Charlie Tumahai: Boot Hill to Be Bop and Back
"Boy is what they call me, but my real name is Charlie.” That was the catch-cry the cousins living in Kitemoana Street, Ōrākei, responded to as Cha...
Aotearoa Country Timeline - Part Two
Aotearoa Country Timeline - Part One
A E I O U – moments in Māori music
I unashamedly proclaim my aroha for our fair country Aotearoa and have done so for as long as I can remember. This extends to all areas of ende...
Songwriter's Choice: Greg Johnson
Sierra Leone – Coconut Rough One of the few New Zealand tunes from the 80s that really had that synth sound and a classic structure with it. ...
Don McGlashan
Suzanne Prentice
The Front Lawn
So many of the greatest songs contain a story. The majority of these songs allow you to fill in the gaps, to complete your own story by deliberatel...
Incubator
Incubator Studios was not a typical professional recording studio. Apart from anything else, it was situated in a six-bedroom flat. Yet it beca...
Jan Hellriegel: Sportsman of the Year
In 2019 Jan Hellriegel released her fourth studio album, Sportsman of the Year: A Suburban Philosophy, simultaneously with a book of essays of th...
Th' Dudes
Herbs: Whats’ Be Happen?
In early 1863, on the eve of the Waikato War, Ngāti Whātua chief Paora Tūhaere purchased the schooner Victoria for £1,400 and set off with 20 of hi...
Jan Hellriegel
Herbs: He Rata Kouru Nui
East Cape, 1987: "Men may come, men may go, but Ruatoria goes on forever.” Beneath the imposing portals of a wharenui, an elder from the Ngāti Por...
Herbs: Reflections on Ruatoria
Not a lot was said on the way home from Ruatoria. "Everyone was so overjoyed, they were speechless,” says Herbs' bassist Charlie Tumahai. "What I l...
Steriogram
Blue Smoke
If there is a "big bang” moment in New Zealand's music history, it was made by the gentlest of melodies. For a delicate song, ';Blue Smoke' carries...
Al Park
Ian Magan
Al Park talks venues, music, gigs
As solo performer, bandmember and booking agent since the early punk era, Al Park has had, and continues to have, an insider's view of Christchurch...
Mareea Paterson
The Juvenolians
Songwriter's Choice: Victoria Girling-Butcher
Body and Soul – Jenny Morris For my 11th birthday, my parents gave me a blue Sony Walkman and my best friend gave me a copy of Jenny Morris's...
Adeaze
Golden Dawn
As music venues go, The Golden Dawn should have been a non-starter. On Auckland's Richmond Road a few steps from the Ponsonby Road corner, its unco...
New Zealand Women in the NZ Top 10
Kirk Harding
Howard Morrison Quartet
Music World
Dennis Marsh
Gerry Merito
Max Cryer
Five wāhine toa of the industry
For New Zealand Music Month in 2019, arts website The Big Idea asked me to discover the string pullers, the influencers, the legends and the gritty...
Kim Paterson
Master
Hegan Entertainments
At dawn on the first day of the year 2000, a fleet of 2000 sea craft led by a flotilla of waka taua followed the convergence of the Sun's rays to A...
