Percussionist Myele Manzanza (Image: Supplied)

MediaJanuary 24, 2020

Beyond RNZ Concert: Myele Manzanza on musicians’ struggle to make a living in NZ

Staff Writer

Percussionist Myele Manzanza (Image: Supplied)

With moves underway around RNZ Concert and a new state-funded music station, how will experimental and less commercially-focused musicians be affected? The Spinoff spoke to New Zealand-born and London based jazz musician Myele Manzanza about the cultural and financial landscape for non-mainstream artists in Aotearoa.

The future of publicly funded music platforms is currently in flux, with the confirmation that Radio NZ is looking at setting up a new youth-focused music brand.

At the moment, it isn’t clear how focused such a brand would be on commercially viable music, though there will be obvious temptations for the organisation to target the largest possible audience.

What also isn’t clear is where RNZ Concert would fit into the wider mix. RNZ spokesman John Barr told the NZ Herald that “there are no plans to close RNZ Concert”. But with funding for the RNZ group tight, and being pulled in many different and important directions, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which the station ended up financially better off.

Part of the problem for RNZ Concert is that it is decidedly not youth focused. Many perceive the station as a bastion of elitist boomer culture, subsidising music for people who have the means to be paying for it themselves.

That’s probably an unfair perception for a few reasons. Firstly, RNZ Concert does a lot of recording of, well, concerts, and in doing so both helps the financial viability of such events, and opens up access to anyone with a radio. It’s also the only mainstream radio station that ever plays experimental and non-commercial music, which can throw those musicians a crucial lifeline to survive in a difficult industry and small market. And it can also give local composers a rare chance to have their cultural contributions be heard.

So what is the reality of trying to build a career playing non-mainstream music? And should the government be in the business of supporting that kind of cultural output?

To discuss those questions, The Spinoff got in touch with Myele Manzanza. He’s been a professional percussionist for more than a decade, putting out jazz records under his own name, along with being part of an extensive list of other projects and touring bands, and is now based primarily in London.

The Spinoff: How long did you try and stick it out in New Zealand first, or was going overseas always the plan?

Relocating overseas was always an ambition of mine. I had been able to scratch the international itch for a while having done tours and ‘seasons’ in the northern hemisphere fairly consistently over the last 10 years, but I had been hitting a glass ceiling for a number of years being based in NZ. It was only over the last year where my life circumstance had opened up enough to consider a proper move overseas.

How does your life as a professional musician look different now?

The level of opportunity being based in London compared to New Zealand is astronomically higher for a niche artist like myself. It’s only anecdotal, but with the size of the country and the way arts are treated in the broader New Zealand culture, I’d say if you’re a non-mainstream artist based in New Zealand you have about a five-year window, where you have perhaps four or five profile building concerts a year that you can do, before you’ve maxed out your exposure to the market and the audience has moved on. After that point you’d need to either invest time and money into building an international audience, divest from being a performing artist and move into music education or another field of work, or just accept the limitations of location and be happy with your lot in life.

In comparison, since moving to London I’ve been able to get six good strategic profile building concerts in the UK / EU in the last 3 months, with various smaller scale bread-n-butter shows that enable me to sustain a performance career and build toward more major tours and collaborations.

In terms of your career, have other projects sort of subsidised your ability to pursue less commercially focused work?

Currently my main bread and butter is 100% performance – my own “Myele Manzanza” projects, DJ sets and session work for other artists, as well as a little drip feed of APRA royalties now and then. However over the years when I was based in NZ I’ve had other work outside of music, for example as an area manager and sales rep for Phantom Billstickers, as well as private drum tuition.

Was Concert the first station in NZ to play your work? Are there other stations around the country that have played much of it?

Radio Active in Wellington would have been the first station to regularly feature my work, and I’ve had notable support from the Bnet and independent stations around the country. There has also been play on Radio New Zealand, and notably RNZ Concert since Nick Tipping has taken an active role in jazz programming there.

