Best Producer nominees at this year's Pacific Music Awards, Anonymouz, Parks and Kings join Alex Behan to talk about their production styles, observations and insights about making pacific music.
Anonymouz, Parks and Kings Photo: RNZ/Alex Behan
Parks (Brent Park) is nominated (along with Julien Dyne and Brandon Haru) for his work producing Ladi 6's ‘Royal Blue 3000' EP, Anonymouz (Matthew Faiumu Salapu) is nominated for his work on The Movement’s 'The Undisciplined Son' EP.
We’ve told the incredible success story of Kings a few times before, and also recently featured Anonymouz (Matthew Faiumu Salapu) about his incredible show relating Samoan oratory with hip hop battles.
Anonymouz’s latest project is ‘Masta’ by Tha Movement with a who’s who of Samoan hip hop history including Poetik, MC Arme, SMV, King Kapisi, Mareko & Kas Tha Feelstyle.
Anonymouz: It didn’t really occur to me until we were shooting the video but I grew up on these guys. I mean it’s an honour. I grew up a fan of this stuff and it’s not until you take a step back and realise it’s a real privilege to be amongst such company so it was really just about gratitude to have a platform alongside them.
The fact that they wanted to jump on board when Tha Movement put the call out. We have a saying down south [Auckland] that it’s about carrying on tradition but it’s also about recalibrating tradition as well. So we wanted to do justice to the Samoan hip hop that came before us but also add a new strand to it.
Alex Behan: That’s interesting about recalibrating, expand on that.
Anonymouz: Well I know that for me growing up I was just a huge fan of Kas (Tha Feelstyle) he’s just the OG of Samoan hip hop. Then you’ve got the Marekos and the King Kapisis and so forth. There’s this kind of fluidity with the production styles as well as the lyrical styles these days where it’s not really a Samoan song, it’s not a hip hop song it’s just you kind of dip in and out of whatever modes. This song sort of felt like that where the guys just had full licence to use those identities that they carry to dip in and out of whatever they feel like and then whatever it is - is what it is. There was no overall game plan for it.
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Alex Behan: I’m interested as to what you might see in terms of young pacific island people growing up with a gift for producing music. Kings, Parks, Anonymouz you must have people who approach you or who you meet who impress you. I’m wondering about the future of pacific music production
KINGS: Firstly, I bet ninety percent of the talented kids who are coming through are Pacific Islanders or Maori, coming through my studio personally. The biggest advice that I’ve ever given them is that the technology is at a place where you are able to actually do it yourself. A lot of the work. The idea of spending thousands of dollars to get things mixed and mastered is a dying art.
I maybe shouldn’t say that because there are a lot of people still invested in that but you’re able to get a very similar sound with the technology today. So I try to encourage young kids especially young kids and say ‘Yo, just go and try it’.
What’s the worst that can happen? You chuck it up on Soundcloud and you get likes you can share it you get instant feedback of either this sucks or this is great and then you can choose to not listen to that feedback and just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s very accessible now.
Parks: I got in to music just playing acoustic guitar and I didn’t have any kind of technology. I couldn’t afford any kind of technology to make produced music until I was in my twenties. This generation have such an advantage by having that technology available to them. You only need a phone now really to be creative and to make a piece of art that can be shared instantly. That’s really exciting and I’d definitely give the same advice as you bro.
KINGS: Yeah just try. We have this thing in Maori we have this thing ‘whakamā’ or shy you get this like a shame thing – it’s hard to explain. But as you grow up it’s funny to say someone is ‘stink’ or ‘you’re shit’ and that can leave sometimes a negative connotation on yourself when you want to try something – I feel. So it’s about stepping out of that and being like ‘yeah I am cool I am good’ or at least let me try and let me try and fail.
