Huge parties, battles and
Glenn McConnell travelled the country to find the wildest parties, bands and dance crews. But he found something even greater.
Music can tell the story of every defining moment across generations of New Zealanders. Through melody, beat and performance, popular music depicts the essence of a generation of parties, protests and progress.
Look back to the 1980s, when New Zealand saw the rise of reggae and punk while the nation underwent huge political upheaval. With songs about the French nuclear tests in the Pacific, the band Herbs took their place in New Zealand music history.
As Mā ori rights were brought to the attention of the entire country through the late-20th century, the Pā tea Mā ori Club and Moana and the Moahunters showed a contemporary side to waiata Mā ori.
And as young New Zealanders sought to establish an independent identity for themselves and the country, stepping away from the British Empire and the conformity of earlier generations, labels such as Flying Nun and Dawn Raid provided the opportunity.
That was then. What about now?
When the pandemic promised to change almost everything about life as we knew it, I started a project to document the state of music in Aotearoa. I wanted to paint a picture of the current music scene by meeting the emerging creatives who have grown new communities through music.
Our popular music can tell us a lot about the generation that fostered it. So what do the current trends tell us about the future for Aotearoa?
The search for New Zealand’s most vibrant, passionate and trendsetting music scenes took us to wildly different places.
With film-maker Chris Graham, we met the people who make up six of New Zealand’s most passionate music scenes. You can meet them, too, in our new music series, Tribal. The first of six episodes has just been published on Stuff.
These six scenes show an incredible diversity among Generation Z.
What is clear is there is no one trend that defines New Zealand’s pop culture today.
Mā ori is mainstream
The mahi to keep waiata Mā ori on the air, and in our playlists, has only strengthened. The singer Rei is on a mission to make waiata Mā ori ‘‘sexy’’. He is something of a record-making machine, releasing back-to-back bilingual tracks that ease te reo Mā ori into the mainstream.
Meanwhile, a singer previously known as Theia is on a mission to continue the long traditions of waiata Mā ori. She arrived on the scene in 2017 looking like something of a psychedelic astronaut, making music that was ‘‘unapologetic alt-pop’’. These days, Em-Haley Walker releases music as Te Kaahu, writing mo¯ teatea and waiata, which follow traditions passed down generations through her whakapapa.
‘‘Our people have always been making music, but it’s only nowadays that it’s starting to get recognised outside of our own people,’’ Walker says.
With wider recognition, the amount of reo
Mā ori music has ballooned. Young artists now focus on rock, reggae, pop, rap and more traditional waiata Mā ori. Looking back across her 40 years in music, Dame Hinewehi Mohi says the fusion of waiata tawhito, the old traditions, and contemporary music has revitalised te reo.
‘‘Over time, we have started to build an appreciation for waiata reo Mā ori and it’s really taken hold,’’ says Mohi.
DIY Dunedin
We saw the revitalisation of Dunedin’s alt-rock heritage, with young musicians throwing massive house parties. There, they convert bedrooms into concert venues and invite a few hundred music lovers and partygoers to squish into their flats.
Regulars to this old wooden house reassured me that the shaking and swaying floorboards were nothing to worry about.
In recent years, with restrictive council rules and the university and property developers buying up old music venues, there have been huge concerns about the future for Dunedin music. There are increasingly fewer places to perform. But that only appears to have reinvigorated a grungy, DIY culture, which booms from Dunedin’s students.
No recording studio? Record yourself.
No venue? Load some wooden pallets and build your own stage.
There’s no particular system or programme that keeps Dunedin’s music scene ticking along. Everyone connected to it seems to have their own bespoke plan to create a path or, importantly, a revenue stream so they can keep making music once StudyLink dries up.
That’s no easy task.
Hamish Calder, a Dunedin rapper who is making waves as the artist Wax Mustang, described his home as a ‘‘DIY city’’. Every musician seems to have their own plan to create a selfsufficient ecosystem, so they can keep making music forever.
In our travels between flats, we found recording studios built in garages and many more bedrooms that converted into concert venues, recording studios and practice spaces. Nothing is single use in Dunedin.
Calder’s mate, Damin McCabe, went as far as to start a record label, Garbage Records, so that musicians such as Calder could start making money from their art.
There’s hope that, with nothing but their instruments, guerrilla marketing techniques and southern resilience, Dunedin’s musicians can find a way to keep making music together, forever.
Hearing African Kiwi voices through music
Our music culture is shaped through our links with the world, as well.
In Hamilton, a city which Ray Ruzibiza aka Raiza Biza claims is the ‘‘best city in the world’’, we learnt about the growth of an African Kiwi style of music.
Ruzibiza has been mentoring a new generation of African Kiwi artists, after moving to Aotearoa in the 1990s. He first moved from Rwanda to Gisborne with his parents, before settling in Hamilton.
From there, he has worked with other Kiwi African artists such as Mo Muse, Jess B, Abdul Kay and Joe Rahim, another Rwandan Hamiltonian, who goes by the moniker Blaze the Emperor.
