Traditional music and dance
Traditional New Zealand music is inextricably linked with Māori music. Since pre-colonial times, songs(waiata) have been performed solo or in unison, based on repeated melodic lines. A common vocal form is the karanga, a call-and-response song usually taking place at the start of a welcome ceremony and almost exclusively performed by women, in the Māori language.
Another very important part of Māori music is performances on the set of instruments called taonga pūoro. Specific to New Zealand, this collection of musical objects includes the koauau and nguru, flutes carved from wood or bone, or the pūtōrino, another flute with a feminine, mineral sound.
From the mid-twentieth century onwards, Māori singers and composers such as Howard Morrison (1935-2009), Prince Tui Teka (1937-1985), Dalvanius Prime (1948-2002) and above all Moana Maniapoto, whose work has an important traditional core, developed in their music a singular style shot through with Māori culture. Modern artists such as the celebrated Hinewehi Mohi, or more recently Tiki Taane, Maisey Rika and Taisha Tari, have also brought the use of traditional instruments back to the fore. And let's not forget to mention Hirini Melbourne (1949-2003), who remains one of the greatest ambassadors of Māori music. Whether in his use of taonga pūoro instruments or in his waiata, the artist preserved national traditions intact.
In the 1980s and 1990s, traditional music began to blend regularly with Western styles, and we even saw the emergence of groups like Herbs, at the origin of a Māori style of reggae.
As part of a campaign to revive Māori music and culture in the early 20th century, Āpirana Ngata (historically one of the country's most important political figures) invented the "action song"(waiata-a-ringa) in which stylized body movements, all carrying meaning, synchronize with the song. Before the arrival of the colonists, the lyrics were traditionally chanted. But the Europeans brought with them the "singing style" of their music. The Māori adopted this approach, which is why some waiata-a-ringa have a distinctly European melody - while remaining Māori in essence.
Apart from the latter, there's a large family of Māori dances in New Zealand whose name the whole world knows: the haka. Although the term haka, which means "dance", was popularized by the national rugby team (the famous All Blacks), who have been performing it before every match since 1905, it actually refers to a whole variety of traditional dances practiced by the Māori on the occasion of ceremonies or festivals. All performed collectively, mostly involving vigorous movements and shouted rhythms, these different types of haka include war dances such as the whakatūwaewae and the tūtū ngārahu - the first is skipped, not the other - the ngeri, whose purpose was to motivate a warrior before battle, or themanawa wera haka, associated with funerals. Like the one you might see before a rugby match, a haka performance may involve facial contortions, showing the whites of the eyes or sticking out the tongue, while performing very vigorous gestures such as clapping hands against the body and stamping feet. All limbs, voice, eyes and tongue combine to express courage, strength or joy.
The group of people performing a haka is called a kapa haka(kapa meaning "group"). By extension, the name refers to the group's performance of Māori song and dance, an important way for Māori to express and highlight their heritage and cultural identity. Not all types of Māori performance are used by the kapa haka. Apart from the haka mentioned above, the kapa haka can perform the poi, a feminine dance accompanied by singing and the rhythmic movements of a ball attached to the wrists by a cord, the tītītōrea, a dance deriving its name from pairs of fine carved sticks to be manipulated in synchronization with the music, and songs such as the waiata tira, choral warm-up pieces used as the group's presentation to the audience. These include the aforementioned waiata-ā-ringa and waiata koroua, teaching songs for new generations, as well as mōteatea, unison songs performed in a style reminiscent of pre-colonial Māori practices.
Every two years, kapa haka performers from all over New Zealand take part in Te Matatini, a festival of Māori arts and culture with haka competitions, founded in 1964 with the aim of encouraging the development of Māori cultural practices.
Classical music
Given the country's young age, no classical music tradition - in the Western sense of the word - has really developed here. That said, there are a few notable figures to mention. Starting with Alfred Hill (1869-1960), a composer who helped import the Romantic aesthetic to New Zealand. Trained in Europe at the Leipzig Conservatory, he introduced Māori themes into Western composition, thus becoming the first to compose music bearing the national identity. Author of over five hundred compositions, including thirteen symphonies, eight operas, numerous concertos and two cantatas on Māori subjects, Alfred Hill was long shunned by the public before regaining interest in the 21st century.
