Introduction: Music Geographies of Aotearoa

Music is deeply entwined into the cultural histories of our bicultural and multicultural nation. In Te Ao Māori, nguru (nose flutes) and pūrerehua (whirling instruments) mimicked sounds of manu (birds) and hau (wind) and were joined by invocations and waiata. In western culture, monks chanted to find spiritual harmony. In the 16th century, Johannes Kepler argued for a divine architect who had woven connections between geometry, astronomy and music. For the many migrant peoples who have made Aotearoa home, musical traditions likewise offer sinews connecting origin, destination and place-in-the-world. Music can both reflect and contribute to the constitution of place. It is more that sound; it is an unspoken script though which place is read, known and reproduced. It contributes, perhaps paradoxically, to what both makes place and takes us to other places. Music has complex mobilities as it can travel invisibly via radio airwaves and wifi as well as tangibly through material artefacts like vinyl albums and the labour of touring performers. Music is essentially sound that is 'organised in a particular arrangement … intended to engage others' (Whittaker it is 'piped' into the places that moor us (private homes, supermarkets) as well as into vectors of movement like flights, private cars and the elevators of commercial buildings. This collection of articles builds on a limited literature that examines music within New Zealand geography. Early examples include Colin McLeay (1997), who examined music and national identity, and Melanie Wall (2000), who explored the relationship between New Zealand music and racialised identities. Festivals were a focus in later work with Wardlow Friesen et al. (2014) interpreting Auckland's Pasifika and Robin Kearns (2014) considering the local/global nexus that is WOMAD Taranaki. The collection has its origins as a session at the New Zealand Geographical Society conference held in Christchurch in November 2022. In alignment with the conference theme, a call sought papers addressing links between music and resilience. Questions addressed in the call included how music assisted individuals and communities in gaining, maintaining and sustaining a secure place-in-the-world. In lieu of a discussant in the conventional sense, Adam McGrath of the Christchurch band The Eastern (and 2024 winner of the Folk category in the Aotearoa Music Awards) offered a generous set of songs that gave voice to stories of struggle and resilience that otherwise fly under the radar in contemporary society. The articles in this issue consider hitherto under-examined aspects of the ecosystem of relationships within the Aotearoa's musical landscape. They examine the place of music in the making of places (such as cities, festivals, and the teaching classroom), as well as the roles of place in inspiring music (as evident in album cover images, and rail travel in this collection). Specifically, Hanju Kim, Nicolas Lewis and Robin Kearns assess the ecosystem of music production and performance in Auckland and its alignment with the UNESCO City of Music brand. Robin Kearns interprets links between mobilities, activism and music, having travelled with musician Anthonie Tonnon to one of his rail-themed concerts. The role of festival management and design in curating attendee experience is examined by Neil Lindsay, Robin Kearns and Tara Coleman. JC Gaillard, Anthony Gampell, Martin Joe, Zara Skuse and Caitlin Young contribute to the GeoEd tradition of this journal with an examination of the benefits of bringing music into the geography classroom. Luke Kiddle shows that album covers illustrate a rich set of connections between music and place. He points to connections between the visual and the aural and, in particular, the ways connections with place in recorded music are given artistic elaboration, making the cover a cultural artefact that, with the music therein, has global reach. The overall goal in this collection is not to argue for place-based genres and national 'musics'. Rather, as Mitchell (2009) points out, music in Aotearoa is invariably an expression of a 'local-transnational nexus', combining tenacious global influences with local evocations. By way of example, contemporary voices at the borderland of folk and rock such as Reb Fountain and Marlon Williams are as likely, if ironically, to be linked to the globally fluid, yet US-rooted, 'Americana' genre. The currents of international influence have long been tidal in power as they flow through music. The Beatles, after all, included Indian influences and the sitar into their compositions 60 years ago. As Connell and Gibson (2003) argue, trying to localise music can be overly simplistic and misleading. Hence, rather than valorising 'Aotearoa music', this set of articles seeks to explore its ecosystem as manifested in performance (Kearns, 2024), city-branding (Kim et al., 2024), festival organisation (Lindsay et al., 2024), album imagery (Kiddle, 2024) and as a tool for classroom engagement (Gaillard et al., 2024). A commentary by Andrews (2024) reflects on the suite of articles, riffing off them to argue for music being as pervasive in the human world as all-embracing environmental dimensions such as climate. As the well-known chorus to the Neil and Tim Finn-penned song goes, 'Always take the weather with you'. This collection implicitly argues that whether one is a devoted fan or a bystander overhearing tunes in a shopping mall, music is pervasive. We take it with us and it follows us. Hence there remain many more music geographies to examine.