I cruised down around about 12:35, with a plan to catch Nesian Mystik at 12:55. Damn, I've been in Auckland for a few years now, and I still haven't been to one of these even though I live right around the corner from Western Springs.
Actually, it was much as I expected. Crowds of people. Crowds. A whole great mixture of people. I struggle through; there's endless streams of familys, all walking far too slow for my liking, not keeping left like all the signs suggest,,,, [I'm not really into rules, but stuff like that is kinda common-sense]
So I wind up at the marquee where Nesian Mystik are gonna be playing, and I'm early, and the tent is overflowing anyway, and I catch the end of a set that I'm pretty sure was Verse II,,,, who knows,,, so I decided to continue on around the lake and see what was going down.
I was scoping everything and everyone, and I realised that all the stalls are selling these T-shirts with stuff like "Freshy" [instead of "Fresh Up" juice] on them; that's what all the young people are wearing, and I start to think that it seems that they've been sold all these racist slogans back in the form of these "culture-jamming" T-shirts, and I wonder if that's empowering, or just fucking sick,,,
I start getting really buzzed out that this whole thing is a ghoulish circus, a once-a-year event to make Pacific Islanders feel like they belong, which mainly serves instead to make them a commodity. I keep my head down and keep walking. I end up at the Contemporary Stage, and take a seat, and it seems that this is FUSA, from Christchurch.
Live bass, drums, keys and acoustic guitar, with three male MCs and a female as well. They had a very contemporary sound, a mix of hip-hop, reggae, funk and urban, lots of urban. So maybe they'll even go places. They had a great bass sound and groove going on in one of the songs, and an MC that sounded a bit like Eminem, so that it sounded very like one of his songs; I think that might mean they've got some skills.
As they got to the end of their set I cruised off, and this whole thing was starting to wear me out, but I was gonna hang around until 13:35 when the programme I had said I was gonna be seeing some jazz fusion. So I rolled over to the Arts Stage, a little place hidden out of the way,,,, I bought a drink of this interesting Tongan beverage which seemed to mainly be made of watermelon and stuff, and sat down on the grass.
It seems that I was witnessing Many Hands, described in the programme as world music. They had Pacific drums, Asian drums, Indian drums, and a female Chinese vocalist, along with this cool Chinese guy I'd seen at the Lantern Festival a little while ago, who sang and played this cool Chinese string instrument. These were all coupled with some white males, playing guitar, bass, drums and keys, in a kinda jazzy fashion. This really let the whole thing down, as it ended up sounding like white rock music rather than something cool and experimental. The mix was really shitty, the nice female vocals and a whole lot more drowned out by electric guitar. At the end of their set they exhorted everyone to buy their CD off them,,, but I wouldn't bother,,,,
Then it was sitting around as they dismantled their gear, and the next people set up their gear, and in that break we were lucky enough to get a performance by two young women who called themselves Sisters That Creep, a delightful urban piece that had them singing/rapping about how they got game over a backing tape. Great way to promote yourselves, but you perhaps picked the wrong stage.
And then the "jazz fusion" that I'd been waiting for, from a group called Soul Artistry, and I'd been seriously misled, as they launched into a version of Che Fu's «Misty Frequencies» [yawn] that they'd appearantly been lucky enough to be invited to perform at an awards event or something.
At which stage I decided that I couldn't be bothered any more, bought Rorn the chop suey she wanted and walked it back home to her.
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5 years ago
