NZ Music de-naissance

Simon Grigg predicted it (or rather, observed it long before anyone else noticed), but the much-touted ‘renaissance’ in NZ music seems to be unravelling.

A fairly unscientific browse through the top 40 singles charts reveals a steady decline in local music’s representation over the past couple of years: from a quarter of the list this time in 2005 (most of it in the top 20), to barely 10% of the chart — and all it below the number 25 mark — two years later.

There are all sorts of things we could attribute the decline to. I have a couple of theories of my own, and at the risk of causing a flame war (so much is at stake for so many here), I’ll give you an indication as to what those might be.

First, it’s not as if it’s not getting airplay. Perhaps not quite as much, but still, historically speaking, a lot. There’s even a whole nationwide radio station entirely given over to the music of NZ. I still have fundamental issues with Kiwi FM as a concept, but they make up for a great deal of that in the execution and the passion.

And it’s not as if it’s not any good. Technical production is no longer the “issue” it was 20 years ago, and the songwriting and playing is easily as good as the (predominantly) American popular music so much of it is modelled on.

Perhaps that’s the problem. When we were finally allowed to hear decent quantities of NZ music, we embraced it. These were our songs and our stories. But after a time, I think we started to notice that our songs sounded quite a lot like those of other people.

Identity and ‘New Zealand-ness’ in music is such an elusive and contestable quality, that even raising the idea that you may favour it over more obviously derivative musics is problematic to say the least. After all, what music isn’t?

But I think it’s something that needs to be looked at more closely. I really think that we respond to something that carries that flavour — the sound of our collective experience, and an honest musical response to the geographic, political, musicological, cultural and social environment — and now that the novelty of hearing ourselves on the radio and watching ourselves on TV (in some sort of culturally diluted form) has dissipated , we can now move on to more concentrated doses.

This is not a call for NZ On Air to have some sort of authenticity-o-meter installed, but a challenge for the popular songwriter and producer to consider the local and export benefits of such a move. Here in the UK, what interests people about NZ music is not the extent to which it mimics American & British global cultural output, but the extent to which it doesn’t.

And I think you’re starting to see that appreciation grow at home too. I think the record industry, buoyed somewhat by a brief period of local chart action, could see real economic benefits from a greater degree of contextual awareness.

That said… if only the West Midlands could have some of the same problems. We still think we’re enjoying local success when a Birmingham band (say… The Twang) get relocated to London and are absorbed into the mainstream.