Erny Belle performs Stay Golden. Made with funding from NZ On Air.
Video / Locals Only
The artist known as Erny Belle “had no idea” she’d end up making music.
“I never thought it was music, because I wasn’t one of those kids like, ‘I’ve been singing since I was a toddler’, or had this crazy talent of any sort,” Aimee Renata (Ngāpuhi) says.
Speaking aheadof the release of her sophomore album Not Your Cupid on November 10, she recalls that her first love was “filming things and making little videos”.
Real name Aimee Renata, Erny Belle explores themes of home in her music. Photo / Matt Hunter
“It kind of began there before it did with writing and making music.”
It wasn’t until her late teens that she realised she might just have found a purpose for her creativity.
“At the time it was really difficult because I didn’t really have the experience, or it just seemed like such a far-fetched idea, but it was something I had to work on and work really hard for,” the now 29-year-old Renata says.
A journey home from Auckland’s K Road back to her ancestral home of Maungatūroto in Northland helped her figure out that purpose – and led to the creation of her debut album Venus Is Home, released in 2022.
“The whole process just happened to time up with the fact that that was when I was sort of trying to figure out what my purpose is, and what I wanted to do creatively or just in general as a career,” the artist recalls.
The album’s title, also the name of its final track, evolved into a tribute to her beloved nana Venus and to growing up.
“It’s a story that’s set in the town, but by the time that I had finished that song, my nana Venus had passed away.
“And it just kind of all fell together and made sense that the song itself is more about my nana and what she meant to me and her thread to that town.
“So, when I came to that conclusion, that’s when it sort of made sense that the album as a whole is sort of all about that coming back to Maungatūroto.”
Growing up in Auckland, Renata started school with kōhanga reo - but lost the language after moving into the English school system. As an adult, her reo is something she’s yet to reclaim, but music might just help her along that path.
Erny Belle has just released her sophomore album Not Your Cupid. Photo / Finn Bowman
“I haven’t started my journey of relearning te reo, because life is just pretty hectic in the first couple of years of trying to establish myself as an artist,” she explains.
“But I definitely think that the thread of being a musician and taking that life path, it’ll definitely intertwine itself. Whether that might be through meeting other Māori artists and starting the real journey again through music, I definitely think that’s all connected.”
Among those artists, she names Marlon Williams and Pauly Fuemana. “I think that we probably all have similar spirits – that sort of Pacific influence, or Māori music as well.”
Amid the release of her second album, featuring the songs Stay Golden and Pit Stop – performed here for Locals Only – she recalls that the process of making it was “amazing”.
The recording process was a far cry from her first time in the studio, Renata admits.