I’ve seen you make comments before about how difficult it is to get jazz onto mainstream platforms in NZ. Some would argue that’s just because the genre has declined in popularity. Why do you think jazz matters?

To be honest, I don’t know if jazz matters all that much. What I think is more important, beyond any genre definitions, is cultivating a culture where boundary-pushing New Zealand art is invested in and respected. Jazz doesn’t matter as much as a progressive, pioneering spirit.

Do you think this is an area the government should be involved in? If so, why?

To take it a step into geopolitical territory, it’s undeniable that America has been the single biggest influencer of global culture over the last 100 years, and its cultural influence is inextricably linked to its geopolitical dominance. As much as its economic, manufacturing, technological and military strength have made it a super power, its art, music and movies have undeniable shaped the cultural consciousness of the world. This level of cultural influence over hearts and minds has done as much (arguably more) to assert America’s standing in the world through the 20th century.

Inevitably, as the USA’s superpower status diminishes, it will create an opening for global cultural influence as well. Nations with a savvy, progressive and forward thinking approach should see the opportunity this presents and begin investing aggressively in their arts sector. New Zealand could be the nation to do this, but it will require a long term vision, a 100 year plan. It’s not something that will see a return on investment within an election cycle. I would argue that Helen Clark’s 20% NZ music quotas in the early 2000s directly helped foster an environment that could enable an artist like Lorde to achieve as highly as she’s done on the world stage 15 years later. The Outward Sound investment in Fat Freddy’s Drop’s initial European expeditions helped enable them to break down doors for numerous New Zealand soul bands who have gone on to influence and be part of the global conversation of music of their era.

Right now, New Zealand’s young jazz and experimental musicians are writing and performing incredible music and making brilliant innovations that sadly, whether due to population, lack of funding and platforms, or just the broader attitude of our audience culture, aren’t getting the investment and recognition they deserve. It’s my sincere hope that that changes and our best and brightest talent not only doesn’t get wasted, but is utilised to the full to raise New Zealand’s standing in the world.

Keep going!

The stunning view down the coast from St Highway 6 near Punakaiki. Photo: Michael Andrew

MediaJanuary 19, 2020

A West Coast internship

Michael Andrew

Guest writer

The stunning view down the coast from St Highway 6 near Punakaiki. Photo: Michael Andrew

Between the city and the coast lies an insurmountable gulf, or so they say. Fresh from university, Michael Andrew decided to test that by interning at a local paper in the West Coast and found himself beguiled by the strangeness and the beauty.

I had never smelled fresh newsprint coming straight off the press before.

Then I went to Greymouth and interned as a reporter for the Greymouth Evening Star, and I got to smell it everyday.

At first it’s unnatural; the astringent, chemical odour of ink, like something from a textiles factory. But then it grows on you. Coupled with the whirling and humming of the Goss press – which at the Grey Star, is located adjacent to the newsroom – it came to cast a certain magic that would define my whole experience on the Coast.

The Goss community web offset press sits in the same building as the newsroom. Photo: Michael Andrew

I didn’t know much about the newspaper before I came to Greymouth. The internship was a requirement for my university journalism course and I had the opportunity to apply to any newspaper in New Zealand.

I picked Greymouth because I wanted an excuse to travel to an enchanting and fascinating place, which I thought was constantly being misunderstood.

In Auckland, where I live, seldom do we receive any news from the Coast other than stories about dying towns, receding glaciers, angry miners, angry farmers, angry weather and a rampant blood feud between conservation and coal interests. I’ve read enough news by now to understand that whenever a place is portrayed that simplistically, it is invariably far more complex.

But even if those issues did exist, what better place for a novice, city-based millennial journalist with fairly progressive ideals to escape his own echo chamber and challenge his own biases?

I packed my van and started the long drive down the country, setting a leisurely pace until I emerged on day six on the western side of the Buller Gorge and felt my heart open wider than the grey Tasman sea spread out before me.

