very clear how important cultural authenticity was to his work. He was adamant that the native tongues of Polynesia came through in the music because the language was the connection to the culture.

 https://thespinoff.co.nz/music/15-02-2017/this-is-our-movie-opetaia-foai-on-keeping-moana-authentic-through-music/

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/music/103508295/how-we-made-kiwi-musician-opetaia-foai-on-how-he-wrote-moanas-we-know-the-way

Music video for “No More Parties In Stoneyhunga” taken from SWIDT’s YouTube page. Video belongs to its respective owners. No copyright infringement is intended.

Awarded Artists - SWIDT

SWIDT, aka Hawaiian shirt mafia, is a music collective from Onehunga, a south Auckland suburb. The members of the group are  SPYCC (Daniel Latu), SmokeyGotBeatz (Isaiah Libeau), INF (Amon McGoram), Boomer Tha God (Asher Schwencke) and JAMAL (Jamal Muavae), and have released projects as solo artists as well. 

Last year SWIDT, which stands for “See What I Did There”, was given the VNZMA’s award for Best Hiphop Artist for their album “Stoneyhunga.” The group has the energy and arrogance of well known American collectives like Brockhampton and the infamous Wu Tang Clan, but still retain an essential element of Kiwiana, referencing local dairies and keeping a sense of humor in their tracks.

An interview with noted.com (https://www.noted.co.nz/culture/music/how-music-collective-swidt-is-blowing-up-the-hip-hop-world/) illustrates how these guys are interested in maintaining the “kiwiana” that seeps into a lot of the music this country produces, an intrinsic tone that New Zealanders can instantly recognise but escapes firm definition. 

Music video for Scribe - Stand Up. Taken from the YouTube page of collaborator and long time friend P-Money, another Kiwi Hip hop producer. Scribe himself doesn’t appear to have a YouTube presence.

Awarded Kiwi Musicians - Scribe

In 2004, Scribe claimed 6 awards at the VNZMAs. He later sold them to a pawnbroker.

A talented artist of Samoan descent who hasn’t been heard for sometime, most people are familiar with his song Not Many, which has a memorable hook and bouncy, arrogant sound.

New Zealand hip-hop as a genre doesn’t have a lot of well-known representatives. Hip-hop has always been the method of self-expression for the disillusioned and disenfranchised, but the culture surrounding it maintains a reputation for drugs and violence.

Scribe, whose real name is Malo Luafutu, has had his run-ins with this culture, as he became addicted to gambling and drugs after the poor sales of his second album.

Caption: The Tui award was given out in 2013 at the New Zealand Music Awards. Image taken from http://www.radionz.co.nz/collections/u/music-festivals-and-events/new-zealand-music-awards/2013-tuis. Image belongs to rightful owners.

12) Awards Ceremonies

New Zealand has two major awards ceremonies on it’s calendar. These are the New Zealand Music Awards (NZMAs) and the APRA Silver Scrolls. The NZMAs are often talked about with the prefix Vodafone as the New Zealand branch of the telecommunications company sponsors it. While the NZMAs are for general achievement in the production of music, the Silver Scrolls are focused on song writing.

The NZMAs have 28 categories related to music performance and production.

The NZMAs are conferred annually by Recorded Music NZ, a non-profit trade association of recording artists, record producers and distributors in New Zealand. Their membership is open to any labels operating in New Zealand. Sony, Universal and Warner Music Group, colloquially known as the “Big Three” due to their dominance in the global music industry, have a significant presence.

The Silver Scrolls are conferred annually by the Australian Performing Right Association, a copyright collective representing New Zealand and Australian lyricists, composers and music publishers.

11) Land of the Long Lasting Hits- part 1

NZ Music Month has come to end, so over the next few days we’ll be looking at some NZ music that received a significant acclaim, recognition or musical success. 

OMC’s smooth pop jam How Bizarre was released in 1995. Over the next two years it climbed to number 1 on the charts in New Zealand, Australia, Austria, Canada, Ireland and the mainstream Top 40 charts in the USA. 

