Pop CultureJanuary 18, 2018

Sausages and Custard: An ode to the weird and wonderful Kiwi Kidsongs albums

Guest writer

Allanah Faherty remembers Kiwi Kidsongs, a series of government-funded kids’ albums that were sung in primary schools all over the country for 20 years.

As a kid, there was little honour greater than being in charge of the song lyrics at a school assembly. Whether it was holding up the giant sheet of paper in front of the school (if you were tall enough), or being allowed to use the OHP (carefully sliding up the transparency in time with the music), it was a deep privilege — and set the scene for a bloody good time on a Friday morning.

Our asses may have been sore from sitting on the hall’s cold, wooden floor, but our hearts were full as we sang about our dad’s love of rugby, a dog’s hatred of leftovers and everyone’s favourite takeaways. The songs were weird and funny, and if you’re like me, you probably didn’t realise that they all came from a collection of albums called Kiwi Kidsongs.

Produced by state-owned enterprise Learning Media, the Kiwi Kidsongs albums were released yearly and distributed to every primary school in Aotearoa for free. Each release was chock-full of catchy tunes and came in both lyric and karaoke form. Steve Weeks, a former primary school teacher, remembers the excitement of listening to each new album as it dropped. These educational jams were initially on cassette, before moving on to CD. “I used them for assembly singing, music classes, school productions and just to fill in that 10 minutes at the end of the day,” he says.

There’s no doubt these musical moments of primary school life stick with us. In fact, I’d wager that every millennial in the country is capable of breaking into a word-perfect rendition of ‘School Is Number One’ or ‘Fish and Chips’. And while, in retrospect, having primary school kids sing about eating chips for ‘breakfast, lunch and tea’ may have been a wobbly health message, it was the ‘90s, and we were smashing back white bread sammies and Roll-Ups on the daily anyway.

Kiwi Kidsongs albums began at an interesting time in New Zealand history. As a nation, we had begun shrugging off our cultural cringe and embracing our own identity. After singing about the traditions of England and America for the majority of our lives, Kiwi school kids were ready for songs with lyrics about rugby, Marmite and enjoying Christmas on the beach.

Former Learning Media audio producer Janice Marriott was among those responsible for the creation of the series. She proposed it to the Ministry of Education after noticing a variety of New Zealand-themed reading materials, but nothing musical. The first album was released in 1990, and Marriott says it snowballed from there until 2010 when funding was tragically withdrawn.

Marriott was in charge of songwriting — she, along with long-time Kiwi Kidsongs sound engineer, David Antony Clark, wrote the unforgettable ‘Kiwi Kids’ Theme’ — choosing which tunes would make it onto the albums, and writing the teaching notes. As a resource subsidised by the government, Kiwi Kidsongs had to check certain boxes and adhere to the curriculum, but Marriott says her primary goal was to make the songs fun.

Bunsen the dog: An unlikely inspiration, but a hero nonetheless (Photo: Janice Marriott)

Marriott not only helped create the Kiwi Kidsongs series but her dog Bunsen also added his own part to the legacy when he inspired a song that continues to burn deep in my memory.

‘Sausages and Custard’ was undoubtedly one of the most popular songs from Kiwi Kidsongs series (or at least it was a huge favourite at St Joseph’s Timaru, which I feel is a fairly good gauge of country-wide enjoyment). Written by Phil Riley for Kiwi Kidsongs Six, the woeful tale of a dog forced to eat leftovers instead of “Pal and Champ and jellymeat,” was the story of Marriott’s beloved pet. Although Bunsen has now departed for that great kennel in the sky, I’m assured that ‘Sausages and Custard’ was played at his funeral. A fitting farewell for this unlikely Kiwi legend.

Not only did each iteration of Kiwi Kidsongs contain lyrics likely to be remembered longer than the finer details of long division (just me?), but they were songs written by true legends of New Zealand music. It was this variety that Radha Sahar, songwriter and musical director for the majority of the Kiwi Kidsongs albums, believes was the true strength of the collection. “People all around the country wrote these,” Sahar says. “It’s a very comprehensive celebration of New Zealand writing and culture.”

