NZ Music Month is over for 2010, so I thought it was time to have a look back at some of our events. If you're anything like me you didn't have time to make it along to everything we had going on. Lucky for us Matthew was on hand throughout the month with a camera. Click the image to enlarge.

   

A massive thanks to everyone who played, and to everyone who came along to listen.

~Ashley

Onehunga is an amazing place. From the buskers outside Countdown, to cars passing you in the street, to the kids with the ukulele that hang out in the library during school holiday, the place is filled with music. The Street Dreams programme is a local initiative that has given these kids the skills to take their music wider than the four walls of our teenage section - and I love the fact that stuff like this goes on in communities like mine.


Street Dreams was introduced in 2009 after Lady Sheeq held a one-day music workshop at ‘Common Ground’, an annual youth event run by local youth and community organisations. It was so successful that they decided to turn it into a 12-week programme of workshops in 2010 and show the participants how to produce an EP.


In early February over 50 young people from Onehunga and surrounding areas auditioned for the programme with 15 being given the opportunity to record, mix and master their own track which would be compiled into an EP for release in May. The group has been meeting on Tuesday nights at the local community centre and we have seen the students grow from budding singer/songwriters to fully-fledged recording artists in a matter of months under the tutorage of local icons Lady Sheeq and Dei Hamo. They have been offered some serious skill building and been given advice around writing, recording and performing, as well as getting the chance to talk to sound engineers and producers from radio stations Flavaand Mai FM.


Perfectly situated at the end of Youth Week and New Zealand Music Month, the Street Dreams Launch is being held at theYMCA Jordan Recreation Centre on 28 May. These guys have done the work, recorded the tracks, had the photo shoots and now we are lucky enough to be able to get our hands on the EP.


The participants will be performing their songs for the first time on stage, with your MCs Dei Hamo and Lady Sheeq with performances by Erakah and DJ TDK. I suggest you take this opportunity to see them now before these talented youth become seriously huge.


Tickets are available at the Onehunga Community Centre office from 24 May, and are $15 for entry and copy of the E.P, or just $10 for a copy of the EP.


You can also follow their progress in the Onehunga Community News.


Thanks go to Auckland City Council and the Onehunga Business Association for the funding and support for this worthwhile initiative.

~Rachael

New Zealand Music Month isn't just an opportunity for the library to show off its sweet collections, and brag about all our influential friends. It's also an opportunity for us to do something that a lot of people don't instantly think of when they think about libraries: teach.

At community libraries around Auckland City we run Akozone homework centres, where school children can come and work on their homework and have a librarian on hand to help them out. On Wednesday 19 May local musician Tony Paki is stopping by the Glen Innes library to teach some of his songs, including a song he's written for Glen Innes.

Tony's a local, a father of three, and a member of the Tu Wharetoa, Te Arawa and Tuhoe tribes. He's been involved in music since he was young, getting started in a a Kapa Haka Group called Nga Tapuwae Junior Maori Club. We were lucky enough to get Tony along to share his love of music and Glen Innes with the Akozone kids. The workshop starts at 3pm on Wednesday 19 May, and is for under-13s.

If you've got the learning itch and can't be part of Tony's workshop, don't forget we've still got beginner's ukulele lessons at Central, and soon I'll be posting some information on our class on how to use the Naxos Music database.

~ Ashley

"Before the days of digital downloads, there was the record store: a place where music lovers could go to indulge their passion, where friendships and romances began, where bands formed, and where information was shared. It was a place that nourished the heart and soul of every music lover – a haven for creative people of all stripes…"
Introduction to Record Store Days, by Gary Calamar & Phil Gallo. 

So many songs we hear are connected to memories, and for us collectors, so many memories we have are connected to songs. Not just a tune, but album artwork, names in the credits, the weight in our hands, the smell of new vinyl or the dusty fingers from hours in the Second-Hand bin. 

The havens that were record stores may have dwindled in the face of iTunes, but the record clubs and vinyl appreciators have lived on. And today, black is back. Real Groovy is selling more vinyl than ever before, and more record players. JB Hifi is growing a healthy stock of new LPs, and independents like The High Seas have started to regain some territory. 

And all the while, hidden in the Central Library’s basement & Heritage shelves, our own extensive collection of rare and interesting records have been waiting for a chance to spin again. 

So come along to Auckland’s Central Library at 6pm on Wednesday 12 May to see the jewels of our vinyl collection, listen to some classic tunes, and share some sound opinions, memories and stories of our audible history. 

~Matthew

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/ xslim/ / CC BY 2.0

This month we're packing up a stack of Auckland bands both past and present and sending them on a tour of some of Auckland's hottest venues - our community libraries.

During May we're sending selections from our Made in Auckland collection collection to a few of the community libraries to let everyone all about it. Normally housed in the Central City Library, the Made in Auckland collections makes CDs produced by local artists available to library users for absolutely no charge.

A sad fact about local music scenes is that no matter how vital and amazing things are, sometimes things get missed. Not everyone gets a record contract, and not everything gets kept for future listeners.

That's what makes the Made in Auckland collection so awesome. Any Auckland band that makes a CD can submit it to our collection and have it made available for our library members. Not only that, like everything else in our library we preserve it for future listeners. Even when the shoebox of 50 CD-Rs under the drummer's bed is long out of stock we keep local music available for all Aucklanders.

Check out the full list of Made in Auckland CDs, and don't forget to catch the collection on tour near you.

Panmure (Mt Wellington) - now until the 14th May
Mt Roskill (Three Kings) - 15th May - 30th May
Epsom - Now until 7th May
St Heliers - 8th May until 14th May
Mt Albert (St Lukes) - 15th May until 30th May

Thanks to groups like the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestraand the Play It Strange Trust the ukulele is becoming more and more prevalent in New Zealand. It's easy to see why, as ukes are lightweight, small, and pretty easy to learn quickly. Unlike recorder lessons in primary school, songs learnt on the ukulele are worth remembering and fun to play.

It really is super easy to play the uke, and websites like Ukulele Huntmake it easy to find the music for songs you want to play (yes, they've got 'Hey Ya').
It's not just here in New Zealand, either. Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls) has been touring round the world these last two years doing Ninja gigs on her days off which she announces on Twitter. She just shows up with her uke and does songs for whoever showed up for as long as they feel like it. A ukulele is perfect for this kind of thing, because it's small enough and light enough to take it with you.