Opinion: On a Friday some years ago, my friend called to tell me that the band Voom were playing at a party in Ponsonby and suggested we go along. We were not, strictly speaking, invited and the party proved to be a bit more fancy than expected, but Voom did play – and then, after a break, played their whole set again.
As the band arrived at the second rendition of their great, sad singalong, Beth, the band’s singer, Buzz Moller, called for my friend – who was known to put out a pretty good version of the song. Unfortunately, by this point, my friend – who had forgotten to eat lunch and dinner – had over-indulged and was slumped over outside on the deck.
“Mate,” I said, “Buzz needs you to sing Beth.”
As my friend wove his way to the stage, looking like a man who should not be attempting to stand up, let alone sing in public, the hosts exchanged glances.
Eyes were rolled. It was awkward. He proceeded to deliver a monumental version of Beth, building to the tricky concluding falsetto – which he absolutely nailed. The room erupted. It was as if the male lead in a romcom had crashed an engagement party, knocked over the canapes and won the girl’s heart by singing for it.
When Voom toured this year with Reb Fountain and Vera Ellen, they did not finish with Beth. Instead, all three bands took to the stage and encored with Chris Knox’s Not Given Lightly, a song from an outsider that has entered the New Zealand canon. It was lovely: everyone in the crowd knew the song, everyone understood the meaning of playing it and the simplicity and satisfaction of being together with it.
More recently, when Dame Hinewehi Mohi was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Aotearoa Music Awards, she was honoured with an ensemble version of Kotahitanga, her 1999 banger that has been enjoying a second life, thanks to its adoption as a signature tune by the young DJ Lady Shaka.
But the really special moment came when Mohi herself led the crowd in singing Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi – the waiata everyone knows at least a bit because it features in school songbooks and because Ruby Tui got the whole of Eden Park to sing it after the Black Ferns won the Rugby World Cup. In the hands of both women, the song’s message of unity was made manifest.
Mohi has form, of course: she single-handedly established the national anthem as a bilingual affair by going out and singing it that way. There is history there, too. As a child, I used to wonder why adults sang a song called Now is the Hour, not only at gatherings in my grandfather’s lounge, but after rugby matches. I know now that it’s a song of farewell and respect adapted by a series of Māori songwriters from the Swiss Cradle Song into Po Atarau and thence the bilingual Now is the Hour. It has a notable history in the world: British wartime singer Gracie Fields heard it as Haere Rā on her 1945 New Zealand tour, adapted Maewa Kaihau’s English verse and made it a huge international hit.
Songs travel more swiftly in our times; they become the news. We’ve seen US Vice President Kamala Harris brand her presidential campaign on Brat, the new album from Charli XCX.
The wag who was playing the Blair-years anthem Things Can Only Get Better while UK PM Rishi Sunak was trying to announce a fateful election date in the rain earned his place in history.
But it still matters that we have our own songs to sing. And as Buzz Moller would put it, they still feel strong.
