I hate myself for that lame title. But it’s a good, satisfying kind of self-hate.
\nSo Chuck has arrived! Last night I took him out for his first good Scottish Night Out – ‘Donde las papas queman!’ (“Where the tatties are burning!”), Chilean traditional music performed by a group of Chilean ex-pats and one hairy Scot.
\nWe met up with Jess, a Kiwi from Rotorua, and George, a Kiwi from Wellington. To paraphrase Chuck: “What could be more Scottish than listening to South American folk music with a bunch of New Zealanders?” And you know, I really don’t know what could.
\nMade me reflect for a bit on the absence of a ‘traditional music scene’ in Wellington, and perhaps in wider New Zealand. Traditional\/cultural music groups exist, of course, but they’re pretty hard to find – I certainly never stumbled across more than one or two. (Although, now I think of it, the Cuba Street Carnival always seemed to summon them out of their shadowy corners.)
\nIn New Zealand we have little in the way of local traditional ‘folk’ music that is shared with the community. Certainly, we have cultural music traditions that are strong – I defy any New Zealander’s spine not to tingle when a waiata rings out – but they are bounded into particular spaces and contexts. The Pacific Island musical traditions are likewise heavily tied into their particular communities. New Zealand’s European-descended pakeha seem to be largely happy to let the musical traditions of their various forefathers fade to nothing. The Asian communities are still a long battle away from being accepted as ‘part of New Zealand’ and their music likewise.
\nAll of this adds up to a New Zealand with a quiet<\/b> sort of multiculturalism.
\nWhich is no bad thing. But it is odd – another distinguishing feature of the strangely half-formed New Zealand culture. Hell, even Aussie has a style of music (twangy guitar ballads often filled with filthy jokes) of its own. And as usual with NZ, it gives us a rare opportunity to have a foot in many worlds and construct a society with a 21st century mindset that is the Victorian humanist legacy of the nation’s modern founders.
\nIt’s an interesting country, Aotearoa.
\n(Note: all the above is generalising from personal experience – I’m quite ready to believe that other parts of NZ have much wider-spread engagement in cultural musical traditions.)
\n(Note 2: I recognise the oddness of reflecting on NZ traditional music when Chilean music is hardly local to Edinburgh – but there is a connection, namely the fact that the hairy Scot of the players got chatting to us in Sandy Bells, local folk music pub. Everything connects, etc etc.)
\nI think the best example I can recall of engaging with traditional music and making it part of the community: the Pacific Island drumming that accompanied every home game for the Hutt Valley Lakers basketball team back in the early 90s. That was a beautiful thing.
\n—
\n(skims back over entry)
\nAh, so that’s<\/b> what I’ll be using this blog for – long stream-of-consciousness rambles. Cool, I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I hate myself for that lame title. But it’s a good, satisfying kind of self-hate. So Chuck has arrived! Last night I took him out for his first good Scottish Night Out – ‘Donde las papas queman!’ (“Where the tatties are burning!”), Chilean traditional music performed by a group of Chilean ex-pats and one hairy … Continue reading It Gets, um, *Chile* in Winter ’round here<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-d","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}