There are some choice New Zealand music books. One notable recent titles is Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music, 1918-1964 by Chris Bourke. It won Book of the year in the 2011 New Zealand Post Book Awards.
Blue Smoke delves into the days of the dance-band. In an interview in The Listener, Bourke talks about this time:
‘There are these guys I just wish I’d seen,” Bourke says of the musicians he’s brought to life. “There are so many of them that I missed out on.” It’s a wish the reader comes to share, thanks not only to Bourke’s evocation of the various musical scenes, but also to the many archive pictures he tracked down for the book, from Walter Smith’s Jazz Band in 1927 to Ans Westra’s 1962 photographs of dancers at Auckland’s Maori Community Centre (“If I had a Tardis, I’d go to the Maori Community Centre,” says Bourke).
Search our catalogue for:
- New Zealand music – history and criticism
- Biographies of New Zealand musicians and singers
- The history of rock music in New Zealand
More NZ Music Month stuff:
- Find out more about New Zealand music.
- Explore NZ Music Month events at Christchurch City Libraries.
- Enter our NZ Music Month competition and go into the draw to win an iPod Nano.
