Not only is RNZ's Indira Stewart a talented journalist, she's an accomplished musician too. The former music teacher and NZ Idol runner up discusses healing after heartbreak, her Tongan heritage, and her time as a competitive accordion player.
The RNZ Music Mixtape sees guests pick their favourite songs and share stories and memories that go with them. You can catch Indira on RNZ's new 5am news show, First Up.
Indira Stewart Photo: RNZ
Aretha Franklin - I Say A Little Prayer
My first audition for New Zealand Idol was with this song.
I mean, she’s the Queen of Soul. Growing up, my group of friends loved Mariah and Celine Dion, but they were artists I didn’t feel wowed by.
There’s something about Aretha that’s always captivated me. She’s just in a different realm. When she sings, she doesn’t just sing, she preaches. When you listen to one of her songs it’s like she’s preaching that song to you. Every word, every line is pulled out of the pit of her soul.
Indira Stewart - I Found My Life In You
After NZ Idol, I was really shaken, and kind of trying to find my identity. I landed in a relationship with another Idol contestant that had made it into the top fifty.
I married young - this person that I didn’t really know at the time. It was a rough experience, so I divorced young too. It was within two to three years.
So I was twenty-four years old, filing for divorce, rethinking my career options, and really kind of broken, because the relationship had left me estranged from my family. So I was trying to heal these ties, and rebuild my relationships with friends and family.
Songwriting was an avenue that was healing for me. I’ve always had a piano in my home, and in my darkest season I’ve found myself sitting at the keys.
I have a strong Christian faith, and I believe to this day that song was brought to me to help me heal. I feel God gave me that song to help me heal.
Sometimes you can spend months writing a song, and sometimes they can come to you in like five minutes, and that was one of those songs.
I remember performing it a few months later on the Good Morning show, when that was still around. And then I had these messages on Facebook from women who had been through rough relationships saying how much that song had meant to them.
Nothing in the lyrics really intentionally talks about that, but it shows me that sometimes there is a soul or a spirit to a song. It connects people that are going through similar things.
Every time I sing that song it reminds me of where I’ve come from, and it keeps me grounded, and gives me a sense of gratitude for how far I’ve come.
Hear Indira's original song in the audio player at the top of this page, by skipping forward to 50:23"
The Journeymen - 500 Miles
My dad had a huge influence in shaping my musical taste. I come from a musical family- he was a brass band conductor and choir conductor for years, so much of my childhood was spent attending all these brass band rehearsals and choir rehearsals - I’m surprised I’m not deaf.
My earliest memories of my dad teaching us music are from when I was around four years old, he’d pull out the guitar and play this song. We’d sit in the lounge and he’d sing it and teach it to us. We’d sit on the floor with our legs crossed and he’d teach it to us line by line. We’d recite it line by line - that’s how he taught us music.
My parents were migrants in the early eighties. My dad would cry when he sang this song, and I didn’t realise at the time, but he was probably missing home. He would say ‘It’s the son singing to his parents’, and i think that’s what he was doing. His family never wanted him to leave Tonga, but he left to give us a better education and better opportunities.
To this day he’ll still pull out his ukulele and we’ll jam this song together. It remains a favourite.
Glenn Miller - In The Mood
I have both fond memories and resentful memories of this song.
It goes back to my father being a brass band conductor - this is one of the most popular big band songs and my father played it on repeat in the house.
One of the first things my dad did when he moved to New Zealand from Tonga, was join a brass band. Music was his outlet. He joined the New Zealand Army brass band in Howick.
If you can imagine this young island boy in his mid-twenties, who barely speaks a word of English, all of a sudden he was in this brass band which was totally white. It was like ‘Where’s Wally’ - spot the brown guy.
It was our first experience of integrating with palangi people. It would have been easy to stick to our Tongan church community, but we were kind of forced to make friends with all the palangi children whose parents were in the band.
We had such a wonderful experience with the Howick City Brass Band. All the palangi families took us in and helped us settle in New Zealand culture. I have fond memories of how kind they were to us.
But I have a love/hate relationship with this song.
My sister and I played the piano accordion competitively for about sixteen years and my father arranged ‘In The Mood’ for an accordion trio. Myself, my sister and my little brother would go around playing the song all the time at Christmas events, at rest homes, and so on, and we just got so sick of the song.
Now I adore it, because it’s a childhood memory, but when you’re a kid you don’t like practising something over and over. It’s another example of the influence my dad had over our music.
Stevie Wonder - All I Do
This is from one of my favourite albums, Hotter Than July. Stevie is an amazing all-time artist. Not only able to be an incredible musician and songwriter despite his disability, he has some of the most beautiful melodies, and some of the most beautiful arrangements.
The opening line is my favourite line of any song. It’s such an amazing melody - there’s a bit of minor seventh in there. Not many people open up a song with a banging line like that - not just lyrically but melodically.
