Music of New Zealand

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The music of New Zealand has been influenced by a number of traditions, including Māori music, the music introduced by European settlers during the nineteenth century, and a variety of styles imported during the twentieth century, including

New Zealand has a national orchestra, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and many regional orchestras. A number of New Zealand composers have developed international reputations. The best-known include Douglas Lilburn,^[7] John Psathas,^[8] Jack Body,^[9] Gillian Whitehead,^[10] Jenny McLeod,^[11] Gareth Farr,^[12] and Ross Harris.^[13]

Pre-Colonial Māori produced a range of music. This included song waiata . The haka is a form of song that is accompanied with movement.^[14] Songs included lullabies, laments and love songs, and as an oral culture were used for education, to remember history and many other things.^[14]

The emotionally charged circumstances under which waiata were composed are reflected in their highly poetic language, which is rich with allusion, metaphor and imagery. (Rawinia Higgins and Arini Loader 2014)^[14]

Songs and music were part of Te Whare Tapere, pre-European Māori entertainment events that included 'storytelling, songs and singing, dance and dancing, musical instruments, puppets' and games.^[14]

Some Māori song includes

Pre-Colonial instrumental music used

European settlers brought new harmonies and instruments, which Māori composers gradually adopted. The action song (waiata-ā-ringa) largely developed in the early 20th century.^{[20][need quotation to verify]} Māori also gravitated towards Hawaiian music from artists like Ernest Kaʻai and David Lucla Kaili that toured New Zealand in the 1900s to 1920s, leading the adoption of steel guitars pioneered by Eruera Mati Hita.^[21]

In the mid- to late-20th century, Māori singers and songwriters like

Despite the vitality of New Zealand bands in the pub scene, for many years commercial radio was reluctant to play locally produced material and by 1995 only 1.6% of all songs played on commercial radio stations were of New Zealand origin.[27] In 1997 a government Kiwi Music Action Group was formed to compel radio stations to broadcast New Zealand music. The group initiated New Zealand Music Week and in 2000 this grew into New Zealand Music Month. By 2005 New Zealand content averaged between 19 and 20 percent.^[28]

New Zealand's first pop song was "Blue Smoke", written in the 1940s by Ruru Karaitiana.^[29] Pixie Williams recorded the song in 1949 and, although it went triple platinum in New Zealand, the award for selling 50,000 copies of the song was only presented to Pixie Williams on 13 July 2011.^[30] The advent of music television shows in the 1960s^[31] led to the rise of Sandy Edmonds, one of New Zealand's first pop stars.^[32]

Formed in the early 1970s and variously featuring

After the dissolution of his band DD Smash, singer-songwriter Dave Dobbyn began a successful solo career, writing the soundtrack music for the animated feature film Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tale in 1986. The film yielded two hit singles: "You Oughta Be In Love" (1986) and the chart-topping "Slice of Heaven" (1986), recorded with the band Herbs. After the release of the film, "Slice of Heaven" became one of Dobbyn's best-known songs, frequently used in tourism advertisements aired on Australian television that encouraged people to visit New Zealand. With the success of the song in Australia, Dobbyn settled in Australia.

Dobbyn's hit song "Loyal" (1988) from his debut solo album Loyal (1988) was used as an anthem for Team New Zealand's unsuccessful 2003 America's Cup defence.

In 2005, Dobbyn released his sixth solo album,

Don McGlashan

Composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist Don McGlashan won fame with bands Blam Blam Blam, The Front Lawn, and The Mutton Birds, before pursuing a solo career. McGlashan's first hits were with band Blam Blam Blam in the early 1980s. He later released four albums as lead singer and writer for The Mutton Birds. McGlashan's first solo album Warm Hand, was released in May 2006. It was nominated for an NZ Music Award for album of the year, and debut single Miracle Sun was a nominee for New Zealand's supreme songwriting award, the APRA Silver Scroll. He has composed extensively for cinema and television.

Bic Runga

Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist pop artist

New Zealand Top 40 Album charts. Runga has since become one of the highest-selling New Zealand artists in recent history. She has also found success internationally in Australia, Ireland, and, to some extent, in the UK. In the 2006 New Year Honours Runga was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to music.^[43]

Lorde

In September 2013, 16-year-old singer

In 2020, New Zealand singer Benee's single Supalonely went viral on video sharing app TikTok. It subsequently went to chart in the Top 40 of many major music markets, including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

The first

By the late 1970s, some New Zealand rock bands were finding national success, including Th' Dudes (whose guitarist Dave Dobbyn formed DD Smash in the 1980s), Dragon, Hello Sailor and Split Enz, fronted by Tim Finn, and later, his brother Neil Finn, who went on to form Crowded House. Independent music in New Zealand began emerging in the latter half of the 1970s, with the development of a punk rock scene.^[49] In 1979, the AK79 compilation was released, compiling the recordings of many early Auckland punk groups.