Take a look at any of the albums’ catalogues, and you’re bound to spot a name you’ll recognise. In addition to Sahar, Hinewehi Mohi, Jenny McLeod, Alan Muggeridge, Kath Bee and Jenny Pattrick also all had songs on the series — as did the late Hirini Melbourne and Arif Usmani. The albums also included iconic songs and waiata that are part of New Zealand’s musical canon, such as ‘E papa Waiari’, ‘Nature’, ‘Tōia Mai Te Waka Nei’, ‘Counting the Beat’ and ‘Six Months in a Leaky Boat’. The songs covered all musical genres, were written in English, Māori, Samoan and other Pasifika languages, and referenced distinctly Kiwi brands, places and things.

In short: Teachers loved them, they were really awesome, and the fact that we all still remember them years later proves that they played a part in helping kids form a cultural identity.

So what happened to Kiwi Kidsongs?

In 2010, the final Kiwi Kidsongs album was released, funding was pulled, and the series ended. It was the result, Marriott says, of a “new climate” with a focus on reading and writing rather than music. While some of the songs have been re-recorded and are available online, the majority have been condemned to a life in the back of primary school cupboards.

But eight years after the programme ended there could be a small glimmer of hope for the future of Kiwi Kidsongs. With the government recently scrapping the controversial National Standards, it may provide a chance for the lens to shift back to art and music. Could the series be funded once again?

It’s something that Marriott would be on board with. “We need New Zealand songs out there for New Zealand kids.” And while the chances might be slim, it’s worth noting that for the first time ever, New Zealand has a prime minister who quite possibly sung Kiwi Kidsongs at primary school. So, in the spirit of Kiwi Kidsongs’ relentless positivity, here’s hoping those weird, wonderful and wacky songs will be revived for a new generation to enjoy.

With thanks to Janice Marriott, Radha Sahar, Sally Bodkin-Allen and Steve Weeks.

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Pop CultureJanuary 17, 2018

Beware the bears: We play the Turkish video game ‘set in New Zealand’

Adam Goodall

Contributing Writer

Turkish developer 2645turqoise has released a game that purports to be a vast survivalist adventure across New Zealand. Adam Goodall finds out how well Ka Mate captures true blue bear-free Aotearoa.

“An adventurous TV presenter goes to New Zealand. The adventurer who encounters with unexpected events will have to struggle for life against wildlife.”

That’s the log-line for Ka Mate, a survival game that’s just hit Steam Early Access. It’s the first project for Turkish developers 2645turquoise, but it’s an ambitious one. The developers promise a vast survivalist adventure across the North and South Islands in which you build shelters, hunt for food and tame the unforgiving New Zealand wilderness. By the time it releases, the developers say, it’s going to have vehicles, farming, villages and more. It’s a baby game right now – the build I played, the build that’s being sold on Steam, is version 0.1.2 – but when it’s done, the developers say it’ll be a “unique game pleasure with New Zealand’s natural habitat.”

Which doesn’t really explain why I got killed by a bear.

Ka Mate isn’t really what it says on the tin. You play as Sean, a washed-up Bear Grylls-style TV personality who’s trying to relax in Hawaii when a mysterious man tells him about a mysterious people who lived in New Zealand hundreds of years ago. Sensing his ticket back to the big time, Sean hooks up with some unscrupulous sailors who agree to take him ‘illegally’ to this mysterious ‘New Zealand’ (“It was a rather expensive option but it was the fastest.”). A week later, the sailors abandon him on a mysterious Pacific island called Jarvis. I respect their decision. His diary makes a pretty good case for him being a raging blowhard IRL.

The player takes over from there, trying to keep this dickhead alive on an uncharted island that looks eerily like a forest in the middle of Oregon. It’s rolling hills and pine forests as far as the eye can see, and there’s next to no water – just one little marsh right next to where you start. This all looks pretty beautiful in the dawn light, in an ostentatious Malick-and-a-half kind of way.

The beautiful sub-Malick lighting of Not-New Zealand.

The island’s full of all-American wildlife, too. You hunt rabbits and deer – so far, so local – but at night you’re hunted by the island’s apex predators: stags and bears. There’s constant birdsong during the day but I couldn’t identify in that dawn chorus any birds native to the Pacific region. I’ve asked around – I’m not super-great at identifying bird calls – but the closest anyone’s gotten is picking out a quail in the mix. Maybe the bears eat the quails. I don’t know. The bears are there, though, and they’re beary, beary angry.

