When Aaradhna – the self-described “Indian and Samoan New Zealander” – released her 2016 Brown Girl album, on the title track she sang, “I’m more than the colour of my skin … I’m more than urban, R&B”, a barbed comment about those who consign Māori and Pacific artists to convenient and often-marginalising categories.
When she won best urban/hip-hop album at that year’s music awards – as well as best female solo artist – it showed someone hadn’t been listening. She refused the award and passed it to Onehunga’s hip-hop group SWIDT.
“I’m a singer. I’m not a rapper, I’m not a hip-hop artist,” she said. “It feels like I’ve been placed in a category for brown people.”
The multicultural group Nesian Mystik, Theia, Tommy Nee – of Niuean heritage, like Tigi Ness, Che Fu and the Fuemana families – Teeks, Seth Haapu and many others also stand apart from that category.
Since 2011, Whanganui’s Haapu (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Atihaunui a Pāpārangi) has released three EPs and a self-titled album, winning a following for his sophisticated singer-songwriter/spiritual soul.
His 2018 piano ballad New Wave (also appearing in te reo Māori, Ngaru Hōu) won him Kaitito Waiata Māori Autaia (best Māori songwriter) at the Waiata Māori Music Awards. His collaboration on Waitī Waitā with Maisey Rika (from her Matariki-inspired album Ngā Mata o te Ariki Tāwhirimātea) was nominated for the 2021 Apra Silver Scroll (songwriting) award.
A producer and collaborator who has worked with Stan Walker, Sons of Zion and others, Haapu is a serious contender and his new album is the bilingual Whai Ora, co-produced with Kody Nielson (Unknown Mortal Orchestra).
It connects with an exploration of his family’s Tahitian origins in gentle, seductive pop-framed songs – titles include Tropical, Night Sky (written with Teeks), Natural High, Return to Paradise – that are steeped in an evocation of a prelapsarian Pacific.
The title track drifts on polished keyboards and a slightly funky bass, Tropical is catchy soul-pop, and the acoustic ballad Rongoā refers to traditional Māori healing: “When nations have fallen/and rivers run dry/when without warning continents collide./You lift me up/you pray for me. My remedy.”
Whai Ora is cultural and consciousness soul music, spiritual healing, stylish pop and – on the balmy affirmation of Natural High – a tropical escape in the middle of winter.
What it’s not is urban/R&B as that category has been defined.
Whai Ora is available digitally on July 14.
