Hayden Afele-Nickel Photo: Latitude Creative
When Creative New Zealand rang violinist Hayden Afele-Nickel to tell him he'd won the 2023 Iosefa Enari Memorial Award for an emerging Pasifika classical musician, he told them he was busy.
Few things get in the way of his teaching, and even when he did call back the significance of what he'd won didn't initially sink in.
Maybe that's not surprising. Apart from composer Joshua Pearson last year and harpist Natalia Mann in 2015, every winner of the award since it began in 2002 has been an opera singer. The late Iosefa Enari was one himself.
Hayden Afele-Nickel sends a "big mihi to Creative NZ" for recognising an instrumentalist.
When he spoke to Bryan Crump on RNZ Concert's Three to Seven show, Hayden was still thinking about how he'll use the $7,500 award. Given teaching is so important, it's likely that will feature.
Hayden is especially proud of the work he does with children's ensembles, such as Arohanui Strings.
Arohanui Strings 2023 Photo: Arohanui Strings
In some ways, he sees teaching as more important than performing given there are so few Pasifika musicians playing classical instruments.
"It has been tough at times being the only brown person in the room."
Hayden has his older sister to thank for his introduction to the violin. She has autism and Down Syndrome, and her parents were looking to find her a musical outlet.
When they tried violin, it was two-year-old Hayden who sparked up and demanded to be in on the action.
His parents remembered this when Suzuki Method teacher Heather Miller started visiting his primary school, and made sure he got lessons.
These days, when he's not teaching, Hayden is a casual player with Orchestra Wellington and the Hawke's Bay Orchestra, and a session musician for the likes of Arjuna Oakes. And every now and then, he plays things like Star Wars with the NZSO.
"Star Wars made me cry when I was practicing, it's really hard. I didn't want to pass up that opportunity, so I stayed up all night, but I always forget that when you play with a really, really good orchestra, it suddenly becomes easy to play."
So, given the joy it's brought him, and given Pasifika singers are taking the opera world by storm, why are there so few Pasifika and Māori playing classical instruments?
Hayden ponders the question for a moment.
He wonders if western culture's focus on the individual sometimes clashes with the collective approach of Māori and Pasifika.
In his Samoan world, "If you gain something, it doesn't really mean anything unless you share that and lift others up with you".
"That personal drive of the practice, the discipline, the one-on-one lessons, that's the tradition currently, and that's what it takes to do well in classical music. But when you take that to a culture that doesn't value those things, you get confused about why this isn't working, when these kids are so musical."
Obviously, the Western classical canon resonates with Hayden, but where does it stand alongside his Samoan culture?
Again, Hayden takes time to consider his answer.
"I think it's hard to find a way for classical music to fit and for the commitment that it takes to do well in that, when you are still heavily involved in your culture - if I'm talking about Samoan culture, there's a lot of family commitments that come with it as well. And so the traditional journey of learning the violin sometimes just doesn't fit in your life.... you have no time for it."
Maybe then, Western classical music in Aotearoa New Zealand has to be cognisant of where it stands: not in Europe, but at the bottom of the Pacific?
"It's long overdue, for sure," says Hayden. "Speaking broadly, no shots fired, if you're an orchestra and you are only playing the canon, then you have unwittingly painted yourself as a museum....".
"I think the only way of making that happen is getting people of New Zealand into that space, if we want that proper integration of cultures through music. If your goal is to be a museum, by all means, go ahead, but we need spaces where we can do that real transformative stuff."
