Musical wizards of Oz

Dedication adn determination have made Scribe a big name in Australia. Photo / Supplied

As New Zealand's annual month-long love fest with Kiwi music draws to a close, one of Australia's top guns in the industry is heading to our shores to teach local talent how to crack the big time on her turf.

Australia has long been considered the gold at the end of the rainbow for New Zealand musicians who join the mass exodus of workers across the Tasman.

Many return, having tried and failed. But as an insurance ad on TV has been reminding us for the past few years, there's also plenty of success stories: "The cheeky sods stole your favourite band Dragon in the 70s, Split Enz in the 80s and Crowded House in the 90s."

Kiwi pop and rock has always been welcomed - or, depending on how you look at it, stolen - in the land of plenty. Ray Columbus replaced Sydney's "surf stomp" with the "mod nod" in the 60s, Sharon O'Neill blasted the airwaves with tales of a prostitute in the 1983 smash single Maxine, and Upper Hutt's Jon Stevens fled to form the Aussie rock band Noiseworks in 1985.

In recent times, we've left it largely up to bands such as Shihad and Evermore to fly the flag. But a leading Australian promoter, Sashya Jayawardena, says it is Aotearoa's own brand of urban music they're crying out for at the moment. "New Zealand hip-hop artists are doing really well over here because there's that strong cultural basis to the music."

Jayawardena has been in the industry for 14 years, touring artists who include Kanye West, Coldplay, The Black Eyed Peas and Christchurch's hip-hop heavyweight Scribe, whom she counts as our best musical export in recent years.

"Scribe is testament to the fact that any genre can come out of this side of the world and be successful. Hip-hop is something that's come from the ghettos of the US. To see an artist from New Zealand stand up and say, `I don't have a gun, but look, this is what I've been through' is brilliant."

She says New Zealand is packed with talent and that there's no shortage of get up and go. "Sure, there's a laidback vibe but I don't think that means the artists are any less ambitious or any less assertive."

If there's one band that knows what it takes to succeed across the ditch, it is Cut Off Your Hands, whose drummer, Brent Harris, is joining Jayawardena this week to deliver a series of seminars on how to tackle the industry.

Originally from Auckland, the indie buzz band was scouted by an Australian company and made its name there first.

"It was definitely a choice to spend time in Australia, when we could have chosen to try New Zealand more," Harris says. "But we were coming from quite an alternative vein and there wasn't a huge market for it here." Harris believes there are definitely elements of luck involved - for instance, they had the good fortune of coming across the right people at the right time. But ultimately it comes down to drive and determination.

`We put the limited amount of money we had on the line to buy tickets to Australia. We were determined to make it happen."

Both Jayawardena and Harris have seen first-hand the tall poppy syndrome that exists in both countries. "It's frustrating because people who are genuinely talented ... certain people don't want to give them a chance. A lot of these artists have been working for many years. We may not have heard of them, but they've been in their bedrooms and backyards and playing small gigs. It's quality music that should be supported."

* The Music Month seminars, How To Break Into The Australian Market, free and open to the public, take place this week in Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and Christchurch. For more information, go to www.mmf.co.nz or www.nzmusic.org.nz