NZOA Music Manager Brendan Smyth talks Kiwi music
Brendan Smyth is charged with getting more New Zealand music on the airwaves. As NZ Music Manager at NZ On Air, he leads a team that funds and promotes Kiwi music and music videos.
In this ScreenTalk interview, Smyth talks about:
- the challenges of getting Kiwi music on radio during the 90s
- what funding agency NZ On Air does, and how it chooses which music videos to fund
- how English video makers have been impressed by the strong ideas shown in Kiwi videos, including one made for a song by Goodshirt
- how the music video for the hit Bathe in the River (from Toa Fraser movie No. 2) helped win over the enthusiasm of radio, which initially proved resistant
- how the music video has found a new life on the internet
This video is also available on YouTube to embed and distribute, via a Creative Commons licence.
Interview and direction by Ian Pryor. Camera and editing by Alex Backhouse.
NZ ON SCREEN 2012