Aotearoa’s special flavour of reggae music is celebrated in a new song that traces the music’s history in New Zealand including its importance to Māori.
Released ahead of schedule to coincide with the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti, the music video for Aotearoa Reggae is clocking up thousands of views each day - up from 18,000 to 27,000 in the space of just a few days this week - and has just dropped on streaming platforms.
“I absolutely 100% support the hīkoi and I absolutely 100% am against what David Seymour has tried to do,” says the song’s composer Michael Fredrickson, of Groove Incorporated, who is non-Māori.
The ex 80s Auckland club DJ turned music producer says he knew Aotearoa Reggae would resonate with Māori, with the hīkoi involving issues not dissimilar to those which have motivated Aotearoa reggae over the years.
“If it was going to be liked by anybody, it was going to be Māori and Pacific who were the people it was going to appeal to.”
Fredrickson says his motivation for releasing the song when he did wasn’t opportunistic but instead about getting the music out to the people who mattered.
“Well for a start this is not a financial thing for me. I just do it for a bit of a hobby and I like doing it, and it cost me a lot of money to be honest.
“All creatives, they want people. They want to get their stuff out there, and they want to get it in front of the people it’s going to resonate with and the people that are going to like it.”
The song
Aotearoa Reggae stands out not only for its catchy tune, punchy vocals and history lesson, but also because of how it has come together.
It’s produced by Fredrickson about an influential genre for Māori and sung by an Australian artist, Honey-B-Sweet, rather than a local artist. But it’s not for want of trying, says Fredrickson.
“I did have that struggle to find a local vocalist.”
Honey-B-Sweet appears as a session musician - a hired performer - on the track.
Fredrickson says he grew up in Ōpōtiki and in the early 1980s went to boarding school at Auckland’s Mt Albert Grammar with its “big Polynesian community”. He says reggae music has had a lasting impression on him ever since.
“It was probably about 60 to 70% Polynesian [at high school]. So Bob Marley was very big at that time and also with growing up in Ōpōtiki. So that music has been part of my life for a long time.”
It’s even seen him travel to Jamaica on a bucket list visit to see the birthplace of Bob Marley.
“That was fantastic going to Bob Marley’s childhood house and his Kingston house and going to the studio.”
These days Fredrickson has a day job as a physician. But he says he misses those younger years DJing with Simon Grigg and Roger Perry (who he says took him “under their wing” in the late 80s) at The Playground and at stints at The Asylum and Berlin club in Auckland. So about four years ago he decided to change that.
“[I’ve had a deep love of music] for a long time, but it was something I never really got into the production side of it. And it was something I really, really regretted.
“And I thought, nah, well, I’ve got to do something about this. So I did.
“And, yeah, four songs later.”
Groove Incorporated’s earlier track was a remake of American singer Freda Payne’s 1970 soul song ‘Band of Gold’.
Aotearoa Reggae came about when Fredrickson was looking for a new song to write and struck on the idea of Aotearoa’s “unique evolution” of reggae.
“I thought it’d be great to chronicle the history in New Zealand. I wanted to make a song detailing how that’s evolved and how we’ve got to where we are today.
“That was the inspiration.”
He discovered a 2004 master’s thesis by Jennifer Cattermole, now an Associate Professor at Otago University, The routes of roots reggae in Aotearoa/New Zealand, which opened up a whole new world to him.
“It taught me how it [reggae] was integral to advancing issues that were important to Māori especially in the 80s.”
He’d been unaware of this until then, “I didn’t really have that much of an in depth understanding of it.”
“I initially wanted to really just go over the history of the genre in Aotearoa. But once I got into it, it became obvious I couldn’t really ignore the central role that the genre had played in advancing issues that are important to Māori.”
Fredrickson who happily identifies as tangata tiriti (”that’s me”) admits to being more than a bit apprehensive about stepping into this territory.
“I have to say that was a little anxiety provoking for me. That was something I wasn’t that sure about whether it was appropriate that an old white guy should be delving into it.
“But it sort of just happened like that.”
Honey-B-Sweet
Fredrickson says finding an artist to sing Aotearoa Reggae’s lead vocals was very challenging.
“That’s a tough one that one. A lot of them want to stay anonymous for one reason or another, whether it’s record deals or contracts with record companies, there’s various reasons for it.
“But I did have that struggle to find a local vocalist.
“Also because it’s rare to find a vocalist who can sing and rap. It’s something that not many can do. A lot can sing, a lot can rap, but not many can do both.
“I advertised on social media, I sent emails out to the university departments but I really did struggle to get suitable local vocalists. So I had to go international.”
Enter Honey-B-Sweet.
“I gave her the brief and she responded. And I said okay let’s see what you can do. And that was great.
“She really did have attitude. A really good attitude.”
Fredrickson acknowledges that the Australian artist had to make a conscious decision to associate herself with the track, knowing it was about Aotearoa and Māori.
“She said, ‘Look, I’m not Māori but I have a lot of friends who are [Māori] in Australia.’
“So, yeah, she had to put herself out there, because she was happy to put her name to it, and she was happy to put herself in that video.”
The music video for Groove Incorporated’s Aotearoa Reggae features Australian artist Honey-B-Sweet.
“It’s pretty low budget but she was happy to put her face to it, and put her name to it and she was happy to put up with any flack if she got it.
“I always thought that there was a risk of that, especially if people did find out that she wasn’t Māori. But she was quite happy to do that.”
‘Jah bless’
Aotearoa Reggae is being well received, judging by comments on the video.
These include remarks such as ‘nice tribute!’, ‘Brilliant tune!’, ‘Bless Sup!!’ and ‘Jah bless’.
“If you look at the people who have, if you look at those Facebook posts, I would say at least over half are Māori names. It’s obviously resonated. The song has resonated for me.”
Te Ao Māori News has reached out to Honey-B-Sweet for comment.
