NYC’s Eartheater at Whammy last month. Image: Nicole Hunt

OPINIONOpinionFebruary 13, 2020

Auckland live music is booming, actually

Contributing writer

NYC’s Eartheater at Whammy last month. Image: Nicole Hunt

Despite what some critics claim, there isn’t a ‘gig problem’ in Auckland, writes Josie Adams. You just need to look beyond indie rock.

There are around 20 gig spaces in Auckland’s CBD. Over a three-day period last month, Whammy Bar alone hosted the Laneway afterparty, the bFM anniversary weekend party, and an Eartheater show. The Others Way festival last year hosted 46 acts in 13 venues across one night and sold out.

To an outsider, it looks like live music in Auckland is booming. To an insider, it looks the same. Sigrid Yiakmis is a promoter, radio host, DJ, and events manager for bFM and for Community Garden. She’s been active in Auckland’s live music scene for nearly 15 years.

“It’s definitely in a boom,” she said. “Over a two day period last week I saw Troy Kingi, Che Fu & the Kratez and Ardijah at Hoani Waititi marae put on by Te Whānau O Waipareira Trust for Waitangi Day, Ary Jansen playing in the Albert Park rotunda as part of Wilde Projects’ Queer Pavilion for Pride Festival – which was supported by the Auckland Council – and German experimental composer Annette Krebs playing in Aotea Square presented by Audio Foundation as part of the annual Music In The Square series put on by Auckland Live.” All of these were free events.

Outside of the CBD, the major venues are E4 in New Lynn and Black Spot Studios in Onehunga, both of which cater to audiences that guitar fiends might not be part of, and therefore not consider when diagnosing the health of Auckland’s live music scene.

This is why you might think live music in Auckland is on the edge of extinction. But that isn’t true. Drum and bass, whether you like it or not, is live music too.

It can sometimes seem like a gig is only ‘live music’ if it has a full band. In reality, two or more guitars feature in a relatively small proportion of gigs in Auckland. DJs, EDM, dubstep, grime, trap, and hip hop are all booming in Auckland. But because the stereotypical “New Zealand sound” is often seen as indie rock, it’s easy to conflate the health of that scene with the vitality of the sector.

The Beths are good, but they’re not the only band in NZ. (Photo by Dave Simpson/Getty Images)

Matt Hunter is the founder of independent record label Heat Rockers and also works with promoters like Eleventh Realm, which was behind last weekend’s packed-out, dual-room Ultra Sound event. He started his record label to give a more diverse range of local artists a platform.

“So many producers and artists and DJs would make tunes and put them on Soundcloud and share to Facebook, and I was like – this music’s amazing! There’s a beauty to formalising something,” he said. “Otherwise everything gets caught in that social media obscurity.”

The label’s focus has been on giving platforms to a more diverse, lesser-known range of artists – musicians who haven’t been shoulder-tapped for funding or promotion by government or council organisations. “Mid-tier to large artists [already] get a prop-up,” said Hunter. “So many of the requirements [for funding] are social media-based – you have to have, like, 1000 likes on your band on Facebook. How do you expect people to get there?”

“Diversity” can be little more than a buzzword, but promoters like Hunter and Yiakmis are actually doing it. Queer and non-Pākehā artists are more present at Whammy Bar and Black Spot Studios than they were at The King’s Arms, and a large reason is that when these venues consider diversity they factor in genre. The success of these gigs has opened up larger venues like the Wintergarden and Wynyard Quarter to both local and international acts.

“Promoters are becoming more open to different genres or even disciplines being included together on line-ups,” said Yiakmis. “I think that has a domino effect for musicians or artists or dancers where they can feel that there is a platform for whatever it is they want to create and that there will be an audience for them, and an audience that is supportive and open.

“There’s always been people who were waiting to see something that deviates from what’s always been on offer, and now that it’s actually happening it makes Auckland an attractive and viable place to tour for the international acts who have largely been ignored by bigger promoters or festivals.”

Community Garden brought Venus X from the New York club scene to Whammy Bar last year. Image: Nicole Hunt

Gus Sharp of local dance heroes Friendly Potential believes safety and diversity are cornerstone values for many new promoters. “Our motto is ‘we can’t relax until you do’. We want to be sustainable, and that can mean financially, but it also means that when people come to one of our events they want to come to the next one.”

Built on a safe and supportive atmosphere – “good vibes” in general – Friendly Potential has built a reputation for great parties. They’ve hosted multi-night parties (“Catacombs”) in the Civic’s Wintergarden, they’ve brought German composer Nils Frahm to the Town Hall, and next month Beacon Festival will shower Queens Wharf in local and international electronic music.

Sharp is one member of Friendly Potential’s dedicated team and says their success is due in large part to their focus on relationship-building. “We were all competing for slices of a pretty small pie. So we decided to collaborate, not compete. And we’ve been going for five years.”

