WANT TO WRITE THE SONG OF NZMM 2011?
This awesome opportunity just came through on the wire. If you're a student with a song to sing, enter this competition and be the 2011 NZ Music Month anthem!
~Matthew
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
On the Saturday 29th May at midday singer songwriter Káren Hunter will perform a solo set at the Central City library.
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
