Photo: supplied
Aotearoa singer-songwriter Anna Coddington (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa, Ngāti Whakaue) dials in from the Cook Islands where she and her whanau are taking a break for the school holidays.
The artist has just released a new single called 'Kātuarehe', the first from a new album she’s finished recording.
"It's been a couple of years in the making and quite different from my previous output”.
The new album will be a blend of English and te reo māori or reo rua.
'Kātuarehe' was born through Reo Māori Song Hubs, a camp for musicians to advance the use of the language; the experiment brings together producers, songwriters and te reo Māori experts in one room.
"You write a song every day for a week with a different group of people. So Katuarehe came out of that!".
In her third year of law school, Coddington admits it's 'no walk in the park' but she's enjoying the challenge because ‘music and my law studies require quite different uses of my brain".
A recently published children's book author Coddington released Blue, Blue Christmas in December 2023. A gradual writing evolution she said took a few years to write in between multiple projects she juggled. Admittedly she is taking a break from performing live because she's too busy to organise a band and wants to do ‘the fun bits that aren't stressful’.
“I've almost let go of the idea of music being my job.. With this album it’s an outlet in a different way for me. I just wanted to have fun with my friends so we wrote songs together”.