When it comes to gig economics, right now dance music just makes sense. “It’s expensive to travel with a band,” he said. “One DJ is much easier to tour.” Sharp is quick to point out that a thriving entertainment scene is a side effect of broader economic changes. “We’re a niche scene, and the council is more concerned with housing, public transport and roads. I think the health of music in Auckland is part of a wider liveability thing. Better transport, higher wages – music is affected by those things.”

Catacombs, a Friendly Potential event in the Wintergarden. Photo: @dylanbiscuit

Hunter suggests the council formally recognise entertainment and music zones to prevent NIMBYs from shutting down establishments like the King’s Arms, but thinks it might be too late for K Road. “If they picked an area like Morningside, which is mostly industrial, and allowed it to be noise-making, that could be a space for the community to grow,” he said. “Open air parties would be cool, too.”

The society that’s built up around Auckland live music is one that’s grassroots, gritty, and overflowing with talent. The financial issue isn’t that venues are desperate to sell drinks; it’s that they’re desperate not to be pushed out of long-established creative zones like K Road.

If you want to see the state of music in Auckland, check out labels like Heat Rockers, NOA Records, and Been To Berlin Once. Follow promoters like Moments, Community Garden, Friendly Potential, and Dynasty Collective. And go out and support the people who are making music happen – just don’t expect them to be holding guitars.

Keep going!

OPINIONĀteaFebruary 13, 2020

What Taika’s Oscar means to me – and all indigenous filmmakers

Heperi Mita

Guest writer

Director Heperi Mita celebrates the success of his friend Taika Waititi, and explains what it means for Māori and indigenous creatives around the world.

There was a moment during the 2020 Academy awards where I saw Taika Waititi, Chelsea Winstanley and Ra Vincent, and realised that in just one generation Māori filmmakers had gone from union picket lines and land marches to the red carpet of the Oscars.

The gap between the current crop of Oscar nominees and the pioneers of Māori filmmaking is a small one – my mum, Merata Mita, was one of those pioneers, and in the case of Chelsea and Taika, she was also a mentor. So for me there was this sense of filmmaking whakapapa.

And although the history for Māori in the film industry is a short one, Taika saying the phrase “Mauri Ora” on that stage harkened back to the very origins of Māori storytelling when Tānemahuta breathed life into Hineahuone, the first woman, and exclaimed “tihei mauri ora!”

This was not part of Taika’s acceptance speech, but part of perhaps an even more significant moment for the ceremony. This year’s awards was the first time the Academy has ever acknowledged the land of the Tongva, Tataviam, and the Chumash, the tribes whose ancestral lands lie beneath the concrete freeways and skyscrapers that make up the metropolis of Los Angeles.

The fact that this message came from a Māori, well known for being outspoken on his opinions on race relations in New Zealand, is a throwback to Māori filmmaking pioneers like Barry Barclay, Tama Poata and my mum whose film careers were firmly rooted in their struggles for Māori rights. However, it’s also a sad indictment of the lack of authentic representation for Hollywood’s indigenous people’s – both real and fictional.

While all this was happening, another Māori filmmaker, Renae Maihi, entered the High Court to defend herself against accusations of defamation by millionaire Bob Jones. And in a strange coincidence, this too was thick with personal historic context for me: Jones appears in my mother’s film PATU! giving the fingers to anti-apartheid protestors on his way to a fundraiser for the Muldoon government in 1981.

The juxtaposition of two filmmakers, one at the High Court, the other at the Oscars, is a perfect representation of the history of Māori in film.

Renae’s case embodies the ongoing struggle inherent for Māori within this industry. But while a lawsuit has obvious tangible consequences, what does an Oscars victory really mean anyway?

Taika Waititi, Chelsea Winstanley, the author Heperi Mita and Cliff Curtis at the premiere of Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen in 2018. (Getty Images).

While conflict against authority by Māori in film is well documented, success on the highest of those stages is almost forgotten. Hammond Peek (Kai Tahu, Te Ati Awa) has won two Oscars for sound design for his work on Lord of the Rings and King Kong, even Russell Crowe has whakapapa links to Ngāti Porou, yet these achievements seem relatively unlauded by Aotearoa at large.

The relevance of both the ceremony of the Oscars and the awards have been questioned in recent years with criticism of selections, and failing ratings. Prior to the ceremony Bong Joon Ho himself was dismissive, describing the Academy Awards as, “a little strange but not a big deal. The Oscars are not an international film festival. They’re very local.”

However, the collective sense of pride that was felt by indigenous people around the world when Taika Waititi took the stage is proof that although the Oscars’ relevance may be waning in recent times they remain an achievement that symbolises the pinnacle of excellence in filmmaking and therefore inspire.

These symbols remain important not only for their inspiration, but the platform to boost awareness of indigenous stories at a global level. It wasn’t just Māori interests that were promoted that day, but indigenous artists and storytellers at large.

In this way the short whakapapa of Māori in film will continue to grow and expand into a generation of storytellers who will achieve even more than this one.