The Australasian Performing Right Association,a copyright collective representing composers, lyricists and publishers in NZ and Australia (and the organisation who run the Silver Scroll awards),named How Bizarre” one of the greatest New Zealand songs of all time.

OMC stands for Otara Millionaire’s Club. Brother Phil and Pauly Fuemana has their tongues stuck into their cheeks pretty hard as Otara is one of the poorest communities in Auckland. The song doesn’t really reference the socio-economic differences in Auckland, but the lyrics do mention a cop stopping their Chevy ‘69 just to admire it. It’s a bizarre song.

The band had a falling out with their producer Alan Jansson in 1998 and Phil Fuemana went solo for a while.  The band briefly reformed in 2005 with Phil Fuemana and Jansson releasing a song with actress Lucy Lawless. Phil passed away in 2005, with Pauly passing in 2010. 

10) Maori Soul part 2

Teeks grew up listening to Bob Marley and Elvis. It shows. 

Born Te Karehana Gardiner-Toi, Teeks’ voice is incredibly smooth and rich. No wonder a Mount Eden Cafe named a milkshake after him. 

He became a Maori teacher at Unitech after finishing his tertiary studies and ended up in a mentoring programme where he got to work with musicians like Rob Ruha of the previous part.

Teeks hasn’t produced any songs in Te Reo yet, but its a challenge he is keen to take on. 

9) Maori Soul Part 1

New Zealand Music Month continues with a look at Rob Ruha, a versatile Maori musician who has crafted a wide range of waiata.

Mr Ruha has a powerful voice and his talents have been recognized by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. He received the Laureate Award in 2017, which comes with a $50 000 cash prize to give an artist a creative push.

He has also dabbled in the film industry as the musical director and translator for the Polynesian powerhouse film “Moana.” 

8) Post-Punk/Alternative Combo Band

The Wellington museum is hosting a performance by vocalist Peter Jefferies and guitarist and singer Chris Matthews, of Nocturnal Projections and Headless Chickens respectively. 

Nocturnal Projections is a crunchy wailing affair that serves as a perfectly serviceable contribution to the body of melancholic and sardonic tunes that make up the genre of Post-punk. 

Headless Chickens used samples and drum machines, an addition contradictory to punk’s original ethos, to construct pieces rich in character and weirdness.

The trio, along with Heath Te Au on drums, will be playing tomorrow night at Wellington Museum. 

Here’s Gaskrankinstation by the Headless Chickens. It’s about a guy who works in a petrol station and the music video gets progressively stranger. Check it out!

7) NZ Music Month at Wellington Museum

New Zealand Music Month is underway; Kiwis get entire month of celebrating local tunes.

http://www.nzmusicmonth.co.nz/ has a daily schedule displaying local events, but this week the focus is on an exhibition at Wellington Museum on Jervois Quay. 

Opening tomorrow, the celebration and showcase of Kiwi Music history runs until the 25 of May.

King Kapisi, a Wellington hip hop artist based in Auckland, will be performing at Wellington Museum on May 18. 

Kapisi is often remembered for his hit song “Screems from Da Old Plantation”, which was filmed in Samoa, and shows King Kapisi rapping at the bottom of a waterfall and on the back of a moving truck.

The track’s lyrics contains a lot of Samoan, but it’s still very accessible to a Pakeha audience

6) Rangatira Rap

Rei raps in Te Reo. E kī! The young gun from Aotearoa recently dropped an 5 song EP on Friday (20/04/18), and it’s all in Te Reo.

Running the titles through translation, Rei appears to be continuing his journey of self-discovery by cementing his cultural roots.

It’s pretty sweet to hear Te Reo being represented in hip-hop, a genre that has continually presented alternative cultural narratives in a package that appeals to a vast array of people.

Other MCs have made similar endeavors, like Scribe and Tiki Tane, but Rei’s energy and enthusiasm for rap music is contagious.

