Taranaki might not be the first province people think of when it comes to music but it has produced its fair share, both in terms of artists with local roots and songs created in the region itself. And there remains a very vibrant scene today. Here’s a brief overview of 10 examples across different genres and decades.
Patea Māori Club – Ngoi Ngoi
We all know ‘Poi E’ and its massive success under the direction of Dalvanius Prime. But there were other songs and an album. ‘Ngoi Ngoi’ was the follow up single to ‘Poi E’ and described by Dalvanius as “a song in praise of Ngoi Pēwhairangi from Tokomaru Bay”. A renowned writer of traditional Māori songs, Ngoi had helped Dalvanius with the lyrics for ‘Poi E’. While it didn’t make the Top 20, ‘Ngoi Ngoi’ was on the Pātea Māori Club’s album, which was nominated for Best Polynesian Album at the 1988 New Zealand Music Awards. In 1992 the Club performed the song on New Zealand Today programme.
Read: Toi Te Kupu, Toi Te Mana, Toi Te Whenua – Dalvanius: the Te Reo Manifesto
Wayne Mason/The Fourmyula – Nature
The Fourmyula has always been known as an Upper Hutt band but Wayne Mason spent his childhood in New Plymouth. My mother and his worked together at the local Save the Children charity shop. I met him when he played some great piano on the first Netherworlds album. During a long career with many highlights he wrote the New Zealand classic ‘Nature’. He still has a foot in Taranaki, playing shows in the province to this day. In 2010 the Fourmyula reunited for a few gigs, and they performed ‘Nature’ for the current affairs show Close Up.
The Slacks – Big Aroha
The Slacks. - Photo by Andy Jackson
Taranaki’s infectious The Slacks broke through with their ‘Big Aroha’ single and video in 2016, filmed in Moturoa’s 4 Square near Midge Marsden’s New Plymouth boyhood home, in a suburb near the port once called Tiger Town. A smash at the time, it’s closing in on 200K Youtube streams and 430K on Spotify. They describe their sound as “subversive singalongs”. Scott and Mark Armstrong, Blake Gibson and Zane Greig have been playing since 1999 and the band claims genre influences ranging from rockabilly to folk, reggae and ska. Three albums in, their last release was 2023’s Information Ape.
Nocturnal Projections – Nerve Endings in Powerlines
Nocturnal Projections were “our” Taranaki punk band between 1979-80 and I was a teenage fan. Looking back, they were world class. If they weren’t playing at The Lion Hotel in downtown New Plymouth we’d drive old Holdens and Falcons out to country halls to watch them belting out Ramones and Pistols classics, along with their own great songs in front of a black tarpaulin and a big Union Jack. I bought their practice room tape. This was on it. We all loved it. Brothers Peter and Graeme Jefferies went on to do great things with their various Flying Nun bands – including The Cakekitchen and This Kind of Punishment.
Victoria Girling-Butcher/Lucid 3 – AM Radio
Also from New Plymouth, Victoria Girling-Butcher and her band Lucid 3 are known for great songs and her shimmering vocals. Victoria would probably be huge overseas if she wasn’t based here. Dave Dobbyn knows that. She has been in his band for yonks. I wonder if the people at the local New Plymouth supermarket know that? And yes, of course we have a family connection. This is Taranaki after all.
Barry Saunders (with Delaney Davidson) – It’s Out of Our hands
Barry Saunders is a nice guy. He once loaned me his amp in return for a bottle of whiskey when I was stuck with broken gear in Wellington. He would have done it without said bottle. He also has Taranaki roots, first revealed in the Warratahs’ song ‘Taranaki’. Most of us know his career with The Warratahs but he’s done much before and alongside that. ‘It’s Out of Our Hands’ – a cracker of a song recorded with Delaney Davidson in 2024 – is proof that he remains a true long-term Kiwi troubadour.
Sticky Filth – Weep Woman Weep
I knew them when they were 14-year-old punks hanging around New Plymouth bus stops smoking cigarettes, dressed up as the second wave of local punks – 12-hole Doc Martens boots, messy hair and torn T-shirts. One was hanging around a younger sister of mine like a bad smell. I sold Craig the bass player my cheap high school Masaki four-string when I left for Dunedin. Then they became Sticky Filth. A worthy band who stuck to their guns for far longer than most. They recorded this. It’s as much part of Taranaki folklore as Len Lye and ‘Poi E’ to me.
Midge Marsden – Struck Down by the Blues
My first ever gig. Midge Marsden and the Blues Connection at the DB Ngāmotu near the port (and Tiger Town/Moturoa where he grew up) in New Plymouth. They blew my head off. I got to know Midge later on. New Plymouth being New Plymouth, his mother and mine also worked together at the Save the Children charity shop in town. Starting out in Taranaki’s 1960s R&B rock ’n’ rollers The Breakaways, Midge went on to play with and befriend Stevie Ray Vaughan and many other US bluesman. Surely one of Taranaki’s most well-known musicians and possibly the country’s longest serving blues champion.
Read: Give It a Whirl: Midge Marsden interview
The Big Broadcast - New Plymouth Opera House 1959
1959 was a big night at what is now the TSB Showplace – Radio 2XP’s live to air Big Broadcast. The recording (linked below) is of its time, a mix of light entertainment and jazz, with some pop and early rock ’n’ roll. Radio star Selwyn Toogood (later of It’s in the Bag fame) was MC and £220 was raised for the local Plunket charity (equivalent to nearly $13,000 in 2025).
Big Broadcast, New Plymouth. - Taranaki Photo News, October 1959. Clockwise from top left are Selwyn Toogood with promoter Eric Weston of 2XP, Leo Davis and his Hawaiian Serenaders, Louis ("Lew") Pryme, Colleen Reichardt, Eleanor Yates, and Opera House manager Shailer Cottier with Toogood.
Acts include the Diplomats, The Topliners, Lew Pryme, Max Carina (good boogie piano), Eleanor Yates of Eltham (soprano), a sketch by New Plymouth Little Theatre, The Hawaiian Serenaders with Kahu Pineaha and Waitara’s Hi-Glows (a Howard Morrison style quartet) whose song ‘The Tour’ was a humorous round-up of local events and personalities based around Bobby Darin’s ‘Splish Splash’. Kenny Brennan serenaded with an Irish song, The Edwards sisters (from down round the coast) did their Andrews Sisters act and The Power Brothers of Eltham played their accordions. The Gold Diggers and The Ocean Ramblers closed up with some “rock ’n’ roll numbers”.
Listen to the entire show at the Taranaki Media Archive.
Nick Sampson/Netherworld Dancing Toys – This Town
In the early 1980s Taranaki was full of men wearing “Motunui blue” denim jeans, shirts and jackets. The imported American uniform of the huge workforce working on Rob Muldoon’s “Think Big” project – what is now the Methanex methanol plant. There were lots of jobs and good money about. It seemed half the province was working on it, including half my friends. I wrote this from a Dunedin perspective “coming back from the outside” to the sleepy town I’d left “living under the mountain by Back Beach time” to see a “denim-jacketed army thinking big”. The horns and guitar break represent the sounds of work sirens and machinery. It resonated with my friends. Phew.
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