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PartnersOctober 31, 2017

The two-minute guide to Rag’n’Bone Man

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The Brit Award-winning blues singer with a hip-hop heart just announced he’s coming to New Zealand in April.

What’s a Rag’n’Bone Man?

Rag’n’Bone Man in the stage name of Rory Graham, an English musician described by the Telegraph as having “the body of a viking and the voice of an angel”. The name Rag’n’Bone Man is reportedly inspired by his love for the classic BBC sitcom Steptoe and Son, about father and son rag and bone men living in Shepherd’s Bush, London. Historically, dating back to the 19th century, a rag-and-bone man was someone who scavenged unwanted household items (ie rag and bone), carrying them around in a grotty sack slung over his shoulder to sell to merchants.

Where did he come from?

Graham was born in 1985 in Uckfield, East Sussex, the place of last known sighting of famous missing person Lord Lucan. He first started performing as a drum’n’bass MC called Rag’n’Bonez as a teenager, like a real-life character from People Just Do Nothing. “A lot of kids I grew up with were really into jungle and we did our own crappy little pirate radio station things,” he told the NME. After some success as a member of Brighton hip-hop collective Rum Committee, he struck out as a solo artist in the early 2010s.

What does he sound like?

Rag’n’Bone Man’s sound is located somewhere near the crossroads of hip-hop, soul and blues. Graham’s biggest selling point is his powerful voice, which he pairs with blues-inflected hip-hop tracks to create what a Guardian review described as “Joe Cocker singing over the chunkier bits of Moby’s Play.” Others have compared Rag’n’Bone Man’s appeal to that of Adele – a down-to-earth bloke with a fresh take on an old sound and a voice that can stop people in their tracks.

What has he done?

A handful of Rag’n’Bone Man EPs were released between 2012 and 2015. The one that got him the most attention was 2014’s Wolves, which featured a guest spot from Vince Staples, while ‘Bitter End’ off his 2015 follow-up Disfigured got the attention of BBC Radio 1. But 2016 single ‘Human’ eclipsed everything that had come before by several orders of magnitude – it hit the charts worldwide (peaking at #2 in the UK, #1 in a handful of European countries and #11 in New Zealand) and currently sits at a casual 322 million Spotify plays.

His debut album, also called Human, came out in February this year, going to #1 in the UK and #3 here. Later that same month Rag’n’Bone Man picked up Breakthrough Act and Critic’s Choice at the Brit Awards – the latter an honour which has been won by the chart-smashing likes of Adele and Sam Smith in previous years.

What are the hits?

The ground-shaking ‘Human’ is the one you’re most likely to have heard before – it sounds like something that might play over a montage of American football players getting psyched up before the Super Bowl. The follow-up single ‘Skin’, with its spine-tingling, stadium-ready chorus, is similarly epic, while ‘As You Are’ is a good example of the sweeter, more soulful side of Rag’n’Bone Man.

More Reading

Want to dig into the back catalogue? Try ‘Bitter End’ from the Disfigured EP, ‘Guilty’ from the Wolves EP and the title track from 2014’s Put That Soul on Me EP.

Rag’n’Bone Man is performing at Horncastle Arena in Christchurch on 3 April, TSB Arena in Wellington on 5 April and Spark Arena in Auckland on 6 April 2018. Spark has an exclusive pre-sale for Spark customers, available from 12pm Tuesday 31 October to 12pm Thursday 2 November.

Keep going!
Students at AUT, Auckland (Photo: supplied)
Students at AUT, Auckland (Photo: supplied)

SocietyOctober 30, 2017

Get a haircut, a degree, and a real job: Why a university education still matters

Guest writer
Students at AUT, Auckland (Photo: supplied)
Students at AUT, Auckland (Photo: supplied)

There’s an increasing belief that you don’t need a degree to get a 21st century career. In the first of a two-part series on the future of tertiary education, AUT vice-chancellor Derek McCormack argues that New Zealand’s universities have an essential role to play in our changing world.

I’m constantly asked about the relevance of university, and the relevance of a degree in the 21st century. People ask me why we supposedly persist with the idea in New Zealand that everyone needs to go to university. As the robots apparently come for our jobs, and employers advertise for skilled positions that don’t need tertiary education, I get questions about why we have so many universities in New Zealand. I’m asked why universities don’t teach what employers and the labour market need, instead of putting out all these unemployable graduates with big debts.

