Innovations: Music in New Zealand and Reclaiming an Indigenous Creative Legacy

Much discussion and analysis of music in global cultures, and especially music of the Pacific region, has focused on frameworks of tradition and perpetuation. These ideas remain significant for music scholarship and within local communities. A review of recent musical developments and new artistic projects in the Pacific, however, demonstrates that notwithstanding the importance of tradition, innovations within musical practices is a persistent aspect of musical practice across the region. A primary example of this is in contemporary musical practices in Aotearoa New Zealand, and where the past few decades have seen increasing linkages between Indigenous Māori music and new concert repertories. Moreover, an in-depth and cross-cultural historical study of musical in New Zealand and the Pacific reveals that artists and composers have always prioritised new sounds, contexts, and genres.
From a starting point of innovation, this talk explores the increasing linkages of Indigenous musical practices and sounds within new contemporary musical forms, from the perspective of artistic development and transformation and within the social impacts of colonialism, cultural encounters, and artistic novelty. In this presentation, I’ll provide examples of how Māori music practices are increasingly linked to orchestra, concert, electronic, choral musics and new compositions, as well as how these changes are shifting the musical landscape of the country. I’ll also provide examples of new works for reflection. By extension, I ask how a refocus on innovation might help us to recover legacies of creative work that is, and has always, been part of Indigenous musics in New Zealand and the Pacific. I also address the implications of this reframing for music scholarship and for music education more widely, and for listeners to reflect on practices and innovations from their own musical backgrounds.          

Brian Diettrich (PhD University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa) is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the New Zealand School of Music, at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington. For the past twenty-five years Brian has conducted in-depth collaborative research with culture-bearers and communities in the Pacific Islands, including in the Federated States of Micronesia, in Hawaiʻi, and in Aotearoa New Zealand. Brian has held numerous international leadership and service roles, and he is currently Vice President of the UNESCO-affiliated International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTMD). His books include Music in Pacific Island Cultures: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture, and Perspectives in Motion: Engaging the Visual in Dance and Music, and he has authored over fifty articles and chapters related to music and Pacific Island Studies. Brian is currently leading a new collaborative interdisciplinary project that explores intersections between Indigenous knowledge, Space Science, and the Humanities.