NZ Music Month: The Annual Corporate Action Committee For Aotearoa Music
"at our venue it's been exclusively comedy festival all through music month"
I Can Barely Bring Myself To Write Anything About NZ Music Month.
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NZ Music Month (NZMM) is so divorced from my day-to-day existence that it feels like homework to write about it ~ akin to studying your teachers favourite book thats so absolutely mid its hard to even summon the energy to make fun of it.
I created a poll on my Instagram page to get some outside perspective on the campaign and, in a result that I think could describe a lot of our publicly funded music institutions, most people like it but cant agree on whether it has any use whatsoever.
Unsurprising in many ways ~ we know Kiwis tend to ‘like’ everything to the point of banality and the usefulness of NZMM seems split indicating feelings depend on individual situations.
Corporate Synergy
“Im a teacher and it’s a cool platform to celebrate NZ music. . “
“I work for Boosted and it’s a great way to focus attention and funding around musicians.”
There is no music industry. The way Six60 & Lorde operate have absolutely nothing in common with how Spell or Night Lunch do their things.
The mashing of these two completely different worlds into one ‘industry’ narrative is the root of most consternation in music industry chats ~ a lack of lane definition causing confusion.
NZ Music Commission is a corporate institution. It has the capability to connect with other entities that speak the same language ie have similar connection points and a shared language or understanding.
Im sure certain individuals with persecution complexes will take that personally but it’s not a judgement ~ just a description.
Thats why NZ Music Month, organised by NZMC, is received well by similar entities and rejected by others in a different lane. Education, radio, major labels and institutional media speak the same language and can easily make use of the campaign.
To people outside the institutional structure its nice but incomprehensible.
“I like it but it’s useless”.
It doesn’t do anything for them because they don’t have the structures or workflow to interact with it. It’s kinda as simple as that.
Can’t Have A NZ Music Month If You Don’t Have A New Zealand.
An interesting and ongoing thought I have is that there really is no New Zealand either.
What is our shared identity? What is our national story binding strangers together into a collective existence?
We’ve been dismantling our outdated nationalistic identity as a way to process our colonial past and exist in an increasingly hyper-individualistic world. I don’t sense we’ve had any success building a society-wide replacement yet.
How can we have a shared idea of what NZ Music is if we don’t have a shared idea of what NZ is? I would suggest NZMM’s seemingly increasing irrelevance comes down to that problem more than anything.
The construction of a unified and authentic Aotearoa Art Movement is a fascinating issue on its own (and another podcast completely) but whatever it looks like in the future ~ its not here yet.
Personally, I think the most promising sapling of music focused cultural production is the Waiata Anthems Movement and the popularising of Te Reo in commercial music spaces.
It makes sense to me that the synthesising of a new cultural identity in Aotearoa will be born out of the process of Maori culture finding its voice in the context of 21st century globalism.
Why not have a campaign focused on building that movement instead? Te Reo Music Month? Waiata Movement Month?
That would at least have a foundation in something tangible and real and feel more useful and less like a corporate PR exercise for marketing purposes.
Ok ~ homework done ✅