08 Sep 2024
Together Larsen Taylor, Navakatoa Tekela-Pule and David Feauai-Afaese are NOA Records, winners of the Creative New Zealand Award at the 2024 Pacific Music Awards.
The award is a partnership under Creative New Zealand’s Pacific Arts Strategy. The award recognises and supports artists who are ‘innovative, genre-bending and edgy’.
NOA Records explores and celebrates music from Aotearoa that connects creatives and thinkers across Te Moana Nui a Kiwa. But NOA Records is more than a record label; they are a creative vessel and collective voice expressed as an independent record label, media archive and creative ‘aiga and whānau.
Navakatoa (Nava) is Director@NOA For Healing and Encouragement. The position title captures the way they work with each other and artists.
“Our goal for the next year is to establish infrastructure that provides fruitful opportunity, platforming and support for emerging Moana artists,” Nava says.
Makerita Urale, Senior Manager, Pacific Arts presented the award on behalf of Creative New Zealand.
“Our strategic vision is to build, invest and grow the Pacific Creative Economy, driven by powerful creative leaders across industries – from Aotearoa, the Pacific to the world – for innovation, partnerships and collaborations for prosperity for all. NOA Records are young individual creatives who have formed a collective enterprise with a big dream. They’re building their business capability and planning so they can be more sustainable in the future, which will help music artists to earn income from their intellectual property in songs and compositions,” Makerita says.
Since forming in 2018, NOA Records’ releases have spanned free jazz to Samoan post-punk to taonga pūoro to Moana-Fi soundtracks.
In 2020, they self-distributed 325 units of the Virtual Shadow Ensemble KEEP YOUR DISTANCE 12” Vinyl, an experimental jazz/electronic spoken word record. The record was made within the span of ten days during the lockdown in Aotearoa, and shared domestically and internationally to Australia, Japan, United States and Europe.
Their label has featured on Bandcamp Daily and UK music publishing, The Wire Magazine, as well as featuring on the year’s best list in The Quietus in 2020.
Other artists supported by Creative New Zealand under the Pacific Strategy were winners and finalists at the 2024 Pacific Music Awards.
Heavy metal band Shepherd’s Reign won Best Album and Best Pacific Language. The band was the inaugural winner of the Creative New Zealand award in 2022.
Creative New Zealand Pacific Arts invests in Wellington-based creative enterprise Signature Choir who won the 2024 Best Gospel Award.
Artist Ema I’u was a finalist in the Music Video category with a video supported via a successful crowd funding campaign via Boosted X Moana, an innovative initiative and partnership between Creative New Zealand Pacific Arts and the Arts Foundation.
History of the Creative New Zealand Award
The Creative New Zealand Award is the result of partnership between Creative New Zealand and the Pacific Music Awards. The partners piloted a new award category for a Pacific artist or collective to acknowledge innovative, genre-bending, contemporary Pacific music. The awardee must have demonstrated inclusiveness of LGBTQiA+, young people, women and individuals with lived experience of disability.
Previous recipients of the Creative New Zealand Award
2023 - Lady Shaka
2022 - Shepherds Reign
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