(A quick sidenote: there is actually an island in the Pacific called Jarvis. It’s just under 5km2 of sand and coral. There are no trees, no deer and absolutely no bears. It sucks.)

We should probably cut 2645turquoise some slack on this. Ka Mate’s in alpha; it’s rough, unfinished, full of placeholder assets and bugs. My first playthrough ended with Sean dying of thirst after a straight day of walking to find the edge of the island; my second ended when the Building Menu broke and froze the game. On top of that, Ka Mate also plays identical to Rust, The Forest, and every other wilderness survival sim out there: hunt for food and resources, craft tools, build a base and try and survive until the endgame. It’s totally unremarkable, and it not really giving a fuck about getting the Pacific right is just one part of that.

It is pretty funny to think about what Ka Mate might be in two years time: a spectacle crossing the North and South Islands, a complex ecosystem with farming and villages and an economy, tied together not only by a narrative but by bears. Bears in our national parks, living in harmony with kereru and kiwi. Bears rolling through Franz Josef after hibernating for the winter. A New Zealand just stacked with heaps and heaps of bears.

But, on the other hand, if they’re this blasé about whether bears live in the Pacific – well, let’s back up a bit.

In May last year, Ka Mate got through Greenlight, Steam’s now-defunct initiative that let users vote for the indie games that they wanted to see sold on the Steam store. Back then, 2645turquoise wanted to tell this story in their game: Sean was going to New Zealand to find the place where Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha composed Ka Mate. Ka Mate’s version of this origin story is pretty much a complete bastardisation of the haka’s real history:

At the head of the pit, [Te Rauparaha] saw a warrior leader covered with body hairs waiting for him. But when he gave his freedom instead of killing him, Rauparaha also began to dance with the words of Haka dance, which unchanged day by day, by coming out of the pit. He also vowed to take revenge from those who want to kill him, with this dance. The song ends with the fact that the “haired man”, that is, the enemy, showed mercy, gives the daylight once again and Te Rauparaha reached to the sun by stepping up from the dept of the pit step by step. Te Rauparaha then taught this dance to all the Maori, and before all the conflicts they entered, tribal members began to make Haka to frighten their enemies.

This story, or any story of Ka Mate’s origins, isn’t told in the current build of Ka Mate. But remember the mysterious people that the mysterious man in Hawaii told Sean about?

Yeah, sure, this is an alpha build, it’s still in the early stages of development, all that stuff I just said. Maybe a year down the line, Ka Mate will patch in a story about that haka that’s accurate and well-told and doesn’t turn Māori into a homogenous group of pre-Enlightenment boogeymen. But if you tell everyone your game is set in New Zealand and then it boots up a Pacific island that has bears and no water and an endless horizon of pine forests and rocky rolling hills?

I mean, it’s not exactly promising.

That’s not to say it’s not salvageable. There’s the stuff they already know. Their developer roadmap says they’re aiming for “more impressive and refreshed game mechanics, better sound” and a “better interface”, and they’re actively responding to players who are running into bugs and crashes.

But also, 2645turquoise could reach out to Ngāti Toa, to Māori artists and storytellers and developers, to work in partnership with them and make sure the story that they’re telling doesn’t exploit and monetise those ugly colonial stereotypes about how Māori were primitive and hyperviolent people before the British came along. They could do the research, do the work, talk to people. That’s the absolute least they could do. It might even save them from legal action if they try to use Ka Mate in a later build –

If you do not attribute when required, Ngāti Toa Rangatira may obtain a court declaration stating that you were required to comply with the Haka Ka Mate Attribution Act 2014 and ordering you to comply. If this occurs the court may make an award to Ngāti Toa towards their costs of having to bring the legal proceedings.

Or maybe, if they’re not interested in telling it right, they could just decide not to tell this story, delete it from the roadmap. Because it’s pretty gross to, from the other side of the world, build a game that twists the origins of Ka Mate into spoooooky survival horror. They shouldn’t delete the bears, though. I really love those furry guys.

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