Byllie-jean on winning a Taite Music Award: 'This is an incredible one for me as a Māori woman and a kuia'

* Correction: This story has been amended.

"An exercise in bravery" is how songwriter Byllie-jean describes turning her (now award-winning) debut EP Filter over to the world.

After years of hustling to raise her family, the grandmother-of-three is happy to no longer feel like making music is a "luxury".

"I feel like the creative thing has been a struggle and a wrestle, and it's been hard-won. I guess I have enough years under my belt now."

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Although she began writing songs at 10, Byllie-jean (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga, Ngāti Pahauwera) says it took a long time to gain confidence in her singing style. She also struggled with a general sense of whakamā [shame] as a younger woman.

Winning Best Independent Debut at the Taite Music Awards in Auckland on 15 April for Filter, which features poet Isla Huia and musician/actor Marlon Williams, is "an incredible tohu [signal] particularly at this time in the political environment", Byllie-jean says.

"With those awards come resources and opportunities, and that's what artists need to keep going."

Although she's not yet able to write songs in te reo Māori with "poetic license", Byllie-jean is proud of the new single 'Hinekoukou'. She worked closely with mātanga reo [language expert] Te Haumihiata Mason at the songwriting programme Reo Māori SongHubs to create the lyrics.

"That was some mana, man, being next to [Te Haumihiata]. That was mana wāhine, all right. I enjoyed it so much.. It felt right together."

For Māori women in music, the time has come, Byllie-jean says.

"That's the voice of the wahine being reinstated to where it was, the voice of the earth."

For Byllie-jean and her family, it was often hard to find a patch of earth to call their own. During her adult life, the singer has been destabilised by having to pack up and move every couple of years.

"Constantly moving is just massive on the nervous system for a start, and also expensive, just difficult ... I always used to have that anxiety that I would get the call that you've got to move out."

To quell her housing anxiety, a few years ago she saved for and bought a house truck she named 'Haumi'.

"Now it doesn't matter who kicks me out or which landlord does what they want to do, I still have Haumi to go to."

Finding secure housing is tough for a single-income family, Byllie-jean says. New Zealand has enough physical houses for all of its residents, she says, so why is there so much homelessness?

"As Māori, we were refugees, and now we are still finding it difficult to connect with the whenua, let alone find a home. We have to do better."