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Roots Is the New Soul – What’s Coming Out Of The Ground?

When you look at the trajectory of New Zealand popular music it’s really no surprise that the current Roots music scene is so abundant. The landscape is littered with changing trends and transient fashions but somehow through all of this the rock steady emergence of an authentic Pacific based sound has progressed. In simple shorthand …

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Brian May – Astrophysics and Street Smarts: The Rise of the New Musici

Since the birth of rock and roll there has been a tendency to stereotype popular musicians as less than intelligent. Comedians from Peter Sellers to Spinal Tap have rolled out the dumb musician syndrome. This archetype has been a long time stuck to the proverbial blanket; maybe the idea goes back to the Middle Ages …

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The Muppets and Metallica – Television Commercials and The Search for Meaning

It is a curious twist when advertisers take a well-known song and reset it as the soundtrack to a television commercial. Whether it’s the Jefferson Airplane’s “(Don’t You Want) Somebody To Love” being used by Coca Cola, Dave Dobbyn’s “I Love You Like I Should” heralding the Holden Astra, “Maybe Tomorrow” by Golden Horse promoting …

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The Deluge in a Paper Cup: Reflections on Cultural Identity in Music Aotearoa.

In the spring of 1988 as a touring musician I disembarked a 747 at Vancouver airport as part of the ‘Go New Zealand’ tour of North America. We were met by an aging and gregarious Canadian cultural attaché. She greeted me with a very deliberate and exaggerated North -American accent: “Do- you- speak-Eng-lish?” Looking back …

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