Kia ora!

Welcome to the last weekend of the school holidays. First thing’s first, pump up the volume and press play.

Marvel at John Williams conducting. Now there’s suitable ambiance may the fourth be with you! Today is Star Wars day – woohoo. George Lucas’ profound trilogy unleashed a science fiction frenzy on the world just short of 40 years ago and today geeks and not-geeks unite to celebrate the great trilogy-cum-saga. Light saber warbling and “Luke I am your father”-ing is totally appropriate today (and the other 364 days).

Nearly every day or month is a celebration to somebody somewhere. Obviously today (Saturday) has Star Wars covered and tomorrow, for instance, is Children’s Day in South Korea and Japan as well as Cinco de Mayo in The States and Mexico. Cinco de Mayo isn’t the celebration of mayonnaise I will add. Now in that vein I am proud to announce that, for those who aren’t already aware, we are four days into New Zealand Music Month. Throughout the month Teen Blog will bring you all sorts of NZ music know-how. Our libraries will also transform into venues for local musicians to perform – take that shush-fingers!

For a quick scrub-up on what exactly music month is about check out the official website here. In short though it is an epic celebration of the lads and lasses that have gifted ours and the worlds airwaves with amazing music. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll scratch the surface of some of the sweetest acts from the last few decades of kiwi music for weekend playlisting. This week we’ll start with the current decade. Globe conquering has been a bit of a pattern lately with The Naked And Famous first through the gates followed closely by Avalanche City’s Love Love Love (it was originally free to download). Many more have found international success too, especially Hamilton’s favourite child Kimbra. In our local charts Dunedin lads Six60 happened as too did J Williams & Scribe and Wellington’s Brooke Fraser. Away from the top of the charts acts like The Checks, Ladi6 and Cairo Knife Fight hungout with a huge amount of great and fresh music that is just too numerous to list here. As for new stuff be sure to keep an eye on/checkout The Phoenix Foundation, Minuit, Lorde, Shapeshifter and Beastwars.

For the duration of the month The New Zealand Herald will be streaming new and old recordings including their studio Sundae Sessions daily – a concert a day, sweet!

Finally, a video. We’re going to skip viral this week and stay in kiwi theme. Borrowing some funny from 2001 here’s Goodshirt’s Sophie. Enjoy!