Kiwi rock: popular music and cultural identity in New Zealand

Popular Music ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Shuker ◽  
Michael Pickering
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comprehensive History

The New Zealand popular music scene has seen a series of high points in recent years. Published in 1989 were John Dix's labour of love, Stranded in Paradise, a comprehensive history of New Zealand rock'n'roll; an influential report by the Trade Development Board, supportive of the local industry; and the proceedings of a well-supported Music New Zealand Convention held in 1987 (Baysting 1989). In the late 1980s, local bands featured strongly on the charts, with Dave Dobbyn (‘Slice of Heaven’, 1986), Tex Pistol (‘The Game of Love’, 1987) and the Holiday Makers (‘Sweet Lovers’, 1988) all having number one singles. Internationally, Shona Laing (‘Glad I'm Not A Kennedy’, 1987) and Crowded House (‘Don't Dream It's Over’, 1986) broke into the American market, while in Australia many New Zealand performers gathered critical accolades and commercial success.

scholarly journals Inside Out: A Diasporic Narrative

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tania Lewis
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
Inside Out ◽  
Structural Marxism

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Stuart Hall’s writing began to take a biographical turn. For readers such as myself, then a mature undergraduate pursuing an American Studies degree in New Zealand, this was somewhat of a revelation. The surprise was not so much Hall’s shift from the somewhat dry prose of structural Marxism to the rather more vital style of a postcolonially inflected poststructuralism, but the fact of Hall’s Caribbean background when I, along with no doubt many other geographically distant readers, had assumed him to be exworking class, British and white. Some seven years later, while wrestling with a PhD on the history of cultural studies at the University of Melbourne, I found myself writing an essay for Arena using the question of Hall’s diasporic identity to explore ‘the relations between knowledge production and cultural identity/location.

Great-grandfather, please teach me my language!

Multilingua ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tania M. Ka’ai
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Language Loss ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Personal Story ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

AbstractInspired by Joshua Fishman’s lifetime dedication to the revitalisation of minority languages, especially Yiddish, this paper presents my personal story of the loss of the Māori language in my family in New Zealand/Aotearoa and our attempts to reverse this decline over several generations. The paper includes a description of several policy reforms and events in Aotearoa/New Zealand’s history and the impact of colonisation on the Māori language, which, as seen in other colonised peoples around the world, has contributed to the decline of this indigenous language. The paper also presents the mobilisation of Māori families and communities, including my own family, to establish their own strategies and initiatives to arrest further language decline and to reverse language loss in Māori families in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This article, combining story and history, should be read as a historiography of the Māori language, based on the author’s acknowledgement that other indigenous minority communities, globally, and their languages also have experienced the effects of colonisation and language loss. This article, much like a helix model, weaves together a narrative and history of Māori language loss, pain, resilience, and hope and seeks to establish that no language, because it contains the DNA of our cultural identity, should be allowed to die. A table of key landmarks of the history of the Māori language also is included.

scholarly journals The History of the Short Story in New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lydia Joyce Wevers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Postcolonial Discourse

<p>The thesis will be an investigation of the history of the short story in New Zealand, attempting to shift the focus away from a (implicitly hierarchical) sequence of writers who specialised in short stories to a consideration of the ascendancy of type in short fiction at certain times (for example the domination of nineteenth century short fiction by oral narratives and romance); the preoccupations of groups of writers who share a collective identity (especially Maori and women); and the recurrence of some kinds of narratives (for example Pakeha writers writing about the Maori). I propose to explore both the construction of 'reality' and 'New Zealand' in the short story, demonstrating how race, gender, and sometimes class/wealth figure in that construction, and generally suggest that the short story's dominance in New zealand's fiction makes it both a significant medium for cultural identity, and a context for a postcolonial discourse characterized by recurring questions about origin and subjectivity.</p>

scholarly journals Documentary shooting and samba

2020 ◽  
pp. 48-66
Author(s):  
Albert Elduque
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Technical Approach ◽  
Brazilian Music ◽  
Young Professional ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
Cultural Mediators ◽  
History Of ◽  
Professional Singer

This article addresses the film Partido alto (Leon Hirszman, 1976­–1982), a Brazilian music documentary that showcases two sessions of partido-alto, a traditional, improvisation-based genre. The film highlights a separation between the diegetic music world, which is based on improvisation, and the technical approach to register it. First, it foregrounds the process of recording popular music through the noticeable presence of a microphone that strives to follow each singer’s unpredictable interventions. Then, the young professional singer Paulinho da Viola joins in on the performance with nonprofessional singers, working as a mediator between the official music scene and popular traditions. I suggest that, by using cameras and microphones to approximate a popular, nonrecorded form of art, the film raises some crucial issues in the history of samba. In particular, the ways in which cinematic techniques such as the sequence shot and voiceover are employed in the film allows us to reflect on the dichotomy between improvisation and recording, as well as the role of cultural mediators. Paulinho da Viola lies at the centre of these strategies, for he assumes an expert commentator and interviewer role, while also being a participant in the popular community.

scholarly journals The History of the Short Story in New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lydia Joyce Wevers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Postcolonial Discourse

<p>The thesis will be an investigation of the history of the short story in New Zealand, attempting to shift the focus away from a (implicitly hierarchical) sequence of writers who specialised in short stories to a consideration of the ascendancy of type in short fiction at certain times (for example the domination of nineteenth century short fiction by oral narratives and romance); the preoccupations of groups of writers who share a collective identity (especially Maori and women); and the recurrence of some kinds of narratives (for example Pakeha writers writing about the Maori). I propose to explore both the construction of 'reality' and 'New Zealand' in the short story, demonstrating how race, gender, and sometimes class/wealth figure in that construction, and generally suggest that the short story's dominance in New zealand's fiction makes it both a significant medium for cultural identity, and a context for a postcolonial discourse characterized by recurring questions about origin and subjectivity.</p>

New Zealand popular music, government policy, and cultural identity

Popular Music ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Shuker
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Success Story ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
Popular Music Industry

AbstractThe New Zealand popular music industry has recently undergone impressive growth, and is poised to make a significant international impact. Two aspects of this newly privileged position are examined. First, broadly sketching twenty years of developments, I argue that Government willingness to get behind the local industry, especially the role of the post-2000 Labour Government, is a crucial determinant of the present success story. Secondly, I consider the debated relationship between local music and New Zealand cultural identity, with particular reference to two prominent musical styles: Kiwi ‘garage’ rock, and Polynesian-dominated local rap, reggae and hip-hop-inflected music. I argue that the local must not be overly valorised, and that it is necessary to distinguish between ‘local music’ as a cultural signifier and locally made music, with both worthy of support.

Not our ‘Dunedin sound’: Responses to the historicisation of Dunedin popular music

Popular Music ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-207
Author(s):  
Oli Wilson ◽  
Michael Holland
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Musical Identity ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
The City ◽  
Indie Music ◽  
Musical Heritage ◽  
Power And Influence

AbstractThe music that was produced in Dunedin, New Zealand, during the 1980's occupies a unique place in the global indie music canon. In writing about this supposed ‘Dunedin sound,' critics and scholars alike have fixated on the city's remoteness: it is believed to be distant from metropolitan centres of music industry power and influence, and consequently supported a subversive and democratised local music scene. This article explores the implications of the ongoing historicisation of Dunedin's popular music scene along these lines, and highlights the ways in which the valorisation of the city’s musical heritage obstructs problematic power dynamics that impact the way young musicians in the city express place and musical identity. Our research applies an embedded participatory ethnography to unpack the ideological positions occupied by contemporary local musicians, and to critique factions within the contemporary musical scene in the city.

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