It’s a relatively small scene, but filled with talent.
‘‘There was no such thing as an African Kiwi before. We created that,’’ Raiza recalls.
But through collectives such as BLKCITY, which also collaborates with visual artists, the distinct voice of African Kiwis is certainly growing.
The K-Pop way of life
While immigration brings a global influence to Aotearoa, the sudden rise of K-Pop shows the power of media and the internet.
The phenomenon of K-Pop has united people across the globe. Take a walk down High St, in Auckland’s CBD, on any Saturday or Sunday afternoon, and you’re likely to see dozens of young people perfecting their K-Pop routines.
Terina Whaitiri moved from Whakatā ne to Auckland to study dance, but has already been instrumental in fostering a K-Pop community, which has influence far beyond just its music or dance moves.
She told us how music, for her, was not just a hobby or interest.
‘‘My whole life I’d felt like an outsider,’’ she says. But when she found this community, with hundreds of others who also enjoyed the same thing, ‘‘it was life-changing’’.
‘‘My life felt like it had turned upside down, but in a good way.’’ The K-Pop community in Aotearoa is one of the most diverse music scenes we visited – inclusive of fans from their young teens to late 20s, all genders, ethnicities and sexualities. Many K-Pop fans, the ones who love the music enough that they hang out on the
‘It didn’t start off as this whole ‘safe space community’ thing, but we made it into this safe space. For K-Pop fans, and people who feel like they don’t fit in. For queer people, too, we wanted this safe space because we’ve seen how people can just flourish.’ TERINA WHAITIRI
weekends to dance to it, describe a life outside of this music where they’ve been crippled by shyness.
‘‘It didn’t start off as this whole ‘safe space community’ thing, but we made it into this safe space,’’ Whaitiri says.
‘‘For K-Pop fans, and people who feel like they don’t fit in. For queer people, too, we wanted this safe space because we’ve seen how people can just flourish.’’
Hosts with the most
For all its problems, there’s no doubt that the hyper-connectivity of the current age means that ‘‘niche’’ has taken on a whole new meaning. There’s always someone, or at least a few hundred people, nearby who share similar interests.
We are connected to the globe. In Wellington, Olly de Salis and Cameron Morris, two enterprising young music lovers, have been working since they left high school to bring some of the European club scene to our capital city.
When the bars along Courtenay Place failed to deliver, de Salis took it into his own hands by offering his parents’ home to host a party so huge it changed the course of his life.
At 18 years old, just after leaving high school in 2015, de Salis started throwing house parties. It culminated with a ‘‘121 party’’ (that was the street address), which had been described to his parents as an ‘‘art exhibition’’, but included a DJ standing on the kitchen table, a huge sound system, pizza and glow in the dark paint smeared across the walls as ‘‘art’’.
It paid off.
De Salis and Morris are now festival directors, as the entrepreneurs behind the brand 121. It will be a familiar name to many in Wellington, as they have also been running their own nightclub under the same name, thanks to hospitality veteran Tim Ward and a group of incredibly passionate dance music fans who want to change how young New Zealanders party.
Finding a true home
In Auckland, we met Housemother Moe Laga. A dancer and visual artist, Laga’s work amplifies the perspectives of queer and Pasifika communities in Aotearoa.
When I first met Laga, I asked what exactly it meant to be the ‘‘housemother’’. It’s an unusual name for something that, on the face of it, is a dance troupe.
She leads a group called the House of Coven. I first met them in a car park under a bridge in Auckland city. They’d parked up a 1996 Honda Accord, pumped up the music and may have had a few cans of something on offer as well.
Strangers wandered past, throwing a few side glances our way. Holding the name ‘‘House of Coven’’, it goes without saying that we were all dressed in black. The style is witchy and ethereal.
Stories about incredible parties and late nights at Family Bar were shared. But as the conversations continued, a deeper meaning came to surface.
When I asked Laga about Honey, one of her House of Coven ‘‘children’’ who had spread her wings to form her own ballroom house, the Coven mother teared up.
The ballroom scene is about dance, competition and always family. It’s a place for young queer people to come together.
Honey found the scene when she was 16 years old.
‘‘Honestly, it changed my life when I was 16. I’d recommend it to any young queer kid,’’ Honey says.
‘‘It’s really important that you go out of your way to find the people who are going to understand you and who will help you develop into the authentic, unapologetic young queer person that you’re destined to be.’’
Laga gets emotional talking about her Coven family. Many have histories in which they have struggled with discrimination and not being accepted for who they are.
Some don’t even really like dancing that much. But this group of Halloween-loving creatives have built a culture of their own, and found a community where they can be themselves.
As we travelled the country exploring different music scenes, we ended up talking increasingly less about music and more about these tribes and communities that had sprung up because of music.
Every scene is unique. Under the banner of dance and music movements, subcultures have sprung up all across the country, forming their own rules and worlds.
Watch the Tribal series on