If ever there was a place where someone can feel free, it is the West Coast. It’s wild, remote and hauntingly beautiful. It refuses to accommodate comfort-seekers or pretension and moves to the roll of its own furious waves.

I took the coast road south from Westport, hugging that narrow strip of land between the primeval Paparoa National Park and the surging ocean smashing boulders into sand and pancakes.

From the first day, my time at the Greymouth Evening Star was magnificent. I walked into the art deco building – home to the paper since the 1940s – in the centre of town and was immediately put to work writing stories.

I covered struggling tourist operators at Fox Glacier, a long lost collection of heritage notebooks returned to the library, the end of controversial white baiting season and a local lawyer’s appointment as a notary public.

After filing a story I would sit at my desk and listen to the sound of the thriving newsroom; the four reporters making phone calls, the subeditors typing away and chatting, the police scanner beeping on the desk, filling the room with stories from the quirky underbelly of the West Coast: intoxicated teen stole friend’s car, intoxicated man stole friend’s chickens, campervan driving up State Highway 6 with rear tyres on fire.

The Greymouth Star’s home on Werita St since the 1940s. Photo: Michael Andrew

Steve Braunias’ words went through my head as I sat and listened, waiting warily to hear a report about someone “giving the bash”, one of the most common crimes he covered as a court reporter with the Grey Star in the 1980s.

Then the newspaper would appear on my desk; a freshly printed afternoon broadsheet with a bold masthead, still warm from the press with my story, and byline on the front page.

Sure, some of the stories were quaint, but that’s the magic, and necessity of community news. They were local stories, about local issues for local readers, informing them about what’s happening in their town.

While regional and metro newspapers across the country are closing or haemorrhaging readers and circulation numbers, the 150-year-old Grey Star is still holding out. It holds the title for the newspaper with the highest readership per capita in New Zealand.

With over 60 staff, it is also one of the largest employers on the Coast. The newsroom boasts some remarkable experience and quality – the chief reporter has been there for almost 20 years, the editor has been at it since the early 80s, and one of the sub-editors has been there for 50 years.

Through my reporting, I found the people of the Coast to be among the most courteous and friendly I’d ever met.

The region was also, as I expected, far more politically diverse than it is nationally portrayed. Even to my highly sensitive urban-progressive gaze, I did not encounter the notorious faction of “blue” conservatism that I was told dominated the region.

In fact, I found a melting pot of ideologies – indicative perhaps of the Coast’s long history of unionism and workers rights – The New Zealand Labour Party, after all, was born just over the hill in Blackball.

I heard an owner of a bookshop which specialised in Russian literature espousing the compassionate ideals of socialism.

I heard an old man who looked like Walt Whitman sitting at a bar and cursing the Labour Party, calling them turncoats and scoundrels.

I heard a pensive fisherman say the only reasons he whitebaits wasn’t so much to catch the fish but to escape his wife for a few hours.

And I heard a pair of scruffy youths discussing the medicinal properties of puha – a miraculous native thistle that is frequently treated as a weed.

The Coast is not simple, nor is it dull. It’s a mad, proud, delightfully eccentric place where a hairdresser with no political experience can be mayor and where the name Eugenie can prompt more outrage than the name Trump.

The oily fate of unsold editions of the Star. Photo: Michael Andrew

After my internship, when I told Paul Madgwick, the encouraging editor of the Grey Star – and also the chairman of local iwi Te Runanga o Makaawhio – that I was planning to write a story about my experience on the Coast he gave his blessing.

“Write it,” he said. “Warts and all”.

I couldn’t see the warts. But if they were there, it’s because they needed to be there. They were as natural and normal as the sand flies that attack your feet whenever you stay stationary for a minute, or the rain that tumbles in biblical blankets from the grey heavens, or the smell of fresh newsprint – pungent, industrial yet carrying with it the promise of stories.