Music > New Zealand Music

Very little has been published about a music that played a significant role in New Zealand community life throughout the 20th century. Beginning with a perceptive look at the early forays into the world of jazz in Australia and New Zealand, Jazz Aotearoa is the first step in documenting the history and great moments of improvised music in this land. Jazz in all its variety and splendour is here: classic performers like Mike Nock and Allan Broadbent; world-class events such as the Tauranga Jazz Festival; live wire venues like Wel... read more

Gray Bartlett, musical entrepreneur has spent his life in the entertainment industry. A hugely successful Country Music guitarist who has played the Grand Old Opry, he's known and worked with all the stars on the local scene since the late 60s. In 2005 he put together the Highway of legends Tour as a swansong for his old mates - and it went on to become the most successful music tour in NZ history, with sell out performances throughout the country. So popular he's organised another for 2006 - and Di Haworth, who toured with them in... read more

MAKING MUSIC IN NEW ZEALAND examines the reality of being a local musician. It collects together comments by popular musicians from various fields of music - from rock to electronica to hip hop - along with quotes from other major players in the industry. It covers: getting started; songwriting; practising and playing live; touring; promotion; recording; the industry; and surviving as a musician. The text is complemented by a stunning range of black-and-white photographs. The result is a book that gives an engaging insight into the... read more

Whether they played to 80,000 in a stadium or festival, or for a few dozen people in a pub, the world's greatest musical performers have helped change forever our concept of live entertainment. This beautifully-crafted book brings together the best-ever collection of photographs and stories from New Zealand concerts over the past half century, from the legendary Johnny Cash in 1959 to today's high-tech extravaganzas. Almost 600 photographs, many of them rare and previously unpublished, show how we sang, screamed and danced to acts ... read more

Winner of the Lifestyle & Contemporary Culture Award, 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Gareth Shute talks to the big names in this book about the history of hip hop, of what has become one of the biggest and most popular cultural movements in modern New Zealand. The first book to examine New Zealand’s hip hop scene, Hip Hop Music in Aotearoa looks at the music’s evolution, from its early roots with Upper Hutt Posse, through to MC OJ ... read more

Be Mine Tonight, Outlook for Thursday, Loyal, Whaling, Slice of Heaven, Welcome Home - these are only some of the remarkable songs that have framed Dave Dobbyn's long career and made him one of New Zealand's most enduring and best-loved musicians. While generations of New Zealanders have grown up with his music, his songs have never been collected together and published in written form before. Produced to coincide with his new album of greatest hits (to be released in November by Sony Music), Dave Dobbyn: The Songbook will contain ... read more

Shortlistd for the 2004 Montana NZ Book Awards Lifestyle and Contemporary Culture section Ready to Fly is a survey and celebration of 50 years of New Zealand popular music. Fifty years of kiwi musicians blamming out the beat - rock 'n' roll, pop, mod, country, folk, heavy metal, soul, punk, new wave, garage, funk, hip hop, techno - that rocks the nation. From wild Kiwi garage to deep in the Pacific of bass, from C'mon to slice of heaven, this is the story of our sound, told from its beginnings with the likes of the shirt-ripping J... read more

To rattle off the hits of Neil and Tim Finn reads like a checklist of recent pop history. And to think it all began in sleepy rural Te Awamutu - a town whose name had a 'truly sacred ring', as Neil would famously recount - where Brian Timothy Finn fell in love with the Beatles, an obsession that would also work its way straight into his younger brother Neil's DNA.Success for the brothers was a long time coming it took several turbulent years in Split Enz - an art-pop band Neil would join in 1977, despite Tim's reservations - before... read more

It's another Saturday night in 1950s Auckland. Downtown, nightclubs are banning the jive because the exuberant couples disturb the cautious fox-trotters. Over in Freeman's Bay, the Maori Community centre is the 'jazziest, jumpingest place in the city' where sweaty men in zoot suits feed on Maori bread and huge tubs of potatoes. In Blue Smoke, Chris Bourke recovers the lost dawn of New Zealand popular music in the 20th Century. Bourke brings to life the musical worlds of New Zealanders at home (buying sheet music from Beggs, listeni... read more

Music-lovers love lists, and this Top 100 from Radio New Zealand's highly respected music guru Nick Bollinger will not disappoint. As his legions of fans know, Bollinger's taste is eclectic: he's as likely to give space to the Axemen as to Bic Runga. His choices come accompanied by some of the most entertaining writing about music and musicians you're ever likely to read.

'You hold in your hands a book crammed with blind prejudices, foggy memories, rash declarations, unsubstantiated assertions and, quite probably, lies.' So begins Soundtrack, Grant Smithies' marvellously passionate, insightful, hilarious and always entertaining paean to New Zealand music. Smithies has written about 118 albums that he personally loves, music that he believes rises above the background noise to say something significant about the musicians who made it, and the place and time from which they came. It is a highly subjec... read more

The original book, published in 1988, immediately became a classic. It was the first proper history of New Zealand rock and roll, told as a series of inter-linking, anecdotal stories. To buy an original on Amazon.com now costs at least $US150.00. The year 2005 marks the 50th anniversary of the first proper rock and roll recording made in New Zealand, a seminal moment immortalised in the book. Now the author has gone back to the original manuscript and revised it with the benefit of hindsight

Dop May 2009, Wellington 100pp and 2 cds hardcover This strictly limited deluxe set of 'The Great New Zealand Songbook' includes a 100-page journal of handwritten lyrics, photos and memorabilia, contributed by the artists themselves -- the coolest Kiwi music coffee table book ever, and the music that goes with it! After attending the Split Enz Vector Arena concert in March 2008, Murray Thom (the creator behind this unique project), turned to his son and said that they had just heard the "The Great New Zealand Songbook". That was t... read more

The highly talented Gareth Shute ( Hip Hop in Aotearoa, Making Music in NZ, Insights) returns with what will be a seminal book on the history of guitar music in this country. The book begins in 1987 at the point where Crowded House's track 'Don't Dream it's Over' had just reached the top of the singles charts in the United States. It traces the history of guitar music in NZ from this time until the present, showing how local bands have tried to follow this example or have sought different routes to success - either locally or internationally.