While the nature of the labour market is undoubtedly changing at a rapid pace, New Zealand’s tertiary ecosystem is in fact a small and agile sector that is both vital to the strength of our economy and an essential part of our education system’s response to these changes. So when I answer those questions, my response starts with some simple facts.

There are eight universities in New Zealand. On a population basis that’s about the same as Australia and fewer than Canada, UK, most of Europe and the US. All of New Zealand’s universities are classified by ranking agencies as comprehensive, research intensive, or very research intensive and five star. Unlike the rest of the world, New Zealand is light on new universities – defined as under 50 years old. We only have one. Most countries have many and some countries are still establishing universities.

New Zealand has only an average university participation rate compared with OECD countries and a much lower rate than countries like the UK and the US. Less than one-third of young people in New Zealand pursue university education, with a higher proportion of women than men. We have an increasing, but still disproportionately low, number of Māori and Pacific young people attending university. Compared with other OECD countries, New Zealand has an unremarkable proportion of degree graduates among its under 35 year-olds.

In September New Zealand companies including Xero, Fonterra, The Warehouse, Spark and Fisher & Paykel signed an open letter that stated tertiary qualifications would not be needed for a number of skilled roles at these organisations. SCREENSHOT

While our participation in tertiary education may appear unremarkable, for those students at university in New Zealand, their chances of success at university and after they graduate are exceptional. New Zealand universities have some of the best qualification completion rates in the world.  More of our university students end up with a degree than in Australia or the UK, for example. And New Zealand universities also have amongst the best graduate outcomes in the world with higher rates of graduate employment, lower rates of graduate unemployment, and lower rates of graduate under-employment – that is, fewer graduates in jobs where a degree is not necessary as a requirement (as it is for jobs like doctor, teacher, lawyer, engineer) or jobs where a degree would not be an obvious advantage (as it would be for jobs like manager, consultant, policy advisor).

Recent data reveals that on average graduates with a degree get significantly better incomes than those with lesser qualifications. According to the Ministry of Education, median weekly earnings of graduates with a bachelor’s degree or higher qualification are 161 percent higher than those without any qualifications. This applies to almost every type of degree and degree major, and the income margin increases with higher degrees.

New Zealand universities are not only effective, they are efficient. They operate on a lower income base than those in the other English speaking countries and lower than the OECD average. For instance, on an equivalent dollar basis New Zealand produces graduates at 85 percent the cost that Australia does. Despite the lower income base, New Zealand is the only country where all universities are world-ranked by international agencies such as QS and Times Higher Education.

New Zealand universities make essential contributions to the economy beyond their obvious education and graduate outcomes. They are major employers, with their 21,000 staff representing about 1 percent of the New Zealand workforce. They make a strong contribution to New Zealand export earnings and international impact. International education is New Zealand’s fourth largest export market and universities make the biggest single contribution at around $1.1 billion a year. New Zealand’s universities are internationally competitive in the rising global market of country mobile students.

New Zealand has a higher proportion of international university students than any country in the world except Luxembourg and Austria. With most of the international university students returning home after graduating, this education relationship creates an enormous network of connection and affection for New Zealand around the world. And, important to note, almost none of the international university students have been connected to the recently reported scams around international study in New Zealand.

Research is a core and explicit role for New Zealand’s universities and we do more than our fair share of the heavy lifting to advance innovation in our country. Universities invest more than $800 million per year in research. That is about one-third of the total research and development spend, public and private, of the whole country. The majority of that research is on physical and information sciences, health, infrastructure and the economy.

As well as all that, universities contribute directly in areas like health, sport, media, business and culture, and indirectly to these things by producing the graduates who take up positions as engineers, managers, nurses and doctors, lawyers, accountants, designers, journalists, creatives, communicators and technologists.

Finally, they contribute to social cohesion by being a pathway for social and economic advancement. An increasing number of students from lower decile schools are accessing and succeeding in university and heading into jobs they never would have imagined, let alone landed, without university.

The New Zealand university system is strong; it certainly isn’t sick or broken. While there may be genuine opportunities for those without tertiary qualifications, people who have degrees are given a foot in the door to careers that will allow them to help New Zealand adapt and influence the changing world. I believe universities and their role in our society are more important than ever.

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