Shine On: Nigel Marshall’s musical time capsule

Nigel Marshall and Susan Ngawati on their farm in Gisborne. Photo / Thomas Teutenberg

Part archive, time capsule and storybook, Shine On is an album that captures the evolution of a man in Aotearoa and his music.

This album spans four decades of music from Tairāwhiti’s Nigel Marshall. The release is a collection of original songs, covering his early life in Naenae, Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington Harbour), on to his time on the East Coast - Ruatoria and Tolaga Bay - Te Henga (West Auckland), and finally, nestled on an 8 hectare block of land in Gisborne.

Marshall collaborated with an ensemble of Wellington musicians, giving the album a unified jazz feel that connects songs written decades apart.

”This has been a fantastic opportunity to recraft these old songs,” he said.

“A lot of the creativity, instead of writing new songs, has gone into the recording of them.”

Marshall spent much of his working life as a resource teacher of learning and behaviour (also known as an RTLB), helping students who struggled in the classroom.

It was thanks to teaching that Marshall arrived on the East Coast in the 1980s. After studying teaching in Wellington he went to Ruatoria to work. At the time, new teachers were often required to work in a rural setting. It was there he wrote the song Tūī about the encroaching forestry industry and the danger it posed to the East Coast environment.

Marshall now works as an educational consultant in the business he started with his wife, Susan Ngawati, who also sings on the album. Ngawati has long been a part of the East Coast music scene, singing with Tokomaru Bay bands, then with Marshall in The Cosmic Cowgirls, HaHaBonk, and the pair perform together at the Poverty Bay Blues Club.

Although Marshall and Ngawati have always been busy with work, family and working the land, music has been central to their lives.

”Music has been a fine way of not just expressing myself, but engaging in a magical way with people in my community, both as fellow artists and by interacting with audiences who have given me the great honour of appreciating my music,” says Marshall.

”It remains to this day a truly beautiful gift to be counted among the friends I have played with over the years.”

The album was recorded in Maurice Priestley’s PriMau Productions recording studio in Newtown, Wellington. Priestley, who played on and recorded early versions of some of the songs when he operated Capture Recording Studio in Gisborne in the 80s, suggested the project to record Marshall’s previously unrecorded songs.

Priestley used his contacts in the music scene to bring together an impressive ensemble of musicians, including pianist Don Franks, horn player Oscar Lavën, double bass player Peter Gregory, cajon player Sean O’Connor, drummers Nic Deighton and Tim Robinson, strings arranger-player Cath Haley, and backing vocalists Sarah Grant and Susan Ngawati.

Although there’s old music, Marshall is still writing. The most recent song on the album, Hand of God, touches on the overwhelming effects of climate change in Aotearoa. Having lived in Tairāwhiti during cyclones Bola, Hale and Gabrielle, Marshall continues to bring back the references to how the land is treated, both by human hands and mother nature.

Shine On is available now on all good streaming platforms.