NEW URBAN POLYNESIAN
by Fuemana
When the Polynesian artists of South Auckland arrived back in their home town at the end of an unprecedented national tour 30 years ago, the prime mover, Phil Fuemana, was in an ebullient mood. The milestone album Proud: An Urban Pacific Streetsoul Compilation had sprung Sisters Underground’s hit In the Neighbourhood and people were discovering this new sound from an unexpected source.
But Fuemana looked to the future.
“These young people have blossomed on the tour,” he told me. “We just need to get more videos on television to show the talent and colour out there. Everyone knows the brown boys and girls have these great voices but our music scene currently doesn’t reflect that.
“Some of it’s our own fault, some of us spend too much time in nightclubs singing the usual old stuff. Proud has proven there’s another way.”
The album New Urban Polynesian later that year appeared under the name Fuemana because it was a family affair: multi-instrumentalist Phil, his sister Christina and brothers Tony and Pauly, the latter rapping a little on Cool Calm and soon finding international fame as OMC with How Bizarre.
Guest vocalists were Sina Saipaia (featured on How Bizarre), Matty J and Carly Binding who would make her name with TrueBliss.
Pauly’s subsequent How Bizarre single and album owed very little to the Fuemana album because New Urban Polynesian was a uniquely Pasifika take on soul. It’s a production located closer to early Strawpeople’s trip-hop than Proud’s rap and hip-hop.
The Fuemana album delivered soul-pop on the sophisticated ballad Seasons, shuffling hip-hop repurposed for Roberta Flack/Donny Hathaway’s The Closer I Get to You, a distinctive punching up of Stevie Wonder’s Rocket Love, their smart street-soul groove on Deep of the Night and the dancefloor pleaser Fa A Samoa.
New Urban Polynesian – now remastered onto vinyl – didn’t sell much at the time. But Phil Fuemana – who died in 2005 aged 41 – saw his vision of young Polynesian artists on the frontline realised: he’d founded the Urban Pasifika label, his youngest brother was a global star, there was the rise of the Dawn Raid label and Scribe, Adeaze, Aaradhna, Mareko, Dei Hamo and others were becoming household names.
The music scene had changed.
BEST OF INSTIGATORS
by The Instigators
Subtitled Auckland Ska Punk 1981-1982, this is just about everything by the five-piece Auckland band that won a 1981 Battle of the Bands, had two vocalists – organist Sonya Waters and saxophonist Ed Geddes – and released only two singles (on the indie label Ripper) in their short lifespan: Not Really Bad produced by Don McGlashan and Hope She’s Alright.
With live material to fill out two sides of vinyl, it’s an enjoyable snapshot of succinct ska-pop with fist-tight guitar from Tom Rothsey, social comment (radio, boot girls, the welfare office), a bracing cover of The Israelites and a skittery dub version of No Problems.
Further proof, if needed, that disciplined, saxy and somewhat breathless ska ages well and is always a dancefloor filler.
New Urban Polynesian has been reissued on vinyl and as an expanded digital version. The Instigators’ album is available digitally and on vinyl.
