NZ Music Month in NZ Schools
Early Childhood to Tertiary, we have been flooded with exciting information about concerts, workshops, composition and classroom projects as well as students and schools participating in initiatives such as the Big Busk for child cancer and the recent Rise up Christchurch Telethon.
We were thrilled to hear that in the first few weeks of May, several thousand Southland children had been singing the NZ Music month songs (Made in NZ and Things to Remember) under the guidance of some wonderful Southern Institute music students and their tutors. In the Waikato, the faculty of Education has been running an amazing programme with (believe it or not) the maths department learning the song first and creating busking teams who've been out and about singing the NZMM songs, their originals and other popular NZ songs. They have facilitated many more to learn the songs as well, through their "Learn the song sessions" running in the student café.
The high level of enthusiasm for our home-grown music and the creative ways teachers and students around the country have been incorporating music month into the curriculum makes for a cheerful forecast of the future of the New Zealand music industry.
We hear of the Music Month song being added to school's repertoires, and that ‘Made in NZ' from 2010 is still hugely popular. The ‘catchy' ‘Huariki Tika' (Things to Remember) is being widely sung along with the Karakia in some schools.
A teacher shared this with us about teaching ‘Huarahi Tika' to her Year 2s
"We'd sung it a couple of times, practicing the second line of the chorus which is a little challenging and one wee fellow said "I feel all warm in my heart now. What is that called?" There is a very wise wee 6 year old in that class and he said, "It's called happiness"."
The NZMC Music Mentoring in schools programme has continued, as always, but with a few variations in May. We combined schools for some exciting workshops: The Pumanawa Workshops. 80 students from Kaikohe to Rotorua came to Auckland for an amazing weekend of songwriting led by mentors-Hinewehi Mohi, Tama Waipara, Lisa Crawley, Fran Kora, Tonga Vaea, Ben Tapueluelu and Maisey Rika. See CHAPTER 4 of I AM TV to see some of the magic of these workshops. The event, having been a huge success, was closely followed by the Girlz Rock day in Christchurch the following Monday where the students were lucky to have Julia Deans, Anna Coddington and Hera taking the reins. Joining Anna and Julia as the event moved up the country to Auckland were musicians; Ivy Lies, Street Chant and Lisa Crawley. Inspired by the leadership and talent of their mentors, the young women, (gathered from 7 different Auckland schools) truly made the most of the day, with each group creating new songs and performing them. This was indeed an exciting day at the Zeal café, with an electric guitar from Musicworks a lucky drawer for one of the participating schools.
No doubt you've all read in the paper how noise control was called in as an Epsom school disco danced away to POI E (one of the students' favourites). How wonderful that we have thousands of students of all ages singing ‘Huarahi Tika'. This song has had such popular reception from schools around the country that we might indeed be ready for another Te Reo hit on the top 40!