Anonymouz: I really think KINGS changed the game when he put out ‘Don’t Worry ‘Bout It’. When we heard that he’s mixed and produced it AND mastered it, from top to bottom that whole process. Like he said I mean I always still struggle with the post production end of things trying to get the mix right. So sometimes you try and outsource that or find the right mastering guys and you’re never really that happy with it so you try another person.
But it just goes to show when you really hone in on those specific skills and you really take the time and you water that craft you can get to a level where you can oversee that whole creative process and I think that’s an amazing template for our youth going forward to know that if you are really about it, you can take your craft to another level because we’ve got trailblazers and pioneers out there that are pushing the whole process forward. So yeah it’s absolutely possible for all our young kids coming through.
Alex Behan: You’ve got KINGS blushing, that’s a rare thing.
Anonymouz: That’s real talk.
Alex Behan: One of the big things that happened to Pacific music last year was the Moana Soundtrack and Te Vaka. Suddenly there was an international awareness of what Pacific music even sounds like. I’m wondering if you have any opinions on how that might be – recalibrated in to modern music styles whether that’s soul, or RnB or rap or hip hop. Do you think about using specifically Pacific sounds?
Parks: I’m a white person. I am of Welsh, English and Scandinavian descent. So it’s not really my place to speak on Pacific music. My connection to it is through my wife who is Ladi6 [Karoline Tamati] and my son and all my nephews and my brothers and my sisters. In our situation, the older we get the less we try and impose anything on our music. Like really trying hard to let people know we’re from New Zealand or that we’re Samoan or that we’re half-caste. We try and drop any kind of pretence at all especially in the conception stage of making something new. The thing is that Ladi is full Samoan and she was born in New Zealand so the music that she makes is going to be the most New Zealand born Samoan sounding thing that you can make because that’s who she is. We just try and acknowledge that and try and remember that and just let things happen naturally. Not to try and force anything.
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Anonymouz: I remember listening on the radio to ‘Closer’ by Six60 and it’s interesting. Great production but the sound that cut through to me was the log drum in it. These frequencies carry stories and they carry identity these traditional sounds. So I guess one way I’ve always sort of viewed it listening to hip hop and there’s shakers and there’s claves in RnB and you dig a little bit deeper and you realise they have an ethnic and an indigenous significance to them in parts of the world. So in that kind of context it would be nice to kind of have the same renaissance happen with a lot of traditional, indigenous instruments from this part of the world.
But I guess for myself in terms of that pacific notion it’s been more of a conceptual thing. Like I’ve always been interested in using location samples as opposed to sample packs. So a lot of projects I do are where I head outdoors and just sample things from outdoors and that comes from that whole notion of natural resourcing because as pacific people we are known for our natural resourcing. We can make boats out of anything. So I try to carry that through to my work too where I’m not just sitting waiting to download sample packs or waiting on the next piece of gear to be released, I can just head out grab whatever samples and see if I can construct the waka out of what I’ve got. So it’s more for myself more a conceptual thing as opposed to a literal thing but in saying that we do have sounds that are indigenous to our people that would be good frequencies to keep alive moving forward in to this digital future.
KINGS: Man that was a great answer man. I love that, I really love that. I have to go do that and record some outdoor stuff. For me the connection to my roots is so similar to what the bro was saying. It comes from the way and the how I do it. I think even just the attitude of doing everything myself is very much a Polynesian or Maori way to just say ‘I’m not going to wait, I’m just going to do it’. I’ll go get better at the thing and I’ll practices my thing in the corner and so I think I take that approach.
But in terms of sound I was never really good at sound-scaping until I focussed on it getting in to this industry if that makes sense. Like I didn’t know much, I knew what I liked rhythm wise and that definitely comes from Polynesian drums from even from taonga pūoro. I remember hearing that in a Blindspott song at the beginning of one of their early ones and I remember being like – yeah that’s cool. So there was also a cool factor for me more than I felt connected to it.
But as I grow and evolve even as a person I realise how important my culture is, which is why I base myself out of my marae, I need to be at home.
