2002 NZ Music Awards: They oughta be congratulated...

Huge congratulations (sorry we're a bit late on it) to Che Fu, for his thoroughly deserved sweep of five Tuis in the 2002 New Zealand Music Awards.
In the first year that R&B/hip hop have been recognised as a separate awards category, it's ironic,and very apt, that the winner was strong enough to scoop the Top Single (Fade Away) and overall Album of the Year ('The Navigator') titles too. Che's other Tuis were for Top Male Vocalist and Best Video.

Congratulations indeed to all category winners, and particularly to Anika Moa (Top Female Vocalist for 'Thinking Room' and Songwriter of the year for Youthful), Salmonella Dub (Top Group and International Achievement for 'Inside the Dub Plates') and Goodshirt (Top New Act and Best Cover Design for 'Good'), all multiple Tui gatherers on the night.

Pursuing the format of the last two years, the annual RIANZ Awards evening was in three parts. First the semi-private 'other categories' ceremony, a bit later the public-invited and televised awards ceremony itself, and to follow the invite-only industry-types leer up over dinner, drinks and discushhionss.

There was a noticeable increase in the level of media support surrounding this year's awards, resulting from the growing snowball of support for local music combined with the use of a PR company for media promotion, and the undoubtedly positive impact of the second NZ Music Month, which the Awards night was sensibly shifted to May to cash in on.

That hype translated into CD sales, the multi-nationals involved reporting a boom month for those local signings which featured in the Music Awards.
This is how it should be, the public responding to the buzz surrounding our major celebration of musical success, and buying CDs they might otherwise have ignored in favour of more heavily promoted internationals. It's been a long time coming.

The televised awards, presented by Satellite Pictures, reflected on a great year for popular New Zealand music. The usual few inexplicable finalist anomalies aside, there was little to argue about the main category winners.

Instead it was the turn for the ceremony itself to provoke argument, Auckland's charming old St James Theatre just too small for its role. With the finalists, stage runway and tele rent-a-crowd occupying most of the lower level, the music industry staffers, dignitaries and media fleeing upstairs found the views from most of the circle seats obscured by the array of television cameras and equipment needed for the TV2 broadcast.

The 'other category' awards, which traditionally don't happen in front of the television cameras, suffered a rather worse fate this year. In order to get things done before dinner got cold, these television-unfriendly-awards were scheduled to kick off late afternoon.

Unfortunately the theatre door security took 'keep the red carpet clear' a bit too literally and many (including media), who would have liked to be applauding the winners of the Classical, Gospel, Jazz and Country etc. awards, were obliged to wait outside for an hour along with the radio prize-winners.

The unfortunate result was that a number of awards were presented virtually without audience, one even without the recipient, who was waiting patiently outside with the rest of the confused industry members. The balance were handed out to the accompaniment of the held-up crowd arriving and settling in.

There is no question that 2001 was another vintage year for Kiwi music, particularly, as the Tui results showed, for what might be called the 'new' music categories. The increasing endorsement of Kiwi music by television and radio has been a major factor, as most surely has the input of NZ On Air in providing both recording and subsequent promotional funding.

Among the 'other' awards was one for NZ Music Radio Programmer Of The Year, which went to Brad King from The Rock Network. The Best Music Video was judged to be for Che Fu's Fade Away.

Top Producer was claimed by Tom Bailey and Stellar* for the album Magic Line, while the Top Engineer award went to Tiki Taane and Paddy Free for their work on 'Inside the Dub Plates'. Greg Johnson's first 'Best Of' (see NZM Dec/Jan) nabbed the Best Compilation Tui - popular music scooping the pool.

The acknowledgement and congratulation of peers, and the recording industry in general, is perhaps even more valuable to finalists in these 'other' categories, the aggravated relegation of which has this year caused a bit of a backlash.

In some cases the achievements are beyond those of their popular music compadres. Gospel award winners, Parachute Music's The Lads, for example, are headlining several festivals in Australia this year, including the Australian Gospel Music Festival and the Black Stump Festival in NSW. Dave Cullen, Parachute A&R, points out that while thrilled Parachute Music artists cleaned up all three gospel nominations, it would be nice for some of those artists to be acknowledged in other categories, Best Video for example.

Artists received honours in two Maori-specific categories - The Mana Reo award went to Ruia and Ranea for 'Waiata of Bob Marley', which features interpretation of his songs in Te Reo Maori, while the Rangiatea Concert Party took home the Tui in the Mana Maori section for Rangiatea. Maorimusic.com has signed a deal with Hot Records UK to release a Maori music compilation in the UK in June.