My relationship with authenticity

Ted's new piece is quite interesting. When I was a young grad student, the whole thing in my circle is that music videos were so polished that it was hard to tell who could play. That's why most of my guitar and vocal performances are in one take. One shot, one take: that was authentic to us. The media took it and ran with it. When we were teenagers, New Zealand musicians mostly looked out to the world. That's shifting now, though, and that's a byproduct of The Dakumentary's DIY revival. - To a lot of people in the Wellington scene, authenticity was like a badge/status symbol: something that gave someone a place to stand (tūrangawaewae). This worked well, but it was much like the rest of the world, where we thought in silos. My friends like Tristan Carter and Justin Clarke and the Troubles were genrebreakers, but most of the music was tightly crammed into boxes, whether it be new music or baroque. Since we did Portrait of a Knight, there's been a big push into the everyday by classical promoters and organisers, like Classical on Cuba. - Now, I'd say that the view is that authenticity is more about how you play rather than what you play, and that's one of the reasons people aren't happy with my boycott. They're pressuring me to play guitar on the presumption that it's 'authentic' to ask me, rather than to allow my mate Joel to do it. I'm busy and he's keen: that's all. Phillip sang better than I can.