Apart from Alfred Hill, New Zealand's own classical style did not really emerge until the 1960s. Douglas Lilburn (1915-2001), trained at London's Royal College of Music and heavily influenced by Jean Sibelius, is often considered one of the first truly New Zealand voices to achieve international recognition.
Influenced by jazz - especially the improvisational feel - the repetition of minimalism, and working primarily in the field of contemporary classical music, John Psathas is New Zealand's most internationally-performed composer. Less well known but equally - if not more - prolific, Anthony Ritchie has composed over two hundred works, including five symphonies, six operas, twelve concertos and compositions for instruments. He has produced works for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra and Michael Houstoun, the great New Zealand pianist with an international reputation for his expertise in Beethoven sonatas.
As for performers, the country has also produced a number of outstanding operatic talents, including Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, New Zealand's most illustrious singer. Indeed, she is one of the country's best-known figures. Of Māori origin, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa saw her career take off at Covent Garden in 1971, in the role of the Countess in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. She quickly moved on to the world's most prestigious stages, including New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1974, as Desdemona in Verdi's Otello . But it was in 1981 that she was crowned with worldwide acclaim, when 600 million television viewers heard her sing a Handel ballad at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. A grande dame of the operatic world who announced the definitive end of her career in 2017.
Less well-known, but just as talented, are Sir Donald McIntyre, a bass-baritone who has enchanted the stages of Covent Garden, Bayreuth and La Scala; tenor Simon O'Neill, who has also worked with the greatest (Barenboim, Nagano, Levine, Muti, Petrenko..) on the most prestigious stages (New York's Met, La Scala, Berlin's Staatsoper and Deutsche Oper, Vienna's Staatsoper, Munich's Bayerische Staatsoper, London's Royal Opera House, Bayreuth...) as well as, long before them, Frances Alda, the great soprano of the first three decades of the 20th century, with admirable technique and a colorful personality. She is particularly remembered for her frequent collaborations with Enrico Caruso at New York's Metropolitan Opera.
Finally, on the orchestral side, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO) is the country's national ensemble. Founded in 1946 and based in Wellington, it is an autonomous public entity under government control. The first conductor to hold the title of "Music Director" of the NZSO was James Judd between 1999 and 2007 - he remains the orchestra's Music Director Emeritus today - but the ensemble has been led since 2022 by conductor Gemma New, appointed Artistic Director, the first woman to hold this position here. Although little-known outside its borders, the NZSO has made a number of critically acclaimed recordings, notably of Sibelius works on the Naxos Records label.
Popular music
As mentioned above, Māori composers and singers have become very popular with the public, developing a particular style and marking the revival of the Māori language through popular song, whose leading figures include Howard Morrison, Prince Tui Teka, Dalvanius Prime, Moana Maniapoto and Hinewehi Mohi, among others.
That said, the quintessential New Zealand pop singer is Bic Runga. A native of Christchurch, Briolette Kah Bic Runga is considered one of her country's finest voices. Her debut album, Drive, released in 1998, was an instant hit in New Zealand, before spreading throughout the Commonwealth. Numerous albums followed, most of them with great commercial success. In January 2006, she was awarded the medal of the National Order of Merit by the Queen, and performs regularly around the world.
But of course, today's world-famous queen of New Zealand pop is Lorde. Born Ella Yelich-O'Connor in 1996 in the suburbs of Auckland, New Zealand, Lorde developed a passion for literature and music at an early age. She naturally developed a precocious talent and signed to the Universal label at just 13! Lorde soon broke records with her hit Royals and established the inimitable pop style she is known for today.
Contemporary music
The importance and value of local production was officially recognized and supported in 2000 with the creation of the official New Zealand Music Industry Commission, a government-funded agency committed to the development of New Zealand's music industry, both nationally and internationally. This success is reflected in the development of national radio stations: whereas in the 1990s, only 2% of radio programming was New Zealand, today more than 20% of the music played on the airwaves is local. And this policy also explains why, despite the great popularity of foreign hits, the local record industry is not left behind.
That said, the big local export hits began earlier. Rock & roll made its debut in the mid-1950s, notably with the success of pioneer Johnny Tahu Cooper (1929-2014), known as The Māori Cowboy, and his cover of Bill Haley & His Comets' Rock Around the Clock. His 1955 single Pie Cart Rock 'n' Roll was the first original rock song recorded in New Zealand. But it wasn't until the 1980s that New Zealand rock began to have an influence on the creations of rockers the world over, such as Sonic Youth and Pavement. With its dissonant, soaring, even psychedelic guitars and lo-fi, hand-crafted productions, the Dunedin Sound wave and its aesthetic, a cousin of punk-rock, had a profound impact on local creation. Led by Dunedin-born (hence the name) bands such as The Clean, Sneaky Feelings and The Chills, this whole scene gravitated around Flying Nun Records, an independent label founded in 1981 and now an emblem of New Zealand music. In fact, the legacy of this movement and label is so heavy and imposing that many of the latest generation of rockers have vigorously distanced themselves from it. Among them are The Datsuns, a mix of garage, punk and hard rock that has been active since 2000, the guitar-less noise-rock trio Wax Chattels, the cool punks of Salad Boys and the big indie hit Gin Wigmore.
Outside of rock, New Zealand boasts a dynamic, heterogeneous music scene, with flagship bands such as Fat Freddy's Drop and their great mishmash of dub, reggae, soul, jazz, R&B and electronica, Ladyhawke and her electrorock, often compared to Canadian singer Peaches, The Naked and Famous, who play a great deal of indie pop, and Benee and Kimbra, two of today's top pop stars.
Two of New Zealand's best-known musicians are so... thanks to a series. The duo Flight of the Conchords, made up of Jemaine Clement and Bret Mackenzie, are enjoying international success thanks to their eponymous HBO series, which tells the not-so-fictional story of a duo of Kiwi musicians who try their luck in New York.... A series that's as much about music as it is about humor.
Hip-hop is, of course, omnipresent in New Zealand. The first single released by a local artist was Upper Hutt Posse's E Tu in 1988, a now-legendary track recounting the history of the Māori resistance movement. After him, a number of pioneers - Savage, Scribe and Home Brew being the best-known - defined an identity of their own for New Zealand hip-hop, attracting worldwide attention.
While today's most influential rappers - many of whom have gone on to international careers - are Savage, King Kapisi and Mazbou Q, a whole new generation of young rappers is changing the face of New Zealand hip-hop. For example, Auckland rapper MEER, who is of Lebanese, Iraqi and Palestinian descent (as you can hear in her Middle Eastern-influenced productions), is campaigning for greater inclusivity, particularly with regard to the LGBTQ community. Raiza Biza, who lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and South Africa before settling in New Zealand, has become a spokesperson for the local African diaspora. Auckland duo Church & AP offer something akin to Chance The Rapper. KVKA (pronounced "cou-ka ") stands out for its "aggressive, passionate and honest" style, and its dazzling live performances; or Avantdale Bowling Club, free, conscious and committed hip-hop, highly experimental and interesting.
Like Australia, New Zealand also boasts an extensive, high-quality Americana country scene. Close to folk and soul, it is notably represented by Tami Neilson, now Canadian by adoption and influenced by the golden age of the 1950s and 1960s - Patsy Cline, Wanda Jackson, Etta James, etc. Other representatives of the genre: Kendall Elise, very folk, Jenny Mitchell, pure country, Adam Hattaway and The Haunters, more soulful, or Erny Belle, who offers a Māori perspective to the genre.
New Zealand's finest events include Wellington's Gardens Magic Festival, a week-long event at the end of January combining concerts and light shows, and Queenstown's Winter Festival, which offers ten days of festivities and concerts. There's also The Others Way festival, packed with surprises and discoveries from all over the world.