Several independent labels like

Rock band Shihad was formed by vocalist/guitarist Jon Toogood and drummer Tom Larkin in 1988. The band found wide popularity in New Zealand over the following decade, playing a mixture of modern rock, post-grunge and pop-rock. Shihad has had three number one albums in New Zealand.^[51]

Other notable rock bands popular in the 1990s include the Headless Chickens, The Mutton Birds, The Exponents, The Feelers, Supergroove and Push Push.^[52]

The first major New Zealand hip hop hit was "Hip Hop Holiday" by

The first entire album of locally produced hip hop was Upper Hutt Posse's E Tu EP, from 1988. E Tu was partially in Māori and partially in English, and its lyrics were politically charged. The song "E Tu" combined African-American revolutionary rhetoric with an explicitly Māori frame of reference. It paid homage to the rebel Māori warrior chiefs of New Zealand's colonial history: Hōne Heke, Te Kooti, and Te Rauparaha.^[55]

In the 1990s, the New Zealand hip hop scene grew with the evolution of

In 2005, Savage, a New Zealand Samoan hip hop artist, had back-to-back number one hits with Swing and Moonshine, the latter featuring US artist Akon. Swing was used in the 2007 film Knocked Up and sold more than 1.8 million copies in the United States, making it almost double platinum.^[57] The song also appeared on the US compilation Now That's What I Call Music! 29.

Formed in 1979,

Electronic music in New Zealand constitutes a relatively small but growing trend in the country's musical culture especially with the rise of acts such as Concord Dawn, Minuit and Shapeshifter in the last 15 years.^[61]

An early example of New Zealand electronica is a track called Pulsing released in 1982 by The Body Electric.

The 2015 New Zealand comedy horror film Deathgasm soundtrack gave rise to various metal groups.^{[citation needed]}

Shepherds Reign is a Polynesian band that play mostly heavy metal music.^[65] They released their album Ala Mai in 2023. The majority of the songs are sung in Samoan.^[66]

The history of blues in New Zealand dates from the 1960s. The earliest blues influences on New Zealand musicians originated with white British blues musicians like The Animals and The Rolling Stones, and later the blues-tinged rock of groups such as Led Zeppelin. The first American blues artist to make a big impact in New Zealand was Stevie Ray Vaughan in the early 1980s. Other blues-related genres such as soul and gospel almost completely by-passed New Zealand audiences, except for a handful of hits from cross-over artists such as Ray Charles. New Zealand does not have its own distinctive blues style.^{[citation needed]}

The Wellerman sea shanty originated in New Zealand.^{[citation needed]}

New Zealand has a proud history of brass bands, with regular provincial contests.^[67][68] The earliest bands were garrison or religious bands but the late 19th century and early 20th century saw the growth of community brass bands, along with the construction of bandstands.^[69]

Pipe bands became widespread during the early 20th century.^[5] New Zealand is said to have more pipebands per person than Scotland;^[70] historical links are maintained by Caledonian Societies throughout the country.

The formal traditions of

Douglas Lilburn, working predominantly in the third quarter of the 20th century, is often credited with being the first composer to compose with a truly New Zealand voice and gain international recognition. Lilburn's Second Piano Sonatina was described as "a work which seems to draw on the best of Lilburn's past...specially suited to New Zealand."^[72] He went on to pioneer electronic music in New Zealand.

In 2004, Wellington composer John Psathas achieved the largest audience for New Zealand-composed music when his fanfares and other music were heard by billions during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics.

In 2019

There are two twelve-month Composer-in-Residence positions available in New Zealand, the Mozart Fellowship at the University of Otago and the NZSM Composer in Residence in Wellington.

The

The New Zealand String Quartet and the NZTrio both perform locally and internationally. The NZTrio specialises in contemporary art music.

New Zealand has a strong choral tradition.

Opera has been produced in New Zealand since colonisation. New Zealand has produced a number of internationally famous opera singers, including Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Sir Donald McIntyre, Simon O'Neill, Jonathan Lemalu, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Anna Leese, and Dame Malvina Major. Frances Alda and Joan Hammond were both well-known New Zealand-born opera singers.

There is a biennial competition the Lexus Song Quest, winners include Dame Malvina Major, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Phillip Rhodes, Jonathan Lemalu and Amitai Pati.^[75]

New Zealand Opera is the country's sole professional opera company. The company stages up to three operas a year in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and features international as well as New Zealand soloists.

Prominent New Zealand musicians performing internationally include pianists Michael Houstoun, Jeffrey Grice, John Chen, and singer Hayley Westenra.

The most well-known musical theatre production written by a New Zealander is the

• AudioCulture, a New Zealand On Air funded online project billed as the "Noisy Library of New Zealand Music"
• New Zealand music festivals
• New Zealand Music Awards
• Nature's Best, a two-disc compilation album of thirty New Zealand popular music songs
• List of bands from New Zealand
• List of Māori composers
• Performing arts in New Zealand