The song I’ve linked is in English, but the continuous sampling of a vocally warped “Rangatira” (a complex Maori ontology that encapsulates concepts sovereignty, leadership, and power) is indicative of the mission Rei is undertaking.

This link here will lead you to E Ki, which is all in Te Reo. The Chief’s Speech is heavily trap inspired, but E Ki is a bouncier, slightly chiller piece. A perceptive listener can hear reggae influences as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh7Cko-LeXk

The spotify playlist for the album will be linked below, but it would be ka pai if Rei got some radio play. It would give the public a chance to polish their Reo, and jam to some mean beats at the same time. Choice!

5) Te Reo Thrash Metal

Whakarongo mai ra! Alien Weaponry is a thrash metal band that sings in both English and Te Reo.

Started in 2010, the band is comprised of Kiwis Henry and Lewis de Jong and Ethan Trembath. A simple setup for a metal band, the brothers Lewis and Henry play guitar/vocals and drums respectively with Ethan on bass. The trio are young, but have already seen great success with their heavy, historically inspired, and crunchy metal.

The above song (which translates to Shake the Earth) is sung in Te Reo, and details the battle of Pukehinahina (Gate Pa).The pa near Tauranga was subject to one of the heaviest artillery barrages of the Maori Wars. 

Alien Weaponry is the only band to win both national finals of SmokefreeRockquest and Smokefree Pacifica Beats, New Zealand music competitions that emphasize original songwriting. They are currently working with Tom Larkin, drummer of Kiwi Kings Shihad, who is producing their studio tracks.

The band recently announced they will be releasing an album on June 1st. They will also be playing at Wacken Open Air 2018, a massive music festival in Europe that attracts around 80 000 people.

4) Big Macs at my Crowded House.

Kiwi crooner Neil Finn is in the news this week as he’s announced he’s going to being touring with international giants Fleetwood Mac on their next tour.

Fleetwood Mac, for those born this side of the 80s, are a massively popular Pop Rock act that have been belting out an impressive number of hits since their formation in 1967.

Neil Finn is a Kiwi legend in his own right. He was co-frontman of Split Enz with his brother Tim, and founded Crowded House; these bands are household names (if you’‘ll forgive the pun). He also had a decent solo career after ending Crowded House in 1996.

Take a trip down memory lane with me with the links below (not my memory lane. I wasn’t born yet).

Split Enz - History Never Repeats:                                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzuJXqgsiSM

3) Patea Māori Club and Poi E

This time we jump forward to New Zealand in the 80s. The population was just over 3.2 million [1], and Michael Jackson had released his Thriller album. New Zealand had been rocked by the Springboks tour and Rogernomics was about to undo Muldoon era market regulations.

Ngoi Pewhairangi and Dalvanius Prime, a linguist and music producer respectively, were interested in creating a way for Maori youth to reconnect with their culture through music.

So they created a song about controlling emotions through rhythm and dance that was instrumentally inspired by an emerging interest in hip-hop. [2] A lot of young Maori could empathize with the feeling of disenfranchisement and aggression coming from hip-hop, so Prime sprinkled the track with hip-hop inspired noises and a drum solo.

The song was a smash hit, spending four weeks at the top of the NZ Charts in 1984, but also got a resurgence in 2010, due to its use as an end piece in Taika Waititi’s coming-of-age story Boy.

The music video itself has a Michael Jackson-ish figure (who goes by Jo the Dancer [3]), so it’s pretty what the zeitgeist was focused on.

The music video was also shot in a day, and features some forgotten past-times of yesteryear, like breakdancing and rollerblading [3]. Check it out for some classic, catchy Kiwi tunes. Just don’t let it get stuck in your head.

POIIII EAAAAAYYY!

[1] 'Overview', URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/the-1980s/overview, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), accessed 8/04/18

[2] Ka’ai, T (2002) Poi E. Retrieved from http://folksong.org.nz/poi_e/. Accessed 8/04/18