New Zealand music on Te Ara
Posted 19 May 2008 // Helen Rickerby
One of the odder pieces of New Zealand music – the decimal currency song, 1967
May is New Zealand Music Month, when we celebrate the creativity of our singers, songwriters and musicians.
To mark this, NZHistory.net.nz has gathered together Thirty-one reasons to love New Zealand music. If you fancy a spot of live New Zealand music, NZlive.com has listings of all the NZ Music Month events.
We’ll be covering music in our upcoming Creative Life theme, but you can already find a wealth of New Zealand music on Te Ara, such as this sea shanty ‘I’ve traded with the Maoris‘, which is part of Seafarers. Other historic songs include this tale of sealers who were stuck on Open Bay Island for four years before being rescued, and the ‘Song of the digger‘ about kauri gum diggers.
One of the odder songs I’ve found on Te Ara is the delightful decimal currency song, from 1967, which aimed to promote the change from pounds, shillings and pence.
In Te Ara’s Te whānau puha - whales entry, there’s a video of a performance of ‘Ruawharo’. The waiata ‘Ka haramai a Pāoa‘ gives an account of how the Waipāoa River was formed, and internationally know bass Īnia Te Wīata sings a Ngāti Raukawa song, ‘He puru tai tama‘.
It’s essential to include Split Enz, one of New Zealand’s greatest pop bands. More recent music is represented by TrinityRoots and Che Fu.
You’ll be feeling patriotic after listening to all of this New Zealand music, so round it off with ‘The boys of the Southern Cross‘, or our national anthem ‘God defend New Zealand‘.
Another New Zealand composition on Te Ara is an extract from Alfred Hill’s ‘Exhibition Ode’, in the Landscapes entry. This was written for the 1906-07 International Exhibition in Christchurch, but not performed again for a century in a special commemorative concert in 2007.
You can hear a recording of the full concert of works by Alfred Hill on RNZ Concert on Thursday May 29th at 8.00pm
The National Library has a photo stream on their Flickr site in honour of New Zealand Music Month: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationallibrarynz/