NZ Music Month: Exploring the small towns that gave birth to big NZ tunes

“I was born in Te Awamutu…” As we mark NZ Music Month, that opening line is a reminder that some of our biggest acts come from some of our smallest towns, writes Ewan McDonald.

Opononi, Far North

In summer 1955-56, the country was enchanted by Opo, a wild bottlenose dolphin which followed fishing boats around the harbour, performed stunts, played with beach balls and beer bottles, and let children swim alongside her. On 8 March 1956 two things happened: Opo received legal protection and Pat McMinn recorded one of our biggest selling singles – Opo the Crazy Dolphin, heard on Sunday morning requests for decades. On 9 March Opo was found dead in mysterious circumstances. We don’t know if she was 27, but what a rock’n’roll way to go. She has a statue at the wharf. (Should we mention Whangarei, birthplace of our biggest-selling music export? Sorry, Keith, it’s a bit too urban).

Te Awamutu, Waipa

We shouldn’t call it a small town – 13,500 live in the easy-going and charming place, a cauldron in the New Zealand wars and the “Rosetown of New Zealand”. More importantly, Te Awamutu is where the Finn Brothers began making music in their bedroom, teamed up in Tim’s band Split Enz, then Neil’s Crowded House and as the Finn Brothers; now it’s the Finn sons too. The town’s great contribution to Kiwi culture. Apart from Sarah Ullmer and, er, Ian Foster.

Kawerau, Bay of Plenty

One of our youngest towns, created in 1953 to fuel the paper mill. It also gave birth to a worldwide hit that lives on, a half-century later. Sir John Edward Rowles, born 1947, left for the bright lights of Te Atatū as a teenager and, in the late 60s, rivalled Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck; If I Only Had Time reached #3 in the UK and he played Vegas and Hawaii. In 1970 he was asked to write a song to represent Aotearoa in a global song contest; he thought of Kawerau and wrote the ballad named for his sisters, Cheryl Moana and Marie. It sold a million and reached the US top 40. Rowles bought his family a new house in Te Atatū; his sister literally became a household name. Google to see who’s been named after her.

Ruatāhuna, Te Urewera

Deep in the forest near Waikaremoana, Te Kooti built one of our largest-ever wharenui. Decades later, this speck off most maps produced one of our biggest stars (in more ways than one). Prince Tui Teka, the 140kg man-mountain, sang like an angel and cracked the worst dad jokes known to man. Tui learned guitar and sax before he went to school; except that he never went to school. At 15 he hit out for Sydney and joined a travelling circus. There, Kiwi musicians were formulating a new entertainment concept; the Māori showbands, tailormade for Tui. He joined the Māori Volcanics alongside a chap named Billy T James, performing around the world. He returned home in 1981 and became an institution on our thriving pub circuit and TV screens. With Dalvanius Prime (see Pātea) he created E Ipo, the first hit in te reo. You could say that song made history. But Tui had already done that.

Raetihi, Whanganui

This hamlet between Tongariro and Whanganui national parks, near Ohakune skifields, spawned “the Whanganui Elvis”. Johnny Devlin was still at school when he won a talent quest at the then-Wanganui Opera House, yodelling, in 1951. He did Presley covers around Whanganui and Palmy, then headed for Auckland’s throbbing music scene. In 1958 Devlin toured to sell-out audiences – shrieking girls queued outside venues; in Invercargill, fans tore off his trousers; in Greymouth, minders fire-hosed them. From 1959 he lived in Australia, gigging, appearing on TV and touring with the Everly Brothers and some wannabes called the Beatles. Raetihi is a bit of an entertainment magnet: it’s backdropped movies Came A Hot Friday (with Billy T), Without a Paddle (Burt Reynolds), Vincent Ward’s River Queen and Roger Donaldson’s Smash Palace.

Pātea, Taranaki

Officially, Poi E is our unofficial national anthem. Does that make Pātea our unofficial capital? This unassuming riverbank town is where, it can be argued, the popular revival of te reo among everyday Kiwis really took root. It’s down to the closing of the local meatworks and the passion and drive of a remarkable spirit, born here, Dalvanius Prime. Prime grew up in a musical household and in the late 1960s moved to Wellington to work as a cook by day and musician at night. Like Tui Teka, he was a showband star in Australia. When the meatworks closed in 1984, wrecking the town’s economy, Prime wrangled the local kapa haka group into a new incarnation that smashed into the nation’s living-rooms with its Michael Jackson-inspired anthem and video. Forty years later, we are appreciating the fruits of his passion for waiata, te reo and rangitahi.

Masterton, Wairarapa

Locals will – hopefully – forgive the suggestion that Masterton is not the most exciting town on the planet. However, it can claim “New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo”. Yes, this unassuming borough with an incredibly long and straight main street, the self-proclaimed Sheep Shearing Capital of the World, is the hometown of Jemaine Atea Mahana Clement. We have nothing but respect for Jemaine’s life story (you can look it up), as we do for his fellow local, Pip Brown, better known as Ladyhawke. She came from a musical family, overcame childhood illnesses and allergies, and is a stone-cold musical genius. No arguments will be accepted. We may need to re-appraise our opinion of Masterton.

Ōtaki, Kāpiti Coast

Road-tripping all the way back to the opening paragraph, it’s rare to find a Kiwi hit that references a local place. This is one, a town north of Wellington that has a glorious surf beach and inglohrious traffic jams. It’s almost impossible to understand how big the Fourmyula were in the late 60s. They had a string of its unmatched by any local band and they wrote their own material. You may have heard one: Nature. They went to the UK and recorded at Abbey Road, in the studio next to the Beatles, and Ōtaki charted in several European nations. It was never meant to be about the town. “It was originally St Louis or some American place name,” admitted writer Wayne Mason. Some members later surfaced in the Warratahs, whose biggest hit was a jingle, Sailing on the Inter-Islander. Assuming the ferry is seaworthy, that brings us to…

Richmond, Nelson-Tasman

Nelson is a city so we can’t nod to the trailblazing Sharon O’Neill or cruelly unsung Rhian Sheehan. Technically, Richmond is a separate town, so join us, please, at the local mall where the 2010 Richmond’s Got Talent quest is getting under way. A big hand, please, for local brother and sister Georgia and Caleb Nott. Fast-forward four years and Broods have signed with international labels, released several albums, toured with Ellie Goulding, Haim, Sam Smith, Tove Lo and Taylor Swift and appeared on Seth Meyers and at any festival worthy of the name. Their third album was called Don’t Feed The Pop Monster. Boll*cks. They done that with class and style.

Kokatahi, West Coast

You could call this an outlier and you wouldn’t be wrong or disrespectful. There are several things the West Coast is famous for: challenging terrain, high rainfall and sandflies, the 1941 manhunt for Stanley Graham after shooting four police. However, the coalmining locality (it’s not even a village) is mostly renowned for its band. They’ve never troubled the charts or the TV producers, but in their colourful uniforms based on 1860s miners’ clobber and unusual instruments (button accordions, lagerphones, bones, banjos, swannee whistles), the band has been serenading the coast, its race meetings and wildfood festivals with bush ballads and folksongs since 1910 – likely earlier.

Ranfurly, Central Otago

Welcome to their world. City folks often under-estimate much of the nation’s affection for country music; unfair to superb and much-loved musicians like John Grenell (aka Hore), from Ranfurly in the big-sky country of the Maniatoto. He placed third in a 1962 national TV contest, left school and turned professional. John sang at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, across America, Australia, Canada, England and South Africa, TV series and a Royal Command performance. Remembered for his bank jingle Welcome to My World, his biggest hit was a Kiwi rewrite of I’ve Been Everywhere, in which he name-checked 115 Kiwi places in less than 3 minutes. So if you feel we’ve left a place or song out of this story… John’s covered our B-side.